Drowned Sprat and Other Stories (9 page)

My love for him sparkles and flares like a jewel, precious beyond belief, and I hold it dear all the way inside to ring him up.

In two days she had to leave Litia’s hotel and catch the bus back to her village. Well, they were expecting her. If she didn’t show up, what then? One of her brothers would be sent to fetch her, or more likely her father. He would combine the trip with church business and sit silently retributive beside her in his dark clothes, all the way back to Londoni. If he found her as she was now, he would tell her she’d disgraced not only him, but her matagali, her village and the AOG (Assembly of God) as well.

Werner looked at her and wondered what she was thinking. He’d noticed that she was often pensive, the smooth field of her brow furrowed. He extended a fat, puce finger and ran an imaginary plough between her eyes. As he’d expected, she brushed him away like a fly. He sighed. A hard nut to crack, this one. He’d had more success with the local girls on his previous holiday in Fiji, but that was years ago and he was slimmer then. And wealthier.

The noodles hissed out of the pot into the colander. Margaret turned from the sink to the gas ring. A thin, golden beam of oil dribbled into the pot, the blue flames leaping like dogs.

‘What are you doing now?’ asked Werner.

‘Cooking your lunch,’ said Margaret.

‘Not like that.’

‘Yes, like this.’ She dropped a handful of chopped onion and carrot into the oil and stirred it. ‘You open this.’

Werner had a tin of tuna pressed into his hand.

When she said she’d cook his meal he’d got his hopes up for some island delicacy. The primitive kitchen shouldn’t have hindered her. They didn’t need much, these Fijian girls — a fish, some coconut milk, some dalo leaves.

Margaret used her teeth to open a packet of instant noodle mix. She sprinkled the powder over the vegetables and tossed in half a cup of water.

‘Not like that!’ Werner was almost shouting. Margaret flinched.

‘Yes, like this,’ she said, fetching the drained noodles and adding them too. Werner stood with the tin of fish still in his hand.

‘Come on,’ said Margaret, ‘open it up.’

‘What?’ gaped Werner.

‘The ika,’ said Margaret. ‘Open it up.’

She took the pot from the heat while Werner struggled with an antique tin-opener. Despite his flab, his buttocks stiffened with the effort of forcing the rusty tooth into the top of the can. Margaret laughed at him, her voice hurling against the stained walls of the hotel kitchen.

‘Shut up,’ said Werner.

‘Shut up yourself,’ said Margaret.

There were little pools of sweat in the dimples of Werner’s shoulders, the odd hair standing up in them like burnt mangroves in a fleshy swamp. His faded orange singlet had dark patches of moisture on it that weren’t drying in the steamy kitchen, dark patches that, when he turned around, interfered with the design on the front. It was of two pigs rutting and the words ‘Makin’ Bacon’. It made Margaret embarrassed, that shirt.

Werner shoved the tin at her and some of the oil slopped onto her wrist. She shook it off into the pot with the tuna, stirred it all and held the empty tin out to him.

‘Ekelhaft,’ said Werner, staring into the pot. It looked revolting. As he took the jagged tin he flicked it up hard. Blood welled from her soft palm.

‘Aaeee!’ She dropped the pot handle to cradle her hand. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

It was only a superficial cut, Werner was sure. He took her hand tenderly and kissed the back of it before turning it around to inspect the damage. There was a gossamer flap of skin and a lot of blood, as red as his. He put his mouth to the cut and licked at it. An expression of disgust crossed Margaret’s face and she pulled away. She turned on the cold tap. The water ran pink into the stone sink.

Werner served the meal. It didn’t look too bad, slopped out onto the plates. Sort of Chinese and anyway, he admitted to himself, he’d eaten worse. He carried the plates out to the verandah and put them on a shady table.

‘Bring the forks!’ he shouted to Margaret from the corridor.

The tap was still running and he could hear Margaret speaking Fijian with an answering woman. Litia had gone to the supermarket. Who else could it be? he wondered. Another cousin?

He sat down heavily on the most reliable-looking chair. Its torn vinyl spiked his thighs, even through his blue cotton shorts. Werner grimaced, his fleshy upper lip forcing his moustache hairs into his nostrils. He sneezed hugely.

