Carnival Sky (3 page)

‘What’s brought this on?’ she asked. As happened during most of their infrequent phone calls or meetings, he found it difficult to adjust to the diminished importance he had in her life.

‘I just need a complete break for a while. The work hasn’t been giving me much of a lift lately, and I know I’ve been getting a bit stroppy. Nick reckons I’m getting to be a grumpy old bastard.’

‘You okay?’

‘Fine. Just bored and needing a challenge, I suppose.’

‘Don’t sell the house, or anything silly. Don’t start growing a beard and wearing collarless shirts. Well, maybe just the shirts.’

He heard her laugh, and something in the manner of it made him think she wasn’t alone. It was her in-company laugh, higher than when she was spontaneous. Nigel would be with her, his stomach folding slightly over his belt in a soft dewlap, his dark hair combed straight back from his face. He was one of those people for whom rebuttal is the automatic response to comment, as if he feared acquiescence synonymous with subservience. If you remarked on the warmth of the afternoon, he would say it had been better the day before. If you praised the All Black pack, he would respond that there had been a sad falling away of rucking skills. If you commended the diversity of political opinion in Parliament, he would insist that MMP had ruined
our democracy. Sheff found it easy to dislike a man who slept with his ex-wife.

‘I talked to your folks a few days ago,’ Lucy said. ‘Well, your mother mostly; Warwick was resting. She said things are much the same. They’re hoping Georgie will be able to go down for a while.’

‘I should too, I suppose.’

‘Yes, you should. Anyway, what about money? What are you going to do?’

‘There’s always freelancing, or the journalism school. I’m not worried. I haven’t been spending much.’

‘Well, you know your own mind,’ and then she began telling him about some ornaments his mother had given her, and that he was welcome to collect them, otherwise she would donate them to charity. ‘It’s the cleaning,’ she said. ‘Never-ending. That’s the trouble with brass and silver. Don’t say anything to Belize, though, I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I should’ve left them at the house.’ She must have come across them after all these months and wanted the storage space they occupied.

Why should he expect Lucy to consider his decision to leave the paper of particular consequence? She was no longer bound to have her life influenced by what he did. She talked more often to his mother than to him. He tried to recall the things Belize had passed on to her, no doubt accompanying each with an account of the family provenance that was their chief value. No sharp memory of any individual piece came to mind, but he did see them grouped on a folded sheet on the dining room floor, and his mother wearing a blue apron, and busy with cloths, Brasso and Silvo, all the while listening to the radio.

‘Anyway,’ he told Lucy as the conversation thinned out, ‘I just thought you should know what I’ve decided.’

‘Okay then. Thanks for telling me. I hope it all works out for you,’ she said. ‘Oh, by the way, Mary Ransumeen died. I meant to tell you. I sent a card for both us. It seemed simpler that way, as we hardly know the family.’

‘I assumed she went years ago.’ Mrs Ransumeen was a deaf, old woman who had been their neighbour when they were happy and lived in Whanganui. She shouted at blackbirds, had a painting by Tony Fomison that Sheff coveted, gardened in dressing gown and slippers, and Lucy had been kind to her.

‘She was ninety-seven,’ Lucy said. Sheff had no comment. ‘Anyway, I sent a card.’

‘Good. Good. Ninety-seven, eh?’

‘Yes, quite an age. Bye then. Thanks for the call. Good luck and keep in touch,’ said Lucy.

How matter of fact the voice he still associated with intimacies, and yet how clear the image and strong the emotion from their first meeting. With something of a hangover he had gone to the council offices to interview Mr Bean about proposed changes to the city bus services. They called him that afterwards because of the resemblance, close physically, but in no other aspect. Mr Bean was all business and not at all droll. Behind him at her own desk, Lucy had feigned absorption in her papers.

It was her legs that Sheff had noticed first. No longer than other women’s legs, but shapely, with the Achilles tendons clear above her flat shoes, then smooth knees and a glimpse of thigh. Using shorthand, Sheff had no difficulty in recording all he needed about terminals, lanes, advanced computer ticketing and imported Korean chassis. His gaze went often to Lucy, and whenever she looked his way he gave a little eyebrow hike of appreciation. Her hair was fair and short, she had a large, round forehead, and she wore several loose silver bangles that jangled on the desk.

Mr Bean answered Sheff’s final queries with competence, and offered no small talk to follow, but when Sheff thanked him and was about to go, Bean jerked his head in Lucy’s direction and said drily, ‘Her name’s Lucy Orr.’

