The House Within Read online

  ‘He sent poor old Mrs Withers off to Auckland with her tumour.’

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘Said he didn’t have the facilities here. Can you imagine it, she’s seventy-eight, trailing all the way up there in the bus, and nobody to take care of her at the other end.’

  ‘Did you say anything?’

  Norma’s shrug says it all. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘Why do you stay?’

  Norma’s eyes widen.

  ‘Oh come on, Norma, you could get another job.’

  ‘I’m good at this, I’ve been in it fifteen years. I wouldn’t get anything else like this round here.’

  ‘You mean he wouldn’t let you?’

  ‘I owe him.’

  When Bethany doesn’t answer, she says, ‘God, Bethany, I was sixteen when I got pregnant.’

  So the rumours were true. But, really, Bethany has always known this. Not that it matters; it ought to dispose her more warmly to Shapcott. She believes school girls shouldn’t have to have babies.

  ‘He saved my life. No, honestly. My dad used to beat the shit out of me without me being pregnant. He would have killed me, for sure. Besides.’ Norma sighs and brushes hair out of her eyes. Her husband is a thin-shouldered man who plays sax in the bar of the Railway Bazaar on Saturday nights. They have two daughters. He is a trainee surveyor for the council. He has been trying to pass his exams for ten years. If he doesn’t get them soon, he’ll be out of a job. Bethany has heard that they fight about money, that he would prefer her not to work.

  But she sees it may be more than that. The cigarette burning above the stove while she prepares dinner in the small state house — rows of them have sprung up at the railway end of town. Some afternoons when she is driving home from work, Bethany sees Norma, laden with shopping, trudging in their direction, the dissatisfied husband fretting in the background, the grizzling children. Bethany has been down a version of this road herself. Perhaps she is fortunate to have had decisions taken out of her hands. But then, Norma has this. Beautiful rooms, a calm domain of which she is mistress. And, perhaps, Rodney himself. Still, she doesn’t like the way Norma is telling her all these things.

  ‘So you’ve changed your mind about the op?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ says Bethany.

  ‘You are okay, aren’t you?’ Genuine anxiety tinges her enquiry, and Bethany perceives, for the first time, that Norma sees her as a friend, that it is inside her boundaries to confide in her. She hesitates, biting back her initial dismissive retort; after all, she needs Norma’s sharp tongue on her side.

  She is about to tell her the truth, wait for Norma’s eyes to widen. Unspoken — regular sex. So who are you bonking? And, probably, she will tell her.

  But she is saved. The door opens and Rodney Shapcott, unctuous, close-shaven, tall, with an over-large head, rubs his pale full hands together as he greets her, waiting for her to enter his consulting room. A light falls across him, perhaps intentionally placed, so that he seems to have a halo around him. She has expected another patient to emerge, but the room is empty. What has he been doing in there, she wonders, while she and Norma gossiped in the waiting room? His desk is immaculate, not a trace of paper or industry of any kind. On his desk stands a hand-blown glass bowl filled with subtle pink and white roses, not too clinical, not sentimental, just right.

  He closes the door softly behind him. ‘Well, Bethany,’ he says. ‘It’s been too long.’

  She remembers just how long she has known Rodney. He delivered Stephen, her second-born, when there was a complication. They have sometimes attended church together. Bethany kneels in church these days, not to hear a sermon, but because liturgies please her. Bethany seeks peace. She has seen him kneel, his head bowed against the pew, the quick inclination towards prayer, before he takes his seat. He is married to a rich woman with a fierce, tanned face and corkscrew curls. Some people call her the Hottentot. He has left her once and gone back. Their children, considered brilliant, went to school with her children, and she and Louise, or Lulu, as she likes to be called — for Bethany does not subscribe to cruel nicknames — have served on cake stalls together. Later, when they were older, the children were sent away to private schools. What else does she know about him?

  Nothing much. Except what Norma has told her. A little gossip around the edges of town. Nothing direct. Only this, that he has touched her in the most intimate parts of her body many times.

  ‘So what are we doing for you today?’

  She draws in her breath. ‘Tubes tied.’