‘Margaret!’

The tap was still running faintly. A mynah landed on the verandah rail and eyed the lunch.

‘Verschwinde!’ Werner flicked his hand at the bird. ‘Margaret!’ The bird flapped its wings but remained perched. Werner ate some of the noodles with his fingers. In Indian style, he told himself.

Litia came up the long steps from the road, burdened with plastic bags of fruit and vegetables. As she bowed her head with the weight, a single grey hair sparkled in the sunlight. She didn’t recognise him from last time, Werner was sure. He remembered her, though. The single grey hair seemed the only indication that the thirteen years since he was last here had passed for her, just as they had for him. She looked up and smiled.

‘Bula!’

‘Bula,’ he said, and sighed.

‘You are having some lunch?’ asked Litia.

‘No forks!’ said Werner, shrugging and turning out his hands. Litia laughed. He looked like an enormous reef fish, pink and orange and blue. She waved and went inside. The hotel had been quiet these last few days — just a few locals and not many backpackers. It gave her some time for herself, today maybe even some time with her feet up.

Margaret was coming down the corridor with two forks in one hand, the other with a rag wound around it.

‘Bula,’ said Margaret. She rattled the forks at Litia. ‘He will be getting mad!’

But Werner wasn’t mad at all. His plate was empty and Margaret’s food had been carefully rearranged so that she wouldn’t notice any missing.

She didn’t. It was so lovely out on the verandah, the gentle, creamy breeze, the birds, the click-clack of the palm leaves, the blue of Suva Harbour through the mango leaves. Werner looked contented, leaning back, lighting a cigarette with greasy fingers. Margaret settled down at her plate and began her lunch.

‘Who were you talking to in the kitchen?’ asked Werner.

Margaret’s eyes widened, as if startled by his question, and then narrowed. She looked shifty. Werner hadn’t seen her look shifty before. It was interesting. He hadn’t thought her capable of it.

‘Who?’ Werner repeated.

‘No one.’ Margaret filled her mouth with noodles and brushed an ant off her plate. ‘You shut up and smoke.’

Werner smiled, in spite of himself. She could be cheeky, this one. He wondered how old she was. Eighteen? It was difficult to tell. They didn’t wrinkle up the same as white women.

‘Are you going to come out with me tonight?’ he asked.

Margaret spoke with her mouth full. ‘Where to?’

‘The Townhouse Hotel. That bar on the roof. I saw it from the street this morning.’

Margaret laid a noodle on the verandah rail for the mynah. It picked it up and flicked it around its beak.

‘Well?’

There was a rustle of dry leaves as a mongoose streaked out from a stand of bamboo.

‘Well?’ he said again.

‘All right,’ said Margaret. ‘Vinaka.’

She smiled broadly at him. He wondered if his luck was about to change. After all, he was different from a lot of white
men you see in the tropics. Scrawny, pathetic specimens most of them, wasted by the heat and prematurely withered. There was one in this hotel, a skinny, bearded New Zealander carrying on a clandestine affair with a young Indian woman from Sigatoka. Werner had noticed them together, cooking in the kitchen, doing their washing in the laundry. Alone, the woman was nervous, always looking over her shoulder, waiting to be discovered. When her lover was near she nestled into him, her face blissful.

Margaret had scarcely touched Werner. He’d felt her eyes on him though, like before, in the kitchen, when he was opening the tin. She began gathering up the dishes.

‘How’s your hand?’ he asked.

Margaret shrugged and a rueful laugh escaped her. ‘Okay.’ She carried the plates down the corridor to the kitchen. Her dry feet rasped on the wooden floor.

Werner would try to remember this heat during his next German winter. There was a time when he thought he’d never experience one of those again. He was sitting pretty in Auckland, landlord of two substantial blocks of flats in Papatoetoe. The money was falling into his lap. Although Margaret didn’t realise it, he’d had plenty of experience with people like her — coconuts — though most of them, as he recalled, didn’t have such frizzy hair. Then his wife had started kicking up, his beautiful blonde Kiwi wife whom he’d met at Oktoberfest, and he’d lost everything in the settlement. Dale had had a better lawyer, that’s all it came down to.