Sheff passed her desk with no more than a smile, but when back at the paper he rang the council and asked to speak to her. ‘Mr Bean told
me your name,’ he said, and she laughed. She could hardly comment with the man himself sitting not far away. She laughed too when he asked her, ‘Lucy Orr what?’ though she must have had that proffered as a witticism many times. It’s a good sign when a woman laughs at something she has heard before.

Was it a happy marriage? Sheff thought it was, but the only close comparison he had was the relationship of his parents, and a child’s view is almost completely self-centred. The unions of his friends were too incompletely observed to be evaluated with confidence. For Lucy and Sheff, however, marriage was a game of two halves, as the sports commentators say. The first years carefree and persistently enjoyable, or seeming so in retrospect once baby Charlotte was dead; the time after that and before they split surely the worst in their lives. That at least they could agree on.

Lucy and he had been apart for more than two years, yet without realising it he still awaited an explanation, as if the divorce was something imposed from the outside and for which he bore little responsibility. Of course they’d talked about it, initially with the alternating vehemence of defence, or attack, and later with resignation that at times bore the guises of understanding and sympathy. Sheff had even agreed to counselling, though he was able to predict platitude before it was delivered, and lacked faith in generalisation.

During the second session he noticed that Stuart, the counsellor, nodded his head affirmatively when Lucy spoke, but when Sheff was talking had the distracting habit of tightening his mouth so that the tendons rose like whip cords beneath the slack skin of his neck, and then he would relax, open his mouth with a barely audible sigh of disenchantment like a Galapagos lizard. His bias was so obvious that Sheff felt a juvenile resentment, and assuaged it by working a hole in the ochre fabric of the office chair with his car keys. Was he to have the most personal aspects of his marriage laid out for mundane comment and specious advice from this man – an old prick pushing seventy with a reptilian neck and a scatter of dandruff on his shoulders? It was
almost unbearable for Sheff, and Lucy knew it, but he continued to go with her for as long as he was able, so that she couldn’t claim he refused to make an effort to save their marriage.

Stuart talked of openness, healing, acceptance, good intentions, unconditional positive regard, the putting aside of bitterness and the adoption of calm self-scrutiny, while Sheff sat beside Lucy and grieved for the ineffable understanding and trust that is the fragrance of love, and that is never restored by the intervention of others. They had cried and hugged, had managed occasionally a sort of desultory sex, they had gone out with groups of people in the hopeless determination to forget, but the death of their baby was also the death of their marriage. Maybe that was illogical, but it was certainly irrevocable.

He’d walked out when Stuart began to probe concerning Charlotte’s death. He just gave one last jag at the chair fabric with his keys, and then got up and went, despite Lucy’s hand on his arm. There was no way he could bear Stuart saying his daughter’s name, talking unctuously about something completely beyond his comprehension. No one could know how he and Lucy felt about Charlotte, because no one else had loved her as they did.

When he’d reached the bottom of the counsellor’s stairs, entry to the street was blocked by a fiddle-playing busker on a folding stool, a large man with a greasy cascade of hair. Because he was facing the traffic and sawing vigorously, he didn’t realise Sheff was behind and wishing to pass. In taking a high and exaggerated step to get by, Sheff was struck by the busker’s whisking elbow, and lurched forward, stepping on the edge of the violin case open for donations on the footpath. He managed to regain his balance, but the case was flipped, and the many coins and few notes scattered on the footpath. The big man began scrabbling to retrieve them, and was abusive when Sheff tried to help.

Passing shoppers paused because of the minor spectacle, and Sheff realised he was cast in the role of robber of the needy. No explanation would change that, and he walked away, hoping no one had recognised
him. ‘It’s my only livelihood,’ whined the busker, quickly turning supplicant before an audience. Sheff didn’t run, or turn to look behind, but he listened for the rush of an accusatory posse. How often does life choose to crown serious vicissitude with minor misfortune, like a bright berry atop whipped unhappiness? Someone behind him was calling him a shit, but he couldn’t hear footsteps.

When he and Lucy argued later concerning his walkout, he couldn’t bear to talk about Charlotte, and tried to tell her of the busker: the blatant posturing and the old-fashioned pointed shoes scuffed grey at the tips, the greasy yet luxuriant hair.

‘What is the matter with you?’ she’d exclaimed. ‘Christ, it’s got nothing at all to do with it. We’re not talking about that, for Christ’s sake. I’m about ready to give up, do you know that? Right on the edge.’ Her voice was both harsh and shrill. He knew the busker was irrelevant, but the incident seemed nevertheless to be a distraction from the intrinsic malevolence that had come into their world. You couldn’t let go in talking of terrible things, or they tore you to pieces. You couldn’t add someone else’s grief to your own, and not be crushed by the accumulation.

