Leather Wings Read online

  “You shouted,” Jania says.

  “Did I? When?”

  “At quarter past four.”

  “Pardon?” She is startled by this accuracy.

  “That’s why I ran away.”

  “I don’t remember shouting. What had you done?” She ransacks her memory without result.

  “Don’t matter. You got me back.”

  “I’m sorry if I shouted. Sometimes people do shout but they don’t mean anything by it. People get angry, it doesn’t mean they want to hurt you.”

  “You said at dinner they do. Some people do hurt you. Villains.”

  “I’m not a villain, Jania, I’m your grandmother.”

  Jania gazes up at her, puts up a small hot hand and passes it over the woman’s face thoughtfully, like a blind person.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just seeing if you’re a fake. What’s my favourite pudding?”

  “Lemon sago.”

  “That’s right. Okay, you can go. Night night.” She turns her face into the pillow with a small sigh.

  Esther picks her way carefully down the main street of Jania’s city towards canned TV laughter in the lounge — too loud — Rex must be going deaf, on top of everything else. He is sitting there wide awake now with the remote control in his hand, like a gun, ready to shoot. Esther is not disarmed.

  ESTHER ENTERTAINS THE Rawleigh’s man in the kitchen. It had been Rex who answered the door as Esther was out the back, changing from her office shoes, but it is Esther now who handles the samples, matching them against the price list. She approves of Rawleigh’s, her mother swore by Rawleigh’s preparations right up until she died. In the Home she kept herrings in an old Rawleigh’s tin, Esther recalls now.

  The man glances from time to time at Rex, who frowns into a newspaper, and turns back quickly to the woman and the little girl hugging a stained velvet cushion.

  “What’s your name then? Ermyntrude? Goldilocks?”

  Jania laughs.

  “Don’t you have a name then? Mummy?” He addresses Esther.

  “She’s my granddaughter. Jania. Say thank you, Jania.”

  The man has produced a tiny pale-yellow rubber ball.

  “Do you like it? It — what it does — well, it — it glows in the dark. You can take it to bed with you and it won’t get lost under the covers. It’ll call out to you: Here I am! Come and bounce me! That — that’s what it says.”

  Jania puts down the cushion and holds on to the little rubber ball, squeezing and staring down at it in her hand.

  “It feels funny.” She bounces it and loses it temporarily under the table.

  I start to tell the woman my best story, the one about this lady whose dog attacked one of her chooks, nearly tore its head off, and how the grandmother, a canny old bird herself, tore up a teatowel and put Rawleigh’s ointment on it and bound the chook’s neck, and three weeks later it was good as new, feathers and all. I kid you not. No, it’s true. They always like that one. Man and beast ointment, I sell a lot of that. But this woman goes crazy for my vitamin range, buying up product as if she never eats any meat or vegies. Her husband’s eyebrows go right up over his head but he doesn’t stop her. She holds the purse, I guess, she fetches it out of her handbag. I say —

  — yes, it’s a very good product, there’s been a rush on it. It shouldn’t be much of a delay, a week or so. I’ll get the other stuff to you toot sweet.”

  “You make a living out of this game, do you?” Rex asks. Is it scepticism or envy on his face? Is he thinking of taking up a similar occupation himself perhaps, selling small household supplies?

  “I — yes, I do all right.”

  The two men regard each other warily, like two dogs in a street. The conversation stops, jammed. The Rawleigh’s man looks half fearful of the older man and is the first to drop his gaze.

  “Don’t bounce it near the stove,” Esther warns Jania over her shoulder, showing the salesman to the door. She smiles at him warmly in case he has felt the chill coming off Rex. Rex is in a bad mood today and letting the household know it. She doesn’t believe Rawleigh’s salesmen can be having an easier time of it than all these small businesses who are struggling to pay their rents. Some of their creams and cough sweets and essences are as good as you’ll get anywhere, but how many housewives do their shopping from home these days? And she feels for anyone with a speech impediment. She has reason to, although no one would guess Esther had ever had a problem of that kind, not now.

  “She’ll break a few hearts, your wee daughter.”

  “Granddaughter.”