Where was Margaret now? Possibly making coffee — and properly, he hoped, in the way he’d taught her the day before yesterday.

The world around Margaret swam and leapt. It was like being
underwater. She spun to catch the night breeze and gentle rain on her face. Below them, the government buildings gleamed green and grey in their night lights and the rugby players ran and crashed in Albert Park, like waves on a reef. She could feel Werner’s arm around her, turning her to face the hill ahead.

Margaret closed her eyes, her stomach aching and bloated with beer. In a flash she saw Werner’s mouth bending to her bleeding palm, his pale tongue licking. There was a story, a story she remembered an old auntie telling her at home in the village. It was about a German, a German like Werner, fat and white, who’d found himself washed ashore near Londoni. Margaret’s auntie had heard the story from her auntie.

Herr Beilman had become, a hundred and forty years ago, a man of hideous appetites, joining in the feasts of bakalo and kurilagi. He would go to the temple and wait among the people for the first head to loll on the killing stone. As the story had it, he preferred children and had once dined with Tanoa on his return to Bau, the mast of Tanoa’s canoe festooned with the corpses of infants. A cannibal, in his own tongue a Menschenfresser … But after only a few months he had offended his chief host and filled an oven himself. Margaret’s auntie had always allowed herself a chuckle at this point in the story.

On the steps, Werner’s arm tightened. Margaret wanted to sleep. She flopped over his arm like a doll, barking her shins on the concrete.

‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier …’ Werner counted the steps for her, ‘Funf, sechs, sieben …’

The hotel foyer was dark. Margaret wondered how Werner could have remained so sober — he’d drunk more than she had. He was guiding her down the dim corridor to her room. Behind Litia’s door a radio tinkled.

‘Liti —’ began Margaret.

Werner put his hand over her mouth.

‘Shshsh — she’s tired. She’s had a long day. We won’t disturb her,’ he whispered. ‘Where’s your key?’

Margaret gestured weakly at her handbag, which still clung, miraculously, to her shoulder. There was a jumbling and a jangling as Werner’s fingers raked through it.

‘There now.’

They were inside. He was laying her down. She closed her eyes. Werner turned the fan on and took off his thongs. Margaret looked so beautiful, her face soft, asleep. The light from the window fell on her hand, the dark shadow of the cut under her gently curved fingers. He lay down beside her and took her in his arms.

‘Margaret?’

There was no response. He put his face close to hers and smelled the beer on her breath. Stupid. She hadn’t had any dinner, so no wonder. He stroked one of her breasts and the nipple hardened. Werner moved himself against her.

The village Herr Beilman had lived in was now abandoned. Margaret had been there once, as a child, with a tourist who’d wanted to see it. The killing stone still stood then, surrounded by undergrowth. She hadn’t liked the place, already knowing her auntie’s story and other stories besides. The tourist had found some kind of thrill in it, stroking the stone and shivering.

‘Margaret.’

It was Werner, pushing hard against her thigh. She forced herself to open her eyes.

‘Go away,’ she said succinctly.

Werner laughed. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, kissing her forehead.

Margaret lifted her mouth as if to kiss him, but travelled on to his nose, his pink reef-fish beak. She fastened her teeth around it.

‘Sheisse!’

Werner had his plump hands on her shoulders, forcing himself up and off the bed. Margaret’s head lifted from the pillow and then she released him, her mouth full of sweat with a faint tang of blood. She rose unsteadily to her feet, the room heaving, and ran at Werner, shoving him. He was yelling, his hands over his face, yelling halting, guttural words of abuse. She shoved at him again and again, working him in stages through the door. With the last shove he struck up against the opposing wall. The key was still in the lock. She brought it around to her side of the door and fastened it closed.