SOMETIMES, WHEN HE WAS CARRYING
his daughter to comfort her, she would fall asleep with her head on his shoulder and an arm over his back. As he moved quietly about the house he would feel the even puff of her breath on his neck, and the relaxed weight of her small body against his own.

SHEFF’S FAREWELL PARTY was at the squash club lounge in Epsom: a new room that overlooked a secondary street, and faced a supplier of plumbing and bathroom fixtures. It was only a fifteen-minute walk from his home, and he could drink more if he didn’t drive. Most people were there when he arrived, and at nine o’clock Chris gave his speech, and also the gift from the paper. Sheff would have left it unopened, but others noisily insisted he display the present to which they had contributed. A framed Hotere lithograph of considerable value. Their generosity affected Sheff more than he’d expected. Strengths get taken for granted and petty failings magnified in the necessary association of colleagues, and he ensured his speech was positive as well as light-hearted. Nothing maudlin, nothing confessional, nothing prolonged, he’d told himself during its preparation. It was just another work-do for most. One more change of personnel that might provide opportunity for some, but was inconsequential to the majority.

The wine was reasonable. Sheff had suffered some awful plonk at staff functions. He thanked Chris as they stood together at the large window.

‘Raewyn jacked it up for us,’ the editor said. ‘She got onto a website that had decent stuff direct from the Waiheke winery.’ In the mild summer darkness the security lights within the trade
shop were a subdued glow, glossing the pale and seductive curves of baths, basins and toilet bowls. A jogger passed below with easy strides and offset elbows, his yellow singlet clear for a few seconds beneath a street light.

‘Yes, but you have to sign it off.’ The white and red lights of passing traffic seemed to stream slightly as if viewed in time-lapse photography.

‘I’m brassed off that you’re going at all.’ Chris meant it, despite his smile.

‘No one’s indispensable – the gaps soon close.’

‘But we had the team about right, and now you’ve mucked it up. Anyway, I hope whatever you do turns out to be a good choice. I’ve sometimes thought of buggering off myself, but with Noreen and three kids I can’t take too many risks. Newspapers seem all about accounting now, don’t they, rather than journalism?’

‘It’s a death struggle with the web,’ said Sheff. The jogger must have reached his turning point not far out of sight, because he passed beneath again, the running style maintained.

‘Or a forced marriage,’ said the editor. ‘Where the advertising goeth, there goeth we. Hard copy is becoming the dinosaur and may end the same way.’ He wasn’t down about it, however. He had climbed high enough in the organisation to have reasonable security no matter how the industry adjusted, and he enjoyed a party. ‘What we’ve promised ourselves,’ he said, ‘is a Mediterranean cruise next June – Santorini, Rhodes, Crete, Sicily, pretty much the whole shooting box.’

‘Good on you.’ Sheff imagined him in a deckchair, hat brim to his chin, while Noreen arranged an itinerary for the next island from her Lonely Planet guide and a heap of brochures.

Chris started to turn from the window, but then swung back. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I knew there was something else. The McInnes Foundation Journalism Award people rang yesterday. They wanted my endorsement of you as a judge this year, and as they pay handsomely I accepted on your behalf. Not quite like winning the $15,000 prize, but then you’ve had that already. Anyway, they’ll be in touch. Okay?’

The McInnes award was specifically for investigative journalism, and commemorated a woman reporter of no great ability, but very wealthy family. Sheff had received the award three years before for a series of articles on price-fixing in electricity supply, and the prize money had been spent on a living-room renovation that Lucy was delighted with, but had little opportunity to enjoy.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘They have a pretty good awards dinner.’

‘Most likely I’ll see you there, but make sure you keep in touch before that. Don’t just drop out on us.’ Chris smoothed his thinning, close-lying hair as if to reassure himself some remained. ‘Well, better mingle, I suppose,’ he said.

Sheff’s farewell party was so like those he had attended for other people, that at times during the night he forgot it was in his honour, and was momentarily surprised when singled out. The company, conversations and occurrences were interchangeable, the wives and husbands of his colleagues materialising as if from a conjuror’s hat, Wayne’s laughter becoming louder as the night progressed, some exploratory sexual tension arising among those unattached, and the amiable, but nevertheless conscious, relaxation of hierarchy.