  ‘I see.’ He smiles, or perhaps draws his lips back over his teeth.

  ‘Well. We’d better have a look around, hadn’t we? Have you had a smear lately?’

  ‘Last year.’

  ‘You’d better have another one.’ He pulls the curtain across the front of the bed.’ Everything off from the waist down,’ he says, ‘and hop up on the bed.’

  His appearance beside the bed is too quick. Bethany is sliding her underpants down as he comes up beside her, smoothing membrane-thin gloves over his fingers. ‘That’s fine,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to take off your shoes.’

  It happens so quickly she doesn’t know how she got on to the bed with them on, the black, shiny patent leather shoes with thin, high heels in which she is still learning to walk. In her recent life she has become smarter, more fashionable. She reaches down to flip them off, but Rodney’s hand stops her. ‘You’re just fine,’ he says. His hands are already between her knees, gently manoeuvring them apart. ‘I’ve warmed the speculum,’ he says, pushing it inside her, the lubricated metal arms being wound back, opening her vagina, centimetre by centimetre. Her dark red hole open for his inspection. His hands press about, feeling her stomach.

  ‘Mmm hmm.’ He looks down at her. ‘Well, I did tell you, didn’t I?’

  ‘But I don’t want a hysterectomy. At least, not unless I need one.’

  ‘How are the periods?’

  ‘Better,’ she says. Cautious.

  ‘Still regular?’

  ‘Pretty well,’ she lies. ‘I can’t see the point. Going through such a big operation, you know.’ Her knees feel strange, forced upwards by the high heels resting on the bed.

  ‘Of course. When you only want to fuck.’ Bethany doesn’t speak. ‘I’ll still have to put you out, you know. Full anaesthetic. You’ll be in hospital for a day. Make a nick in your navel, laser goes down through here.’ He draws a slow diagram on her stomach with the tip of his finger.

  ‘I know how they’re done.’

  ‘Yes, of course you do.’ He sits down on the end of the bed. ‘Why doesn’t Matt get a vasectomy?’

  Matt is the man Bethany plans to marry. The point when decisions have to be made has taken a long time to come about. Bethany believes she has learned to cope with being on her own. There are times when she has relished solitude, the command she has over her life from one day to another. But she has not planned to stay alone forever. Her children are older. This time it will be all right. She and Matt have believed they possess a secret, this affection they have for each other. They have been so careful. But, of course, it is never like that, people always know.

  ‘How’s Jill taking it?’ Rodney’s arms are folded as he studies her vulva.

  ‘Dear Bethany,’ Jill had written to her. ‘So here I am in Hanmer, drying out. You want to know what it’s like? Well, why don’t I tell you? There’s a mountain, still covered with snow even though the cherry trees have finished flowering. The sky is often very blue here, lit by a vibrant sun, as I believe the tourist brochures describe it, but the weather changes quickly. Storms and heavy rain appear out of nowhere, just when you least expect them. Well, you’d understand that, wouldn’t you? To think I tried to help you. There’s a smell in the air, the hot sodium chloride of the springs, Bethany, we take the waters here, very pleasant they are, soothing, which is what I need. You should try them, you’ll probably need them sooner or later, like me.

  �
��But that’s not what you really want to know about, is it? You want to know what the hospital is like, where they cure the alkies and addicts (same thing ha ha). There is a brass bell at the entrance way, and a pot plant on a brass stand — an aspidistra, I suppose you’d call it, you like to have the right word for everything, don’t you? Pink plastic flowers in a brass vase. Well, that should tell you all you want to know. Brassy. Oh yes, there’s a sign that says Visitors Are Requested to Contact Nursing Staff At All Times Before Visiting Patients. Just as well for you to know this, Bethany, if you and Matt are thinking of dropping by. I’d tell them to drop you in boiling oil, or the nearest hot pool. Another little sign down here, by the way — Keep Your Head Above the Water in the Thermal Pools. You can’t imagine what’s beneath the water can you, can’t imagine what you might inhale if your head went under. Oh well, Bethany, that’s not enough for you? You want to know what’s beyond the doorway? Music, wild laughter, the smell of smoke, talk. Do I talk about you? What do you think? Yes, your name rings around this last outpost, this resort of the lost. Do I like it here? Who cares? Do you? Does Matt?’