After a while Werner’s footsteps sloughed off down the corridor. Margaret’s desire for sleep went with him. She went to the window and looked out. The wind was beginning to pick up, and the rain struck hard against the glass. Standing there with her arms hanging limply at her sides, Margaret wondered if it was raining at home. She pictured her mother’s face, asleep, peaceful. There was no surge of nostalgia, or even frustration, at the thought of returning. She brought a hand to her breast and laid it there, wondering if her heart had somehow died before she had.

The night’s dense rain brought with it a determined silence. Upstairs in Werner’s room his heavy bulk fell into bed, the sound muffled and as tiny as a bird landing on a tin roof.

‘You sit there and we’ll ring everybody up and see if they like you.’ Portia’s cigarette stuck out between her stubby fingers like a little mast on a capsizing yacht. She was actually doing the F sign, thought Hannah. Sometimes Portia did for real anyway, out car windows.

‘You’re giving me the finger,’ she said quietly, while she sat by the phone, which was the kind that was stuck to the wall, with a curly cord. But Portia wasn’t listening; she was dragging on her fag without even coughing, her eyes resting on something moving in the garden beyond the deck. Hannah saw how the blue semicircles of her irises, just the profile of them, swivelled from one side of the lawn to the other. They were focusing on her enormous dog chasing a cat, perhaps, or a bird. Hopefully it
was
Portia’s dog, which would mean it was outside and not lying in wait in another room.

Extravagantly, Portia blew out smoke and turned to face her. At the brown end of the cigarette her lips looked like pale pink beads in the shape of shells.

‘Now you’re really making the fuck sign,’ said Hannah. Portia glanced at her upraised hand.

‘Look — it’s like the fingers,’ she said. ‘Cool. All those adults out there giving the finger and they don’t even know.’

‘I already said that!’ Hannah felt brave. ‘I said that before. I saw it first. I —’

‘Go and get the air freshener from the bog,’ said Portia. She narrowed her eyes against the smoke. ‘Mum’ll be home in a minute.’

Hannah set off down the hall, which had sides of soft brown board with white splotches and babyish pictures done with felttip. Portia was too cool to draw on the gib board now — she was ten. She didn’t let Hannah do it any more either. Hannah tried hard not to think about the dog. Thinking about him was sometimes enough to bring him to her, lolloping out of one of the doorways.

The tin of freshener was pretty, a glistening cylinder with conical flowers in every shade of purple.
Spring Grove,
it said. On the way back down the hall Hannah gave it a tryout, puffing a hazy silver cloud just ahead of her. When she walked through it some of the droplets clung to her hoodie like glitter.

In the living room Portia had stubbed out her cigarette — Hannah couldn’t see where. Maybe she’d just thrown it off the deck. The sliding doors stood ajar.

‘Give it here.’ Portia held out her hand for the tin. All her fingernails were felt-tipped luscious red, which had seeped into the quicks. Her other hand held the walkabout phone close to her ear. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You listen on that phone.’

The first person they rang was the new girl. Portia considered that she most likely would have nothing interesting to say. She didn’t know enough yet. A man answered and went off to get her.

‘Hello?’

‘Who was that?’ asked Portia into the phone. ‘Breathe more quiet,’ she said to Hannah.

‘My brother. I’m not breathing loud,’ came Nicole’s voice. You could tell Nicole was fat even from her voice. It was a fat girl’s voice, which came out thick and kind of gluggy-sounding from deep in her creamy neck.

‘Have you got a brother that’s a man?’ asked Portia. There was a sudden hollowness, as if at the other end Nicole had removed her head from the phone. Then there was a muffled bump and thump and somewhere nearby the rumble of the brother talking.

‘What’s she doing?’ asked Hannah, forgetting for a moment that she was not supposed to say anything. Swiftly, Portia swung the portable phone behind her back, pushing it into the seat of her jeans. They were skaties jeans. Hannah wanted a pair just like them, with all her heart.

‘Be quiet!’ hissed Portia, like a pissed-off mother.

‘Hello?’ It was Nicole.

‘Has your brother sexed yet?’ asked Portia. ‘Has he got a girlfriend?’

‘No,’ said Nicole. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you Christian or something?’

Nicole didn’t say anything then. She just breathed, more softly than Hannah did.