People endorsed his decision to take a break. Good on you, go for it, I admire you for it, you’ll find it the best thing you ever did, they told him. Reinvent yourself, take a breather and smell the roses, they said. A change is as good as a holiday, nothing like a new challenge, you only live once, I’ve been seriously thinking of a lifestyle switch myself, they said. People tend to encourage daring in others if it has no risk of adverse consequence to themselves.

A sonorous dentist, married to Tania who worked in advertising and also did a gardening column, cornered Sheff by the kitchen slide and gave him life advice. Sheff’s one strong recollection of Tania was of amazingly pale legs with mole spots like currants in rolled dough. ‘You’re on the button, Jeff. Absolutely right decision,’ her husband said.

‘Sheff,’ said Sheff. On their first date Lucy had told him that he
should have his own restaurant. Her way of reminding him that he, too, had a name that could be played on.

‘There’s these times, aren’t there, watersheds and crossroads, when the die is cast in the lap of the gods. Carpe diem and all that, and you’ve got to have the guts to have a go. You don’t want to die wondering. What is it exactly that you want to do?’

‘I’m just stale and need something different for a bit. That’s all really.’ Sheff noticed the greying hair like a herb posy at the V of the dentist’s black shirt. It occurred to him that there were few women dentists, yet they had successfully stormed law and medicine. Women recognised that material gain was insufficient recompense for a lifetime in people’s mouths.

‘It’s good to move on, don’t you think? Test the waters,’ Sheff volunteered. He understood he was in a conversation of platitudes.

‘Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more, Jeff. Live for the day. March to your own drummer. Follow your dream. Anything’s possible if you believe.’

But it’s not, thought Sheff. It irritated him, that sort of claptrap, and it did harm. High aspiration and the determined pursuit of it was one thing: unrealistic dreams were quite different.

For all people there are unattainable things, and they need to accept that and concentrate on the best of what is possible. ‘Sheff,’ he said. ‘It’s Sheff. Good to see you again,’ and he edged past the dentist and headed off towards Nick, Raewyn and Lloyd, who had found chrome and bright vinyl chairs, and the four of them became the core of a familiar laager where the conversation went on with customary ease. Sheff played his part, yet was able to watch all with some detachment. He was unlikely ever to be with these people again as a group, and that more than any of the speeches brought home to him the significance of the decision he had made. No matter what friendships continued, the relationships of the workplace, often closer by necessity than those with family, would be lost.

He was forty-four. Almost certainly more than halfway through
his life. He had no child, no partner, no burning zeal for any cause, and now no job. On the other hand, he told himself, he had a home, money in the bank, a profession, and his health was okay as far as he knew – apart from a few niggles, including a knee that made popping noises sometimes when he went up stairs, and an ingrown nail on his left big toe. So he was finely poised between anxiety and anticipation. As he listened to Lloyd sharing an anecdote about a Green Party election rally, he had a sense of being outside himself: levitating under the ceiling of the squash club lounge, feeling the music and the increasingly raucous conversations pulsing up, and being able to see his group bent towards each other on their tubular chairs. Raewyn, solid, yet attractive, well able and accustomed to looking after herself in men’s company. Lloyd, younger than the others, in the grip of a snide and wary ambition. Gangling Nick, surprisingly well dressed, whose happy family life was the balance for anything that might go awry elsewhere.

Sheff could see himself just as clearly: tallish, a slight belly as the result of a sedentary life, and fair hair, still a mop at the top and back, but somewhat oddly receded from the brow, as if yanked back a couple of inches. He seldom considered his own appearance, and was mildly surprised if he saw himself in a mirror, or keeping pace in a shop window. It was the recognition of an inalienable external companion rather than anything essential: a carapace familiar to those on the outside, but of little significance to his concept of self. Women would have a very different attitude, he supposed.

He did see his own reflection soon afterwards, briefly, as he entered the lavatory and took one of the three cubicles, but he wasn’t left alone with his thoughts. He had barely closed the door when someone else came in, heels clicking, and took the next space. ‘I know you’re in there, and I apologise in advance.’ It was a woman’s voice that Sheff didn’t recognise. ‘The women’s loo is full and I can’t wait,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve had some damn bug since this morning. I want you to be a good boy and sing.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sing. Sing anything at all just to cover any noise. I can’t sing in case someone else comes in and it’s even more embarrassing. Please, just sing, right now.’