  “Oh, yes.” He laughs. “Grannies get younger every day if you ask me. I’m a — yes I’m a family man myself. She staying for the holidays, is she?”

  “A bit longer than that actually.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’re complaining. Did I leave — did I leave the receipt with you? That’s right. Yes.”

  When he has gone Esther returns to reproach Rex for what has seemed like rudeness. Rudeness to door salesmen is on a par with rudeness to taxi drivers, waiters, the next best thing to racism. Unless, of course, you have a valid reason for complaint: bad service, shoddy goods. Esther can wave her hands about and raise her voice with the best of them when she knows she’s got a case.

  Rex is outside in the garden, wielding secateurs at the fuchsia bush. He has dropped the newspaper untidily so that it forms a collapsed tent on the kitchen tiles. Considering it is Rex who is number one house cleaner since his retirement, he does very little to make his job easier. The balance has shifted a little since Jania entered the household and Esther shortened her work hours voluntarily. Rex had told her not to bother, he was there to mind the child all hours of the day, but Esther had felt it right that she be there at “home time”. She had put the same restrictions on herself for Prue, despising latch-key parents, and having said so too often to let herself become one of them. When her mother was away, “resting”, she had had to let herself into a silent house after school.

  She hadn’t known Rex would resent her helpful presence at half past three; it was as if she threatened his authority in the house. He didn’t like her in his kitchen, turning down the gas under his vegetables when he forgot, clearing things off the table and setting up drawing utensils for Jania. It was ridiculous. She would have welcomed help in a similar situation, but instead he stages these occasional rebellions, leaving his mess on the benchtop deliberately, failing to put dishes in the machine. It depends on what sort of mood he is in, perhaps if his heart is worrying him, twingeing. He will never tell her unless it is a really bad pain. Then he uses his puffer. And what if he should have an attack while alone in the house with Jania? It is Esther’s duty to be there.

  Jania is in the passageway, bouncing her glow-in-the-dark ball, with curtains drawn. When Esther steps into the darkness the small round glow zigzags up and down in front of her face.

  “It works!”

  Esther switches on the light. “Don’t you go knocking over my pot plants!”

  “It feels funny. Like chewing gum. Feel.” She presses the ball into Esther’s palm. “It isn’t sticky though. See?”

  Esther pulls a face of revulsion, making Jania laugh. “If he gives one of these to every little girl he must be doing all right for himself. Play with it in your room, all right?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean — no? You’ll do as I say!” Esther is shocked over again by her grandchild’s defiance. She doesn’t remember Prue, the child’s mother, being so cheeky — can she have forgotten?

  “I can’t play with it in there. It would be like a bomb. I’d have to build up my city again if there was a bomb. I want to play in here.” She stares at Esther, challenging her to understand, to be an understanding grandmother. Why can’t Esther keep her temper and understand? They confront each other wielding frowns for weapons.

  “Oh — do what you like, just be careful, that’s all.” She opens the side door and calls o
ut to Rex: “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. You don’t have to shout.” He glances up at the nextdoor windows.

  “What’s happening about dinner then?”

  “I’ll be in in a sec.” He lunges with his clippers and lops off a large ragged branch, kicking it with unnecessary force against the fence. She isn’t the only bad tempered one in the house.

  “Why were you so ratty with the Rawleigh’s man?” she demands.

  “Was I? No. I didn’t like him, did you? Uriah Heep. Smarmy.”

  “He has to be nice, he’s a salesman. Jania’s very taken with that little ball.”

  “Huh.”

  “What’s that mean? I thought it was nice of him. The man obviously likes kids; he has kids of his own. He said.”

  “I’m surprised to hear it.”

  “Why?”

  “Thought he’d be queer — that purple sweater.”

  “Well, you got that wrong. Anyway I seem to remember you had a jersey just like it a few years back.”

  “Nothing like it. Purple, but not like that.”

  “I expect his wife knitted it for him. I don’t know, you never stop criticising people these days — we should get out more often. We don’t see enough people.”

  “You do. You mean I don’t see people.”

  “Well, you don’t.” She sighs. “Why do you always do that? Bitch about something, then when I agree with you later on it’s all my fault. You were complaining only the other day the neighbours weren’t friendly.”