‘Hey, um …’ Portia sounded casual. She put one foot up on the sofa and inscribed above Hannah’s head a sweeping, silvery arc of perfumed vapour. ‘Do you like Hannah?’ Hannah felt her
heart constrict. Her fingers gripped the handpiece so hard they stung at the knuckles. She could feel the silvery mist descending.

‘She’s all right. She doesn’t even talk to me, hardly.’

‘Right.’ Portia strode towards the dining alcove. On the table was the survey form she’d drawn up. ‘So what do you give her out of five?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Two? One?’

There was a pause. ‘Three,’ said Nicole, carefully. Portia clicked the Talk button and marked Nicole’s column with her new peach-scented orange pen.

‘You didn’t even say goodbye,’ said Hannah.

‘You dial the next one,’ Portia said. ‘You ring Sia.’

Hannah pushed 3. That was all she could remember. Portia rolled her eyes and finished punching in the number for her, reading it from the top of the survey form.

‘Hello?’ It was a little old lady. Portia could tell from the way she said hello that she probably couldn’t even speak English.

‘Is Sia —’ began Hannah, but Portia pressed Talk and glared at her.

‘Not you. I’ll do the talking.’ She pressed Redial. This time it was Sia’s big sister, who took ages looking for her. While Portia waited, she went out onto the deck to smoke. Tethered to the wall, Hannah watched her through the glass doors. The trees in the garden drip-dripped. The cigarette in her mouth was the same one as before, bent and blackened at the end. This time it did make Portia cough, maybe because it was already a bit used up. She only had a couple of puffs before she stubbed it out carefully on the edge of a pot plant and threw it into the long grass down below.

‘She’s not here. She’s gone down the dairy.’ It was the big
sister back again.

‘Shit!’ said Portia, loudly. It was louder in Hannah’s ear than it was through the air. As Portia came back inside she clicked the phone off. ‘Ellie, now. And we’ll need a new person to make up for Sia. There has to be an odd number, otherwise it won’t work.’ She was copying Ms Ash, their teacher, Hannah could tell. Portia put her pen up to the corner of her mouth just like Ms Ash did.

The phone hardly rang before Ellie answered it.

‘What are you doing?’ Portia asked.

‘Playing with my new rat. I’ve left nine messages for you. Who’ve you been talking to?’ There was a jealous tone in Ellie’s voice. Portia felt it thrill her, up and down her spine.

‘People. I’m finding something out.’

‘What?’

‘Do you like Hannah?’

‘She stinks.’

‘Blah!’ Hannah couldn’t help it. It just came out. ‘Blah! Blah! Blah!’ She banged the phone up and down in its cradle a few times and rapid-fired some buttons. ‘Blah!’

‘Out of five? What do you give her?’ Portia was shouting.

‘Zero!’ shouted Ellie, just as Hannah lifted the phone to her ear again. ‘She’s a loner, she’s a loser, she’s a user.’

Hannah suddenly felt all tight around the lips. She carefully replaced the phone and went out of the room. Portia heard the gentle scrape of a schoolbag being lifted from the polished floor and the click of the front-door snib. As the door swung open, there was the soft growl of a car coming to rest in the carport.

‘What’s she doing there anyway?’ Ellie was demanding. ‘What’s she doing at your place?’

‘I’ve told you,’ Portia placated, heading down the hall, ‘she’s only my neighbour. You’re my best friend. It’s different.’

‘Is it just the two of you there, on your own?’ asked Ellie.

‘Nah. Oliver is doing his homework.’ She gave her brother’s bedroom door a hefty kick as she passed it. There was no response, which meant he was probably online. Through the open door at the end of the hall she could see her mother unloading groceries from the boot. She could hear the plastic of the shopping bags crackling in the wind as they were set down on the path.

In her room she lay on her bed, the phone warm in her ear while Ricky Martin gazed down from above, oblivious to the arrow sticking into his head from a blood-red smeary cloud. Ages ago Ellie had written GAY up there in lipstick and Portia’s mother had tried to wipe it off.

‘Mum’s got a baby book to look for names for our baby,’ said Ellie. ‘I looked up Portia.’

