Repercussions

11

Repercussions

    The phone rang in the early hours of the morning. Veronica, who’d felt queasy all the previous day, but had grimly ignored it and got on with putting her research notes in order for the new book, turned over restlessly, and buried her face in her pillow. Peter shot out of bed and hurried into his fawn sitting-room to answer it.

    “Peter, dear?” said Belinda’s anxious voice. “I—I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.”

    The police had got the Cohens’ number from Jim Rosen’s I.D.: having no close relatives of his own he had given his father-in-law as the person to contact.

    “We’ll come roight over.”

    “Thank you, Peter, dear!” said Belinda in tones of heartfelt relief.

    “How is Jerry taking it?” asked Peter cautiously.

    “He... Not very well, I’m afraid,” she admitted in a trembling voice.

    “I shall get Veronica up and we h’will be there in about”—he looked at the clock—“about twenty minutes, da?”

    “Thank you, dear; and—and then we can arrange about—about going down to the hospital—”

    “Yes; but do not disturb yourself, Belinda, I h’will take care of all that. And whoile you are waiting for us, you get yourself a brandy, n’est-ce pas? And then, if you could make us a noice cup of tea?”

    “Yes; I’ll do that.”

    “I see you very, soon, then.”

    “Yes; thank you, Peter. Good-bye,” said Belinda, still in a trembling voice, and hung up.

    Peter poured some Cognac into a glass, swallowed it, poured some more into the glass, and went into the bedroom with it. He sat down on Veronica’s side of the bed, and laid a firm hand on her shoulder. “Veronica! Wake up, moy dearest!”

    Veronica moaned faintly into her pillow.

    Peter shook her firmly. Veronica made a mumbling noise, and turned her head, opening her eyes and squinting at him. “Whassup? ’S not morning, is it?”

    “No, moy dearest one, but you must wake up now; did you not hear the phone?”

    Veronica had sunk fathoms deep back into sleep after burying her face in her pillow. She said fuzzily, still squinting: “That was ages ago, wasn’t it?”

    “No; it was just now; sit up, moy precious—come along: da.”

    Once she was sitting up and starting to look alarmed he put his arm round her.

    “What’s up?” she demanded abruptly.

    “That was your mother on the phone—”

    “Dad?” she said, going a nasty shade of green.

    “No, not your father; there has been an accident; h’yere, take a wee of sip of—”

    “Stop mucking around! What’s happened?”

    Peter’s mouth tightened for an instant and he drew a deep breath. “It is Becky and Jim.”

    “Go on, damn you!” said Veronica through her teeth.

    “They are both dead, I am afraid, moy darling.” He attempted to tighten his arm around her but without much success, as she was now rigid. “A car accident.”

    “What about the kids?” she said hoarsely.

    Peter swallowed. “Rosemary is dead; Damian is unconscious.”

    “What about the baby?”

    “She is perfectly all roight, moy darling—not a scratch on her,” he said gently.

    Veronica swallowed hard. After a moment she said: “And Carol?”

    “Carol was not with them, moy dearest—do you not remember? She was goink away with some friends—down south, I think.”

    “Oh—yes.”

    Peter put the glass of brandy into her hand. Veronica drank some without appearing to notice that she was doing so.

    “Has anybody rung Helen and Nat?” she said abruptly.

    Helen, Nat, Melanie and Pat’s two daughters were already down in Taupo at the Cohens’ bach. Patricia herself, as she not infrequently did, had taken off to spend the festive season with a friend—this time a friend in San Francisco—having dumped her offspring on her capable older sister. Not that Susan and Allyson weren’t old enough to look after themselves, now, but Pat didn’t trust Allyson to behave herself and didn’t trust Susan to keep an eye on her. As they both, without admitting it, adored their hearty Uncle Nat and loved going on holidays where you did a lot of fishing and swimming, wore what you liked and ate lots of barbecues cooked by Uncle Nat, Allyson had raised only a token objection to this plan and Susan, having almost, as has been mentioned, attained years of discretion, hadn’t objected at all.

    “We sort out all of that when we get to your parents’ place,” replied Peter tranquilly. “Now you must get dressed.”

    “Yeah,” said Veronica vaguely, not moving.

    He again attempted to tighten his arm around her. She scowled, gave him a push—since he was pretty solid it had no effect—and said briskly: “Come on.” She handed him the glass and got up.

    Peter stood up slowly. He looked at her doubtfully. She was scowling, pulling on a clean pair of panties. “Veronica—”

    “Get a move on!” she growled, not looking at him. She hauled a clean pair of jeans out of a drawer and climbed into them.

    Peter gave a tiny sigh and set the glass down neatly on the old-fashioned dressing-table mat on his old-fashioned oak dressing-table. Since he himself had not yet managed to confide in his wife the story of what had happened in Israel when he was a young man, which he had told Belinda Cohen about so easily, he was not offended by Veronica’s prickliness—just a little sad. He got dressed silently.