  “All right, I admit it, I’m a pathetic old man.”

  “If you say so.”

  It is particularly since Rex’s illness that the guilt has become boringly noticeable and not just because he is at home all day, inconveniently occupying the house. Rex is a sad man and his sadness makes Esther sad — when it doesn’t make her crazy. She would hate to hurt Rex.

  Just as there is no excuse for her attitude to Jania, there is no excuse either for her lack of love towards poor old Rex whom she married in love — she must have — thirty-six years ago, and who has committed no sin other than to have grown older. Like herself. She could never tell him about her infidelity, her faithlessness. His heart might stop. On the other hand, she can’t quite bring herself to give up Donald — and stop her own heart? She is used to Donald. Who knows, he might be part of what keeps her ticking, like a clock battery. She doesn’t believe this, not really, she isn’t a dependent woman, has always been her own person; and yet she doesn’t dare find out. Would Donald notice? They don’t do it so often these days, it’s mostly the talk, but how galling to have to wonder how long it might take him to notice if she were to absent herself from their intimacy.

  The talking is important. In fact, what she likes about Donald is the pleasure he takes not just in her body but in her conversation. She enjoys the way he watches her mouth while she talks. “Now,” he will say greedily, arranging her opposite him like a tray of party nibbles. He prefers to get out of the car and walk to some place where they can do this, sit face to face. “Now. Now tell me about your awful life.” And she does, translating all kinds of boring domestic misery and office gossip into sentences that make him double up with joyful humour, make her double up as well, so that her life sieves down to just this, a series of comedy sketches. With Donald (not in the office, of course, but outside it) she sees herself quite differently, under strobe lighting, coloured, turning on a revolving set, offering angles that are only optimistic. Or mostly. She doesn’t like to disappoint him with real problems, not outside of work, and rarely does. The sex is better after a good laugh.

  And he does care about her. There are things he understands about Esther that Rex would never understand. Rex is too good. For one thing Donald is sympathetic about Jania, he doesn’t criticise Esther (as Rex does) for finding the child difficult.

  “You’ve been dumped on,” he said when he heard she was being dispatched to them like a parcel.

  Donald isn’t good with children himself, only consenting to know his own sons properly when they were old enough to be capable of decent intellectual discussion and a game of poker. She remembers his faint puzzlement, embarrassment even, on occasions when she became passionate about Prue, her own child. When the accident happened and Prue didn’t regain consciousness, Esther and Rex had flown straight over to Canada — the natural reaction, surely. But it had seemed to puzzle Donald; it couldn’t bring Prue back, he said, reminding her of how she had never liked her son-in-law (playing back some of her funny names for him) and pointing out that the three year old might be better off without a sobbing grandmother; she had her Dad and a perfectly good hospital staff caring for her, sympathetic and sane, which for the time being Esther was not. When Esther returned from this sad trip, Donald had avoided being on his own with her for weeks, unsure of how to behave in the face of grief. Yes, Donald isn’t without his failings, but on the plus side is his cheerful wickedness, his sense of humour, qualities missing in Rex. Rex’s heart, the doctor has explained to her. A bad heart is bad for the humour, can make a man morose. Rex has missed the message in his Readers Digest — “Laughter is the Best Medicine” — which he reads regularly and seriously enough.

  Now Donald is her only real friend. Her “thing” with him has led her to neglect her other friendships, with women for instance, until (she noticed this recently) she can lay claim only to acquaintances: workmates, members of her Thursday Reading Group, and neighbours she has got to know through her sometime editing of the local Newsletter. Enough of these but nothing like a proper friend. It matters. When Rex had his first attack and she was so frightened, that was when she noticed it first. Donald, of course, was limited in the help he could offer her then, and perhaps he preferred it that way (she thinks now, in her sour mood).

  Other than Donald, who is there? Melanie, a faithful former schoolfriend, has moved out of her orbit into a succession of menial housewifely jobs and watches the soaps on television. Sometimes they chat at the supermarket check-out where Melanie has “landed” a job. Esther is clearly still “friend” in Melanie’s head, although they have so little in common. Melanie would have no trouble loving a grandchild.