  ‘Why doesn’t Matt get a vasectomy?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask him.’

  ‘Not sure of him, eh?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Understandable, I suppose. Second time round for you both. Or is it third for you, Bethany? You’d have to count Gerald, I suppose.’

  ‘They reckon,’ Jill writes, ‘that fifty per cent of all marriages end in divorce, and every third marriage is a remarriage for at least one of the partners. You and Matt should be pushing the statistics up quite nicely. How many parents can a kid love? Don’t expect mine to love you, Bethany. I don’t plan to love yours. As a matter of fact, I never even liked them. Ah, got you, didn’t I? You hadn’t thought about that, that I’ll be your kids’ stepmother too. Yeah baby. Pretty hip, eh. Old Jill, catching up with the times. Catching on. You’ll be hearing from me. Jill.

  ‘PS I’ve just thought of something. I’m reclaiming grandparents. Your kids can find their own.’

  Rodney unfolds his arms. He strokes the heel of her left shoe. Very gently, so he doesn’t disturb the way it sits on the white sheet.

  ‘Lulu’s got a folly,’ he says.

  ‘What folly?’ There is an ache in her abdomen wall from being stretched out like this.

  ‘Huge. She built it herself. Out there at daybreak with hammer and nails. It’s a monstrosity.’

  ‘It’s a building then?’

  He stares moodily between her legs. ‘You could say so.’

  ‘In the garden?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like a ha-ha?’

  ‘No, in reverse — a ha-ha goes down, a folly goes up.’

  He is holding the heels of her shoes in each hand, his fingers clasping each needle point, as if he is going to tip her legs in the air.

  ‘Rodney. Don’t.’ She is helpless, cannot move without the speculum hurting her. She does not know how to withdraw it without making matters worse.

  ‘What’s old Pete up to these days?’

  And she remembers then. Peter had been to see him when they were still married. He had gone to Rodney and said, I can’t bear it any more, the way she goes on and shouts and throws things at me. What can I do about her?

  ‘You know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I should do, I’m old enough.’

  ‘You might want another child, you and Matt.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, we have enough children. I’m too old.’

  When he came home from his visit to Rodney, Peter had been withdrawn, smug she might say, looking back, as if he knew that he was in the right about her being a harridan. The next time she threw plates at him, he threw all the plates on the table down on the floor so that they splintered in all directions and food flew up the wall.

  Peter and Rodney became friends. Not for long, because it was soon after this that Peter left. But long enough to jog together for an hour after work in the evenings two or three days a week.

  So this is a punishment of sorts, she supposes. Rodney is tired of women with problems he can’t solve. Rodney is biting his lower lip, his eyebrows frowning. Not just punishment. He wants her. Or, at least, to know what she is like. Lulu is full of follies and Norma is only one of Rodney’s.

  ‘I think it’s a bit rough,’ he says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I reckon you’re still in love with old Pete.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  She is about to ask him to remove the speculum, but he sits down at his desk, picking up his pen to make notes.

  ‘Like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor,’ he says, over his shoulder.

  The sunlight has shifted in the room. It had been on her mind to write to Peter. ‘Sweet Pete,’ she had written in her letter, ‘I want to tell you that I’m planning to marry. I hope you’ll be glad for me. I need to be a family, I don’t want to go on being alone. I hope what I am doing is right but who ever knows.’

  The truth, as Rodney has pointed out, is that she is here because she is unsure, she does not know what Matt would do if she conceived again, a late mother, a child he would not want, a child she could not bear to part with. Last month she had missed a period. Menopause, she decided, but it’s a bit soon yet. She had panicked. She couldn’t imagine what she would tell Matt and what his response would be. This month, here she is back again, right on the dot of the second month as if the last one had happened — just an aberration. She’s scared that next time it might be real, a real baby. She can’t go through it all again. She doesn’t want another fatherless child, to be an older mother, on the outside looking in. There is not enough certainty, there never was. Does this make Rodney right? She is old enough to know: perfection doesn’t lie in wait.