    Damian was unconscious for three days, in the efficient hospital in the nearest big town to Te Kuiti. Sir Jerry, alarmingly pale and silent, spent almost the whole of those three days at his bedside, ignoring the representations of his wife, his sons-in-law, his daughters and the hospital staff that he ought to get some rest. After Damian had finally come round, opening his brown eyes quite abruptly and saying: “Hullo, Grandpa: I’ve spotted the bug in that maze progr—” and suddenly falling asleep, and it was obvious that his brain was not affected, and the doctors said that he was fit for a journey by ambulance and that in any case they’d like to have that leg looked at by an orthopaedic surgeon, Sir Jerry had him moved to The Mater, an expensive private hospital within fifteen minutes’ drive of the Cohen residence. Damian could have received exactly the same treatment, from the very same specialist, in the much larger public hospital specializing in bones that was only about another half-hour’s drive further south—for the New Zealand health service, though being rapidly eroded by the Labour government currently in power, had not yet reached the point where it would charge to provide the best care available to little boys who’d been hurt in road accidents; but Sir Jerry had great faith in The Mater, although it was a Catholic foundation, and as he didn’t mind paying exorbitantly, and as the consulting orthopaedic surgeon and the hospital didn’t mind charging exorbitantly, they were all satisfied.

    The police, very efficient and helpful, eventually located the Woollastons and Carol on their camping holiday at about the same time Damian came round—Melanie, who of course took a breathless interest in all of Carol’s affairs, had recovered from her initial shock enough to remember that the Woollastons had intended to hire a campervan in Dunedin and then go on down to Stewart Island. Nat—who was a lot more shaken by the whole thing than anybody but Helen had the slightest idea of—flew down to Invercargill, grimly went down to Bluff and caught the boat to Stewart Island, and collected Carol. To his consternation, she didn’t cry a single tear either when he told her the news (having refused to let nice Mrs Woollaston do it for him) or on the journey back. Nat in his simplicity had bawled his own eyes out on Helen’s ample breast in the privacy of their room the second night of Damian’s unconsciousness; Helen, after he’d got several ounces of whisky down her, had done the same against his hefty chest the morning Peter had rung them at the bach; and Susan, Allyson and Melanie had all wept loudly and unashamedly.

    The funeral was held as soon as Nat and Carol got back home, for Pat, looking shockingly old, pinched and ill, had of course flown straight back from San Francisco as soon as Peter had rung her with the news. Lady Cohen, Sir Jerry, Helen and Nat, Pat, Susan, Allyson and Melanie all wept, all either holding someone’s hand or leaning their head against theirs, or both. Pauline Weintraub, supported, to no-one’s surprize except her sister Lindy’s, by Erik Nilsson, held out almost to the end, and then collapsed, sobbing, on Erik’s chest. Veronica, tight-lipped and grim, at first stood motionless, not touching anyone; after some time, however, she cautiously took her husband’s hand and gripped it very tightly. Peter then wept very softly. Lindy, very grey-looking, remained upright and tearless throughout and flew back to Wellington that afternoon. Carol, stark white in her little green frock—Lady Cohen had very sensibly decreed that the children mustn’t wear black, it was all quite bad enough without that—still didn’t shed a tear. Damian, of course, was still in hospital, and baby Sharon was at the Cohen house with a very pleasant Karitane nurse looking after her.

    The day after the funeral Helen and Nat sensibly decided to take all the girls back down to the bach at Taupo, including Carol. Carol expressed no wishes at all in the matter, so they took her.

    Two days after that, however, Sir Jerry had a mild stroke and was himself rushed off to The Mater. After an anxious consultation with Peter on the phone, Helen flew up from Taupo in a very bumpy little plane that made her feel awfully sick (which she didn’t admit to anyone, being Helen), while Nat stayed down there with the girls. Helen stayed at her mother’s for two days, until it was clear that the stiffness in Sir Jerry’s left side really was clearing up, and that his speech was quite unaffected, and then returned—by bus, which also made her feel queasy, but she took some pills, this time—to the bach.

    To her astonishment, the following day her daughter Pauline, who hadn’t been on a family holiday since she turned eighteen, rang her up and said abruptly: “Mum, can me and Erik come down for the weekend?”

    “Yes, of course,” said Helen automatically, mentally reallocating bedrooms.

    “Can we have that little blue room?” said Pauline gruffly.

    “It’s got single beds... I’ll push them together,” Helen decided.

    At her end of the phone Pauline turned scarlet. “Ta.”

    Calmly Helen enquired when they should expect them, learned with great relief that Erik thought they’d set out first thing on Friday morning, if that was okay—she’d had a nightmare vision of them coming down amidst the drunks and all the other weekenders on the Friday night—agreed calmly that that’d be fine, and rang off.

    “NAT!” she bawled.