‘Yeah?’ Portia looked at herself in the mirror and wished she had bosoms. Then she could fit real size 8 from a ladies’ shop. Then she’d look just like Britney Spears.

‘It means hog,’ said Ellie, only just containing herself. ‘A dead famous person called Shakespeare used it in a play — that’s what it said in the book. Portia. Pig. We won’t be calling our baby that. Pig. Hog.’

‘It’s not your baby.’ Portia had to think fast. ‘It’s only half your sister. It’s not your dad’s sperm. It’s different sperm. I know all about this. It’s only coming out of the same mother. The sperm came out of a different father —’ But Ellie had hung up.

In the kitchen Portia’s mother was banging tins onto shelves.

‘Can I have a rat like Ellie?’ Portia got out the milk to make a Milo.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’ve got a dog.’

‘So?’

‘He’d kill the rat.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s in his genes. It’s his instinct.’

‘What’s instinct?’

‘What you’re born knowing.’

‘What’s my instinct?’

‘Sometimes I wonder, Portia.’

‘Ellie’s got a dog and a rat. She’s got a new rat. It’s her second rat. She had a rat that died. It’s not fair.’

‘The rat lives with her mother, the dog lives with her father.’

‘If you and Dad split up can I have a rat? Are you and Dad going to split up?’

‘Not this week.’

‘Why did you call me hog?’

‘What? I didn’t. Don’t be silly. And don’t make a mess.’

But the Milo tin had already popped open, leaving a little heap of brown crystals on the bench.

At her place, Hannah lay on the rug in front of
The Simpsons.
The heater was on and she felt sleepy. When her mother came to call her for tea, her pencil had fallen from her hand, her eyelids were flickering and there was a faint scent of lilac. Hannah’s mother slipped out the sheet of paper that lay under one crooked elbow.
Do You Like Portia?
it was headed, with a scale of 1 to 5, and a list of girls’ names.

In the morning Hannah couldn’t find the survey form and there wasn’t time to rule up another one. As she went in the school gate she wondered if Portia would ever be so careless. At breakfast she’d told her mother and father about Portia’s survey
and her mother had said that when Portia grew up she’d be a politician. She said this in a scathing voice. And then Dad said Portia was probably born a social engineer, whatever that was.

It took Hannah until lunchtime to get hold of Portia’s survey and tear it into tiny pieces. When the bell came for the end of eating, she’d followed Sia, Nicole, Ellie and Portia down to the back field. She’d had to time it carefully, keeping close to the bushes before darting out into the open ground and lunging with one stiff arm into the clustered bodies gathered around the paper. She felt it crumple and tear under her hand; she came away with some of it; she was running across the field, her feet drumming now on the asphalt of the tapuwae court, her hands rending the half-page to tiny pieces. She even bit off some of it and spat it out as she ran.

When Portia told Ms Ash that Hannah had torn up her maths project, Ms Ash was busy reasoning with one of the naughty boys and took no notice. After that, all Portia could do was make sure Sia, Nicole and Ellie cut Hannah out for the rest of the afternoon. On the way home she walked ahead of her all the way, the whole two blocks. The only thing she said to her, which was when they were on the crossing, was, ‘You keep behind me.’

Hannah watched Portia’s blonde head bobbing ahead of her down the plane tree-dappled street and didn’t mind at all that she couldn’t see her face. It was better that she couldn’t, because otherwise Portia would be able to see hers, too, and she might ask her why she was smiling. And then Hannah might tell her by accident that she’d spent the rest of lunchtime drawing up a chart headed
Be Kind Contract,
leaving gaps for five names. She was sure it would be something Ms Ash would approve of.

She’d ring Nicole first, she decided, as she went up her right-
of-way. Then Sia, and thirdly Ellie. Last of all she’d ring Portia, and Portia would want to come round and see for herself, and because the contract was Hannah’s idea, Hannah would be boss. When Portia saw all the other names she’d have to sign up too. Yes, it was shaping up to be a better afternoon than the one she’d had yesterday. Around the back and past the grapefruit tree she went, through the back door and down the hall to the phone.