  With her “friends” at the office Esther exchanges views on the latest news scandals and joins in a daily contest to do the crossword. More than this she has judged risky and unnecessary. Donald is only steps away in his boxy office, multi-coloured tie flashing behind the glass.

  A careful existence. Dull. And yet not so dull as some. Not as dull as Melanie. Melanie reads Mills and Boon. Esther is writing a Mills and Boon, which is quite a different thing and anyway it’s a secret. She won’t confess it to the Women’s Reading Group, not until she is published and rich. Then she will have no trouble finding friends to understand her.

  Esther needs a new friend.

  WALLACE

  I TRY TO keep the car tidy, inside and out. It makes a good impression. Rust at the bottom of the doors can’t be helped, but a good hose down on a Sunday and a bit of our own polish on the windscreen, it makes all the difference. (We’ve branched out in the cleaning line and it’s good stuff.) I keep any junk in the boot now, out of sight, and hang a plastic bag for my chocolate wrappers from the door handle. If you’d seen the car before I got this job, you wouldn’t believe I was the same driver. Chocolate wrappers front to back, stuffed in the gear shaft, under the seats, any old where. Red, purple yellow shiny wrappers. Toffeepops, Moro, Kango, Pinky, the lot. I’m a chocolate freak, but now I hide it in one rubbish bag — well, you have to have vices, don’t you? I check my mouth, my teeth in the mirror before I leave the car. Sometimes I take the basket, sometimes the briefcase, depending on what I’m wearing. Basket goes with purple pullover, briefcase with fawn leather jacket. I don’t wear a suit, I’m no Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s no friend of mine. I do have a St Christopher, Mother gave it to me, I can’t think why I wear it, not for her, not for the saint, it’s just become part of me, a kind
of joke I have with myself. I have all kinds of jokes with myself. I don’t share them with people, people don’t understand. I know I’m different, but I don’t want anyone else to know. I behave just like everyone else, don’t I?

  My customers don’t find me different, at least I don’t think so. You do get some queer customers answer the door, depending on the time of day. Mostly it’s women though, not that they can’t be queer too, but on the whole they’re easier. More polite. They don’t like to disappoint you, or else they’re after something. I always know. They should teach it in schools, wariness, healthy suspicion. I learned it goodness knows where, but I learned it well.

  No one pulls the wool over Wallace, specially not a woman, a lady, whatever she calls herself.

  I’ve had a good week. Orders taken, cash exchanged, product handed over. You don’t have to order in lots of twelve like you used to, and get stuck with certain lines, often as not. I order as I like, it’s up to me. Funny the stuff they want. This old dear, she goes through an unbelievable amount of that smelly ointment, goodness knows what she puts it on, maybe she eats it. The house reeks. She says it reminds her of something, someone, I forget. I listen to them rattle on and nod my head feeling that smile dry on my teeth. Other times when a customer has next to nothing to say I find myself rattling on, chattering like a chimp on ice, lisp and all, can’t seem to stop. Well, you have to, don’t you? The job doesn’t like silence. I’m a salesman after all. Independent distributor. Most of the independents are into networking these days, they move with the times, a lot of sheep. Not me, house to house is all right with me, sometimes I spend more time talking than selling, but that’s no bad thing, people like to talk, the doctor’s too busy — what am I saying, the doctor’s too expensive — but the Rawleigh’s man … The old people like door to door and I get on great with old people. They’re safe to talk to, they don’t go jumping to conclusions, they appreciate. And after school’s out, well that’s the best time, everyone says so, it has to be. A lot of working Mums still get home to be with little Jack and Jill by half three. Saturdays are falling off — too much sport and now the supermarkets are open, a lot of shops are open weekends, it’s a shame. But I’m doing all right. Some days children open the door, but Mummy’s usually somewhere there behind them — or Daddy. I try to put on the same face no matter who comes; my Rawleigh’s face, a sort of disguise. I’d have liked a uniform. I’ve never had a uniform unless you count the green jersey we all wore at school, but mine wasn’t even the right green, Mother said it didn’t matter but it did.