    Nat was in the garden, tinkering with the motor-mower. “WHAT?” he bawled back.

    Helen stuck her head out the back door and yelled: “Come here!”

    Nat stumbled over to her. “What’s up?” he panted.

    “Pauline’s coming down for the weekend.”

    “Jesus—is that all? Ya bloody nearly gave me a heart attack, ya stupid woman!”

    Helen forbore to tell him, as she usually did, not to say “Jesus,” it sounded extremely silly coming from a Jew. “Come and give me a hand with the beds in that little back room.”

    Nat followed her obediently to the little blue back bedroom, wiping his hands down the sides of his ancient khaki shorts as he did so.

    “Come on—you take that end—push!”

    “What the Hell is this in aid of?” he croaked, as they shoved one bed against the other. Neither bed was in use, as the little blue bedroom was the smallest and darkest of the five in the rambling old holiday home; it was also at a considerable distance from the rest of them, being right at the end of the passage, with a bathroom, a large store cupboard and then another bathroom on one side of it, and Sir Jerry’s “games” room, with its billiard table and dart board, on the other.

    “Pauline—she’s bringing Erik with her,” said Helen, with a grunt, endeavouring to line her end of the bed up.

    “Here—lemme.” Nat pushed her aside and gave the bed another shove. “There—thadd’ll do.” He sat down on it before she could say it wasn’t straight or something, grinned at her and said with a dirty wink: “So it’s like that, eh?”

    Helen might not have let him get away with that if she’d been all gussied up with a good bra and a girdle on under a decent frock, her face made up, and her hair done. But as she’d left all her girdles at home, and was wearing her oldest, softest bra (which stopped her flopping about, more or less, but didn’t actually support her large bosom), with an ancient sleeveless blouse which revealed the slab-like upper-arms that she normally concealed (and which incidentally induced Nat to squeeze them rather frequently) and a huge, scruffy pair of blue cotton shorts that revealed a good deal of her slab-like thighs, now starting to tan nicely (and which incidentally induced Nat to pinch and squeeze both them and her bum, frequently not even caring if the kids were present or not)—as, in fact, she was thoroughly relaxed and comfortable, she merely replied simply: “Looks like it.”

    “Seems a decent joker.”

    “Mm,” said Helen, sitting down beside him.

    Nat shot a sneaky look at his watch. “Not like that other goddawful prick, Whatsisname—that married joker.”

    Not reproving him for his language, his wife rejoined merely: “Thank goodness!”

    Nat looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and said cautiously: “’Course, he is a goy.”

    “Don’t say that, Nat,” said Helen—but automatically, as if she was thinking of something else.

    “Well?”

    “Oh, what does that matter!” she said vigorously. “I’ll just be so relieved to see her settling down with—with someone trustworthy!”

    Nat reflected placidly that Helen was a funny old bird—“trustworthy?”—well, he supposed she had a point, at that; and put a hand on her big, soft thigh.

    “What say we christen these beds for ’em, eh?” he rumbled, with a dirty chuckle.

    “Nat Weintraub!” said Helen, not indignantly enough.

    Very gently Nat ran his hand up the inside of her thigh; Helen shuddered.

    Nat began to unbutton the fly of his ancient khaki shorts.

    “Nat,” said Helen faintly: “it’s the middle of the morning!”

    “What the Hell’s that got to do with it?” He stood up and let the shorts fall off him. ”I’m ready, willing, and able!” he added, grinning. As he never wore anything under his shorts in the holidays—Helen had long since given up trying to talk him out of this indecent habit—she could see that he was. Nat watched with enjoyment as a flush ran up her Prussian neck.

    “The girls... “

    “They won’t be back for ages; said they’d have lunch in town, didn’t they?”

    “All right—only close the curtains, for Heaven’s sake,” said Helen weakly.

    “What on earth for?” He cupped his balls. “The bloody lake isn’t watching us!”

    Helen—as he perfectly well knew—went funny at the knees when he did that.  “What if Mr Robinson comes over?” she said faintly.

    This was the bach’s elderly, dried-up stick of a neighbour; he often did come over—to borrow things, ostensibly; actually to get away from his even more dried-up wife’s constant nagging and to have a sneaky cigar with Sir Jerry or Nat.

    “Be a treat for ’im, won’t it?” said Nat happily, continuing to cup his balls, and tilting his pelvis suggestively in Helen’s direction.

    “Nat,” said Helen in a stifled voice that he recognised.

    “Yes, darling?” he said hopefully. “Want me to do something for ya?”

    Very red, for even after all these years she still found it difficult to talk about the things she liked doing so much, Helen said huskily: “Could we have a bit of a sixty-nine to start with?”

    Beaming, Nat knelt at the bedside between his wife’s sturdy knees and said: “Come on, then, let’s get these off ya!” He hauled her shorts off, and saying: “Get your blouse off, love—don’t hide the merchandise,” began to draw her capacious panties down.