  Sweet Pete, she thinks again, closing her eyes. What about the good days in between? Twenty-five out of twenty-eight — that wasn’t bad. We had such nice times. But it wasn’t like that. The sweetness had dissolved long ago, like a lolly remembered in childhood, a piece of candy during rationing, that has a specially remembered flavour but is nothing now. She wouldn’t write to Peter.

  Had Rodney Shapcott told him his wife was impossible? That he would be better off with a new start? But, if he did, would Peter have believed it? Did he need help to arrive at such a conclusions? It doesn’t bear thinking about. She opens her eyes. The light strikes the glass bowl containing the roses, and she sees a prism of rosy colours, deep and striking. The poetry of her life is very muted at this moment, but still there is this, there is bright and shifting light in the most unexpected places. She stares at Shapcott without saying anything.

  ‘We’ll book you in then. Next Wednesday do you?’ he says, standing up to unscrew the instrument.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her body feels stiff and abused as she sits up. When she is dressed, Bethany walks out from behind the curtain and stands in front of Shapcott’s desk, where he is writing up his notes.

  ‘I could have you for this,’ she says.

  ‘For what, Bethany?’

  ‘For what you just did.’

  He smiles at her, wordless amusement hovering round his eyes. And what can she have him for? She didn’t refuse to take off her shoes. What has he done that he could be made to answer for, if she repeated her experience?

  She gathers her handbag, accepting the appointment card and the instructions he has written on a separate slip of paper. He hurries to open the door for her, so that she has to brush past him.

  At the reception desk she pauses to ask for the account.

  ‘We’ll send it to you,’ says Norma. Her eyes are wistful and old and heavy with knowledge.

  IRONING

  T’WAS ON A Monday morning

  That I beheld my darling,

  She looked so neat and charming

  In every high degree.

  She looked so neat and nimble o,

  An ironing of her linen o,

 
Dashing away with a smoothing iron,

  Dashing away with a smoothing iron,

  She stole my heart away.

  Aunt Vera’s house is smaller than Bethany remembers it. As she pulls up in the driveway, she wonders fleetingly if she has come to the wrong house.

  In retirement, Bethany’s Aunt Vera and her husband Jack moved to Rotorua, buying a house by a stream, close to the lake where her uncle could fish for trout. An edge of glamour tinged its history, it once having belonged to a film magnate and his family, a self-made man, the only sort Vera and Jack could admire.

  ‘So where’s the conservatory?’ asks her daughter Abbie, sitting beside her. ‘And the Roman bath house you were on about?’

  For years, Bethany has dreamed of the house, the knotted willow trees in the stream, the light that shone through them when you approached along the river bank. Waking after bad nights, she found herself surprised and disorientated. Am I at home? she asked herself in the dark, believing herself transported here. For her mother’s house had never been home, that collection of rotten timber and unplastered nail holes and low gib ceilings where she and her sister survived until it was time to leave, to move on and go about their grown-up lives. This house of Vera and Jack’s was different. But she sees now, looking at it through her daughter’s eyes, that if it was her aunt’s heart’s desire, it was the film magnate’s country cottage. The conservatory is still there, a small sun-porch with french doors leading outside, and the bath house has been demolished, leaving a shallow hole in the ground littered with a rubble of tiles. Steam spurts fitfully from a custard yellow patch in the lawn, the smell of sulphur heavy in the air.

  ‘This place sucks,’ says Abbie.

  Bethany places the key in the lock with a shiver of despair. She has half-expected, with a surge of girlish imagination, that Vera will be waiting for her. There had been magical bus rides from Auckland, through the luminous bush glades of the Mamaku hills, counting miles and milestones until they were there. There was a rock that was inscribed with the words JESUS SAVES PENNIES, written long before graffiti became a fashion, that told them only another half-hour. And then they would be there, her aunt perky in her latest new frock, brimming with plans for the holiday. Jack had been a tradesman, a dealer in car parts, a successful man.