For a moment Sheff felt songs were absent in the world, but then he began on ‘Jingle Bells’, repeating the one verse that was all he knew and becoming louder and more confident with each round. ‘Okay, you can stop now,’ the woman called, and the lavatory was quiet again except for a subdued hiss from the urinals. ‘Thank you. I appreciate it. Just give me a minute to make my escape,’ and Sheff heard the cubicle door, the washbasin tap, the click of heels and then the outer door. He’d got into the swing of ‘Jingle Bells’ and sang it a couple more times under his breath before going out to wash his hands.

When he came back into the main room he looked about to see if the woman was watching for his entrance, and obvious because of it, but everyone seemed quite at ease and occupied. Sheff felt admiration for the woman, someone with presence of mind and willing to take a gamble in an emergency.

He didn’t hang on until the party’s last gasp, didn’t want to appear reluctant for the farewell to finish. The residual core of drinkers and dancers gave him a rowdy send-off, then turned back to their entertainments. ‘Hey, Sheff, don’t forget your present,’ called Callum. A junior reporter whose grammar and punctuation were so poor that Sheff wished he’d never sanctioned his appointment. Raewyn told him not to be a stranger, Lloyd stood up to shake his hand, Nick, knowing as a friend they would be in touch, raised an arm. Sheff gave an exaggerated bow at the door for the benefit of those who glanced his way, and so nine years on the one paper were brought to an end. No trumpets, but at least almost all the staff had taken the trouble to come.

The lithograph was awkward to carry, the frame too big to tuck comfortably under his arm. He’d walked only two blocks when heavy rain began, drops like pellets that beat a tattoo on roofs,
and pavement, and were cold on his head. For a few minutes he continued to hurry through it, reminding himself that the art work was glassed and bubble-wrapped beneath the paper, but his light shoes were quickly sodden and the water ran down his neck with an unpleasant trickle and tickle. A corner dairy offered one of the few overhangs, and he stopped there, stood in the small alcove formed by the doorway.

Although shut, the shop was dimly lit, and Sheff could see, just inside the door, the advertising easel board that stood on the footpath during shop hours. He’d passed it many times without regard, and never entered the premises. Now, for want of alternative, he gave attention to it, and the displays beyond in the miasmal, phosphorescent glow. ‘Open Seven Days Late’ it said, which had a teasing ambiguity, and ‘Milk, Bread, Chips and Pies’. Above the freezers were posters of a wondrous array of ice creams and ice blocks – Paddle Pops, Magnum Temptation, Cookie Crumble, Super Fru, Bubble O’Bill, Goody Goody Gum Drop.

In neighbourly familiarity the proprietors had painted their names on the window close to the entrance. Wilf and Beth Fergusson. He had seen Wilf once, cleaning the outside window with a long-handled squeegee. His peach-downy cheeks, and his mouth drawn open slightly by concentration and the upward tilt of his head. Sheff couldn’t recall having seen Beth, but imagined her a Jack Sprat wife: cadaverous and laconic in contrast to her husband and the rhyme. They would now be in bed together, not clasped, but presenting curved backs as they faced away to sleep.

Sheff wished himself in bed, or still at his farewell party, rather than sheltering beneath the Fergussons’ overhang, the rain still loud upon it. Because he was looking into the dairy interior, he didn’t notice a man approaching, until he spoke, with easy informality. ‘Pissing down, eh?’ The guy came close to Sheff, peered through the glass for a moment to see if there was life within. ‘Fair pissing down,’ he said, nodding in self-affirmation. Sheff could smell the booze on him.

‘A downpour all right,’ said Sheff. They listened to the rain and watched it bouncing on the slick roadway in the glancing street light. The water chortled in the gutter and bore oddments of litter bobbing away.

‘Been here long?’

‘No.’

‘What you got there then?’ He was a small man wearing a Swanndri, and tight jeans too long for him, so that they concertinaed above his pale sneakers and were tatty at the heel. He wiped rain from his face, but retained a satisfied smile arising from alcohol rather than any fulfilling experience or achievement.

‘A picture,’ said Sheff.

‘A pictcha. Jesus.’ He seemed astounded, and then yawned twice. Half an hour ago Sheff had been at his farewell among well-dressed colleagues, most of them anyway, and with good wine and food, and now he was huddled in a shopfront beside a man with teeth missing and a Swanndri. And a man open to the call of nature, for without further conversation he stepped closer to the road, but still under cover, unzipped, and arched piss into the already running gutter. It seemed to go on for a long time, the rain and piss falling noisily together on the wet street. The relief of it made him philosophical. ‘It’s a bloody strange thing,’ he said, before turning back towards Sheff, ‘but quite often I piss more than ever I’ve drunk. How the hell do you figure that?’ Sheff made no reply.