    Helen’s legs quivered, and he dropped a kiss on a meaty thigh. She undid her blouse, and removed it. Nat had the panties down to her ankles, now; he pulled them off and threw them across the room: they sailed right over to the chest of drawers, and draped themselves over a pretty little blue vase. He knelt up, grinning, and watched as she removed the saggy bra.

    “That’s better! Dunno why the Hell you bother to wear that thing, anyway! Cummere!”

    Helen bent down; Nat knelt up, and went “Worra-worra-worra!” into her boobs.

    She clutched his back. “Oh, darling!”

    Very pleased indeed, Nat said into the boobs: “Want me tongue now, do ya, old Hell’s Bells?”

    She shuddered all over and replied, quite unnecessarily: “God, yes, Nat!”

    Pushing the meaty thighs well apart, Nat proceeded to thoroughly indulge her in that weakness of hers that they both enjoyed so much; when she was at the trembling and moaning stage he silently got up on the bed, assumed the requisite position, and let her wrap her tongue around him in that very special way she had, until it got a bit too much. Then, since she was moaning again and digging her fingernails right into his shoulders, he turned round very quickly and fucked very hard for not very long, and as soon as she screamed and clenched on him and drew breath to scream again, exploded gloriously and agonisingly and with the usual showers of stars across pitchy velvet blackness that he always saw in his head.

    Nat, who liked it whenever he could get it and got it whenever he could, would not have believed you if you’d told him that they’d just been reaffirming their immortality in the face of the recent traumas in their family. And Helen, in her more everyday, or girdled, persona, would have refused to listen to a word of such indecent nonsense. But they had been, all the same.

    “Gee, I dunno, Jo-Beth,” said Fred Nakamura to his sister. “They have awful strict immigration laws; I guess you could come visit with us on a tourist visa; but they wouldn’t let you stay without a permanent job.”

    Jo-Beth Nakamura put down the sheaf of colourful tourist brochures about New Zealand—Fred had gone into the whole business of moving out there from the States on a three-year Research Fellowship just as seriously as Charlie Roddenberry had gone into taking up a Readership there—and sighed regretfully.

    Missy Nakamura (whose real name was Masako, but who was called Missy by absolutely everyone, since she was a third-generation American) looked up from feeding baby Harry and said to her sister-in-law: “Why don’t you try for a job out there, Jo-Beth? I’m sure you’ve got all the qualifications.”

    Jo-Beth was a librarian; she had done a B.A. in English and Library Science, and had an M.L.S. from an A.L.A. accredited school of library and information science.

    “Yeah; I’ve written to their Library Association, but I haven’t heard back yet.”

    “I tell you what!” said Fred energetically. “Dr Macdonald said in his letter that the Institute’s library should be up and running by the time I get out there.” Fred was due to take up his research fellowship in September; he had suggested this himself rather than hang round in L.A. until the following March, dying of frustration at having to do someone else’s research in his humble current position as Research Assistant, instead of getting on with his own. “Where’s the letter?” He jumped up and fished it out of the correct pigeonhole in his big old desk. “Here: look, he says the library’s going to be the first wing built.”

    “That’ll be a change!” said Jo-Beth: her experience with libraries’ places in the pecking order had been not unlike that of Caro Webber, who had been quite stunned when Hamish had casually informed her that of course the library would be the first part of the new building to be commissioned. She had dazedly realized that there were definite benefits in having a top boss who was an academic and not an administrator.

    “That means they’ll be appointing new staff, doesn’t it?” continued Fred.

    “Ye-ah… They’ve probably appointed the Librarian already; still, I’m a bit young for that, anyway...” She was twenty-six, so her relatives merely nodded.

    Missy, who had a very high opinion of her sister-in-law’s capabilities, suggested: “What about Deputy?”

    “Why not? No harm in writing!” said Jo-Beth cheerfully. “I’ll do it tonight!”

    When she had taken herself off her brother and his wife looked at each other with dawning hope.

    “Do you really think—?” said Missy in a trembling voice.

    Fred rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Keep our fingers crossed, huh?”

    “Yes. If only she could get a job out there, Fred; it’d be perfect! Just what she needs to make her forget that horrible man!” Missy’s voice shook; as usual, she avoided mentioning Hank Cunninghame by name.

    Fred grinned. “You think maybe she find nice Nisei boy out there?” he said in a silly voice.

    “Cut it out, Fred!” said his wife, giggling. “I wouldn’t mind what he was, not even he was—was purple!” she added vigorously. “Just as long as he was nice, and—and could look after her, like she needs!”

    Fred grunted noncommittally at this anti-feminist statement. In his opinion his sister was more than capable of looking after herself; but she was certainly rotten at picking men. “Be company for you, too,” he added.

    Missy sighed a little, and kissed baby Harry. “Uh-huh.”

    After she’d put Harry down for his nap she said on an anxious note: ”I hope Hannah won’t be too upset, if Jo-Beth does get a job out there.”

    Fred was working at his desk; he looked up vaguely. “What’s that, honey?”

    Missy came over, put her hands gently on his shoulders and repeated her remark.

    Hannah was Mrs Nakamura, Senior. Fred replied: “I guess she’ll miss us all, sure; but she’s running for Town Councillor again this year; and there’s Joe and Doris and their kids; she won’t be lonely, honey.”

    Missy, who adored her bustling, super-efficient little mother-in-law, sighed a little. “No; I guess you’re right.”

    She prepared to go do the marketing: “Fred,” she said, picking up her car keys.

    “Uh-huh?”

    “Be sure and keep an ear open for the baby.”

    “Mm-hm.” Fred turned over a page, looked round, and grinned. “Sure I will, honey! What’re we gonna have for dinner?”

    “Chili con carne, I thought; does that suit you?”

    Fred grinned again. “Sure! You know I always love Mexican! Can we have tacos with it?”

    “Yeah, sure, honey. I’ll see you later, huh?”

    “Mm-hm.”

    Missy dropped a kiss on his shiny black head, and went out to do her marketing, blissfully unaware that—though most of the items she bought, except the sweet onions, the cos lettuce and the Monterey jack, were available in New Zealand—out there her total grocery bill would have come to almost five times what she paid in her local market in Altadena. Missy was in for some shocks, come September.

    Hamish returned home after two weeks with Elspeth down at his parents’ farm in Taranaki to find Mirry’s letter waiting for him. He immediately rang her up, but got no reply—hardly surprisingly, since it was nine-thirty at night, and she was doing her waitressing job at the Chez Basil restaurant. After a certain period of baffled fury this fact dawned on him, and he began to calm down a little—not much, though: the refusal of his financial support had hurt his pride, and the refusal of his person had hurt something very much deeper, which he hardly knew he possessed.

    So the next morning he rang her at what he judged was a very reasonable hour: eight in the morning. He himself had been up since six-thirty, after very little sleep. He had made himself a pot of coffee—Elspeth was still down in Taranaki, so he didn’t need to bother with anything more substantial—and taken it up to his study, where he had worked bleakly on a guest editorial for the J.P.A.P.S. for what felt like hours.

    Mirry hadn’t got home until after two, because they’d had a private party in the Small Room which, naturally, Basil had been reluctant to break up earlier for fear of offending some very good customers. So it was perhaps with some justification that she growled into the phone: “Who the Hell is it?”

    “Mirry? It’s me.”

    Mirry had expected some sort of reply to her letter and had been very upset when there had been none whatsoever. “Whadda you want?”

    “I’ve just got your letter,” said Hamish cautiously; on re-reading it this morning, he had been calm enough to notice the date on it. “I’ve been down in Taranaki—at my parents’.”

    “So?”

    “I— Look, can’t we talk about it? I’ll come round, shall I, and—”

    “NO!”

    “What?”

    “I said no! Isn’t it self-evident? I don’t wuh-want to talk about it.”

    Hamish was too upset himself to notice the wobble in her voice. “Now, look: this is ridiculous! Of course we have to—”

   “Yes, it is ridiculous!” said Mirry loudly. “That’s the whole point! It’s totally ridiculous and I don’t want to go on with it!”

    “Mirry—” he said hoarsely.

    “Leave me alone! I can’t take any more of it!” cried Mirry on a sob, and hung up on him.

    Hamish glared unbelievingly at his receiver, slammed it down, and strode furiously round his study for a while.

    Ten minutes later, Mirry’s phone rang again. Mirry was face-down on the bed, sobbing. She bounded up, dashed out into her tiny passage, picked up the receiver and crashed it back down into its cradle. Then she rushed back into the bedroom, starting to sob again, and threw herself on the bed once more.

    Hamish did a lot more striding up and down; this time, since there was no-one in the house to object to it, swearing loudly. Then he sat down at his desk and stared aimlessly at his typewriter and his half-written guest editorial for at least twenty minutes. Then he swore again, got up, tore off his clothes, climbed furiously into his swimming trunks and, neglecting in his fury to put his shirt back on, shuffled his feet into the flip-flops which Elspeth’s relentless correcting of his terminology had almost trained him to call “jandals” as the locals did, grabbed his towel and strode down steep Kowhai Bay Road to tiny Kowhai Bay. There he swam furiously until he was panting and exhausted, lay on the tiny crescent of silver sand for about half an hour, swam himself into exhaustion again, lay down on his towel once more and, physically exhausted but emotionally in turmoil, lay there thinking furious, unhappy, and very disconnected thoughts for at least a further hour.

    He was so very hurt and bewildered by his little lover’s sudden rejection that he never managed to draw what might have seemed to an impartial observer the obvious conclusion from that remark in her letter about their relationship’s not having much of a future: that it was a future with him that Mirry wanted. Instead he assumed that this was a reference to that impossible age gap between them, and that she had at last realised that he was far too old for her. Had she perhaps already found a younger man? Whenever he caught sight of her at the university she seemed to be surrounded by a gaggle of youths. And he knew that even down in Taranaki, on Harry Field’s hill farm, where she might have been supposed to be quite safe from predatory young males, there was someone called Brian in the offing. Mirry had referred to him as clumsy, thick, and boring. Hamish didn’t know very much about girls, but he did know that they didn’t describe youths as “clumsy” because they had big feet. He also knew, since Mirry had told him so, with a scornful laugh, that Kay Field wanted her to marry Brian, who was helping his father manage the farm next to theirs. Of course he knew that Mirry rarely did anything her bossy mother wanted her to do, but...

    So Hamish was thoroughly miserable. Sylvie had successfully managed to erase that young male’s brash confidence in his own attractiveness that he’d had at the time of his fling in Taranaki with pretty dark-haired Rebekah, and later, when he’d fallen so disastrously in love with the sophisticated French Francine in Paris, so he had no conception of how completely irresistible Mirry found him. The fact that he would be forty-one this coming February didn’t help, either. With all these thoroughly good reasons against it, it was hardly likely that the idea of divorcing Sylvie in order to marry Mirry would occur to him; and it didn’t.

    As he lay on the beach brooding, face down on his towel, suffering all the torments of rejection and grinding jealousy, the harsh January sun reddened his pale back—what with working up until Christmas and then going down to the farm, he hadn’t managed to get in much sunbathing so far this summer—and when he had taken Elspeth to the beach, he’d been very careful to slather both her and himself with sunscreen cream, and to wear his shirt when he came out of the water. So that night the tortures of sunburn were added to his emotional torment.

    He had now persuaded himself that there was another man, and probably the “clumsy” Brian. So he was alternately writhing and raging with jealousy as well as sunburn. It wasn’t so very long before, alone in the big, modern house, he collapsed in tears from sheer misery.

    Peter stood in the doorway of his fawnish flat’s sitting-room. Veronica was sitting on the sofa with her feet up, reading. She didn’t look up.

    “I am goink, now,” he said.

    His wife didn’t reply.

    “I’m not sure when I shall be back; perhaps around foive—da?”

    Veronica still said nothing. Her eyes remained fixed on the printed page. Peter knew perfectly well she wasn’t reading a word. His voice trembled a little as he added: “When I get home I make us a noice dinner—da?”

    Veronica turned a page.

    Peter swallowed. He went out, closing the door very quietly behind him.

    In the sitting-room Veronica still didn’t look up. She went on reading.

    Downstairs in the chilly brown lobby of the old apartment block old Mrs Perkins was checking in her handbag to see that she’d remembered the letters she intended to post. She greeted Peter politely. Peter replied in kind. Mrs Perkins eyed his briefcase. She knew perfectly well the university was still in the middle of its summer holidays. She did not remark on this fact, nor on the presence of the briefcase.

    “How is Mrs Riabouchinsky?” she asked in a neutral voice.

    “Very h’well, thank you, Mrs Perkins,” replied Peter in distinctly gritty tones.

    Mrs Perkins did not remark on this, either. Peter’s antennae, however, quite unmistakeably picked up the fact that she was refraining from further enquiry.

    “At least,” he added hurriedly, “she still suffers somewhat from the morning-sickness, you know.”

    “Yes, of course,” replied Mrs Perkins tranquilly. They both knew that this wasn’t what was wrong with Veronica, at all.

    “May I give you a lift, Mrs Perkins?” Peter asked politely. “I go up to Puriri, moyself; but I could drop you anywhere it suited you?”

    “No, thank you, Dr Riabouchinsky,” Mrs Perkins replied. “I’m just going for a little walk down to the Post Office.”

    They descended the steps together. Mrs Perkins walked slowly away in the sunshine in the general direction of downtown. Peter got into his big pale yellow Merc, started it up with an awful roaring noise, and shot past her at about fifty miles an hour—thought Mrs Perkins, who had never bothered to convert to metric measurements with the rest of the country. She sighed a little; but as she was an intelligent and very sensible woman she knew that—however long it took—Peter and Veronica would work their way through their current crisis to some sort of resolution. As it was impossible to tell whether this resolution would be a happy one, she didn’t waste time and effort on hoping that it would. She walked very slowly down to the Post Office, and posted her letters. Then, since it was such a lovely day, she bought a ferry ticket, sat tranquilly on the wharf for some time waiting for the old Devonport ferry, and when it came rode on it for the round trip.

    In the fawn flat Veronica read grimly on. She felt queasy halfway through the afternoon but drank a glass of water and, ignoring the queasiness, went on reading.

    “You have finished your book?” said Peter, when he got home.

    “Yes,” said Veronica. “I’m going for a walk.” She went out.

    Peter’s lips trembled. He went and sat on the sofa. After a little he picked up the phone and dialled his mother-in-law.

    “Is there any change?” asked Belinda, after she’d reported on the health of Sir Jerry (fast recovering), Damian (improving slowly but steadily) and baby Sharon (blooming).

    “No,” he said in a trembling voice. There was a sympathetic silence from the other end of the phone. “She is—she is so cold, Belinda!”

    “Yes; Veronica’s always been like that when anything’s upset her, Peter, dear; I did warn you.”

    “Yes,” he gulped.

    “You just have to—to let her find her own way through it, Peter.”

    “Da—I know. That does not make it any easier.”

    “No,” she agreed sympathetically.

    “She is—she is... It’s so hard, to feel she does not h’want me!” he burst out.

    To his surprize Belinda replied: “No, she does want you: she’s just scared of letting herself go.”

    “Oh,” he said slowly. “I see—yes, of course it is that, I should have realoized... Only—only how do I break down her reserve, Belinda? I have troied everythink!”

    Belinda already knew that, and she thought privately that it was rather a pity that he had. Not that it would do Veronica any harm to know that he cared about her, she supposed rather doubtfully. “I don’t think you can; I don’t think anybody could; it’s just a matter of waiting until she—she comes out of it.”

    Waiting for an indefinite period for your wife to come out of the icy, silent, unreachable place that she’d retired into some four weeks since was not a pleasant prospect. “Sometoimes I think that she never h’will,” he said in a trembling voice.

    Belinda Cohen, though she had not lived as long as old Mrs Perkins, was almost as sensible. She replied: “Of course she will eventually, Peter.”

    “What if—if the baby has come and she still does not—does not—”

    “Oh, I don’t think it’ll last that long!” replied Belinda briskly.

    Whether because she was too close to both Peter and Veronica, or perhaps because she was not as intelligent as Mrs Perkins, she had never thought of the possibility that had occurred to the clear-sighted old lady: that Veronica might “come out of it” without necessarily turning to Peter. As Mrs Perkins, who was totally lacking in sentimentality, saw it, it was quite on the cards that the tragedy of Veronica’s sister’s death would wreck the Riabouchinskys’ marriage—which in any case, Mrs Perkins’s keen eye had spotted, was a union to which Veronica had not given nearly enough thought. Mrs Perkins was unsurprised by this last: women never did, in her experience. But she was very sorry for Peter, of whom, in her detached way, she was rather fond.

    Peter was somewhat comforted by Belinda’s remark—though his own reasoning on the topic was not unlike that of Mrs Perkins. “I trust not,” he said, sighing.

    “It’s only been a few weeks.”

    “Yes.”

    “How are things going up at Puriri?” she asked brightly. Repressing another sigh, Peter began to describe the Institute’s new quarters up at Puriri Campus.

    When Veronica got back they dined in almost total silence—apart from asking each other politely for the salt, and that sort of thing. After dinner Veronica picked up another book. Peter went into his dull cream kitchen and spent an unnecessarily long time in there wiping the bench and putting things in the shiny new dishwasher on which Veronica had insisted. When he came out he picked up a book, too.

    Veronica slept on the sofa; Peter slept in the bed. They had had a row about this arrangement, and during it Peter had almost believed that Veronica was coming out of her icy shell for good. Then she’d suddenly said dully: “All right. We’ll take turns.” And that had been that: they were taking turns.

    Mirry’s letter had been written out of desperation and unhappiness, and quite without calculation. But subconsciously she had hoped that Hamish would come rushing to throw himself at her feet and assure her of his undying devotion and his wish to marry her immediately, if not sooner. She went on hoping for this for quite a long time, getting sadder and more bitter almost visibly as the weeks wore on and nothing happened.

    When the doggy, hopeful Brian, who resembled nothing so much as a large, not very bright St Bernard pup, came up to the big city for a few days (at the prompting of both his own mother and Mirry’s, who were entirely in agreement that a marriage between their offspring was highly desirable) Mirry was so miserable that she went out with him on her day off from the Chez Basil and then let him come home to the flat and do it. She didn’t have an orgasm—in fact she hardly reacted at all to his presence—but Brian, having stuffed himself into her and gone bang and flop, didn’t notice, and fell asleep on top of her small, squashed body.

    Mirry wriggled out from under him, looked at his large, tanned, snoring form with undisguised dislike, and went into the bathroom and had a very thorough shower. Afterwards she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked just the same as usual; that was, the swollen-mouthed, cat-who’s-been-at-the-cream, dreamy-eyed look that she was accustomed to see in the mirror after a session with Hamish was entirely absent.

    She scowled horribly; then she shrugged. “Sod the lot of them!” she said bitterly, not bothering to lower her voice, and went back into the bedroom. Brian was still snoring. Mirry couldn’t work up the energy to shake him awake and get rid of him. She got back into bed, turned on her side with her back to him, and drew her knees up.

    Brian snored on well into the morning. Mirry, dry-eyed and bitter, stayed awake until dawn, finally falling asleep as the oblivious tuis in the kowhais were starting to chuckle and call happily outside in Basil’s garden

    Brian finally woke up around ten and finding himself with what was universally in his circles referred to as “a stiffie”, immediately shook Mirry awake and tried to, as he phrased it, give her a good one.

    Mirry gave him a huge push in the chest with both hands; normally this would have had no impact at all on Brian, who was a husky youth, but he was so surprized that he flinched, and let go of her.

    “You’re a pig, Brian Chapman!” She scrambled out of bed.

    Brian gawped at the lovely tanned little figure that was being thus abruptly denied him, and said: “What’s the matter?”

    “What’s the matter?” said Mirry with a scornful laugh. “Jesus! If you don’t know—!” She wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and did up the sash tightly.

    Brian goggled at the dressing-gown, which was deep yellow Hong-Kong silk, embroidered lavishly with pink and white peonies, green leaves, and turquoise and white birds—and which Mirry in her agitation had quite forgotten she’d sworn never to wear again, it being a present from Hamish—and said: “I don’t get it. Why don’tcha want to?” He sat up and stared blankly and—if Mirry hadn’t been too cross to notice it—pathetically at her.

    Mirry merely gave a snort, and turned her back on him, pretending to look for her slippers.

    Brian rubbed a confused hand through his short, pale fawn hair, and mumbled: “I thoughtcha—I thoughtcha liked me.”

    “Huh!”

    “Well, if you don’t like me, why the Hell didja go to bed with me?” he said loudly, turning scarlet.

    She didn’t reply.

    “Mirry—” he said miserably.

    “For God’s sake don’t whine!” snapped Mirry.

    Brian got silently out of bed, grabbed his clothes, and went and had a shower. When he came out of the bathroom she was sitting listlessly on the edge of the bed, still in her dressing-gown.

    Abjectly he said: “Mirry—if it was something I did—”

    “Huh,” said Mirry, but not as if she was terribly interested, one way or the other.

    “Well—if it was—well, I’m sorry.”

    “Look, just go away,” she said tiredly.

    Miserably he went.

    His departure was not unobserved: Basil, having gathered a huge bunch of parsley because it was rapidly going to seed in the hot, dry weather after the wet December, had popped down to the flat to offer her some. He retreated hastily.

    “Didn’t she want it?” said Gary in surprize: Mirry loved parsley, she made herself great salads of it, not even pretending it was tabbouleh by adding expensive Bulgar wheat.

    “Uh—no, I mean, she had someone there. I saw him going.“

    “I thought that was a different car,” replied Gary with interest.

    “Um—yes. No, well, not a good time: she was clashing around in the kitchen and swearing. Well, shouting words like ‘useless oaf,’ and swearing, actually, lover.”

    “Oops!” replied Gary with a smothered giggle. “What was he like?”

    “Well, clumsy, obviously, dear.”

    “No, to look at, Baz.”

    Basil made a face. “Lumpish, fawnish.”

    “Not as pretty as the ginger one, then?”

    Basil was aware that he himself, being slightly plump and balding, was not pretty. Whereas the blond Gary was—very. And in the past had been known to wander. “No,” he admitted, eyeing him uneasily.

    “He’s had his chips, then!” concluded Gary cheerfully.

    After she’d had a cup of coffee Mirry felt a lot better. She went back to bed and had a good nap. When she woke up she went into the sitting-room and fished out the application form that her History professor had forced on her last year. “Pacific Institute of Political Studies. Student Assistantship. Open to Honours Students in the Fields of Political Science, History and Constitutional Law.” The closing date had passed, but the closing date for late applications, to be accompanied by a late application fee of twenty dollars, was this Friday.

    You had to be doing your Masters—well, Mirry was; and your thesis topic had to be one that the new Institute approved of—well, it was, because last November Professor Corey, who was also the Dean, had made her go and see Dr Riabouchinsky about it, and he’d said it was just the sort of cross-disciplinary study they were hoping to encourage.

    Peter had, in fact, looked at the pretty little dark thing with a vague memory of having seen her somewhere before. Quite three hours after her departure from his office it had dawned on him where he’d seen her, and in whose company, and he’d sat bolt upright with a Russian exclamation. Marianne, who was taking dictation at the time, had jumped, and dropped her pencil; Peter had apologized profusely. He had refrained from imparting his knowledge to anyone, though he’d almost burst with the effort.

    “Right, I bloody will!” said Mirry aloud. With the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, she filled in the form. Then—the Institute having moved its quarters lock, stock and barrel to a couple of draughty prefabs on Puriri Campus—she got out her bicycle and rode down to the campus, where she delivered the form personally to a startled Dr Riabouchinsky.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/foreign-relations.html