Demons (11 page)

‘
Do you?
Really?’

‘
No,’ I grinned. ‘Well, not
normally anyway. Just once a year, on my birthday.’

‘
I don’t know when that
is.’

‘
Maybe I’ll tell
you.’

‘
Well, what about my
suggestion? Fancy a day out?’

‘
Yes,’ I said. ‘I
do.’

‘
I can borrow Dad’s car,’
said Chris. ‘I can pick you up.’

I almost said, I can borrow my Mum and Dad’s
car. I could pick you up, now I’ve got my licence. But I resisted.
I’d done enough asserting myself for now. Go with the flow
instead.

‘
OK.’

‘
Where?’

‘
What?’

‘
Where do you live? I’ll
need to know that if I’m collecting you.’

‘
Of course.’ I gave him the
address. ‘11 Flax-view Road.’

“
OK, see you at
ten?’

‘
No, eleven.’

‘
What? Oh I see.
Clever.’

‘
Ten’ll be
fine.’

‘
Great. Bye
Andrea.’

‘
Bye Chris. See you
tomorrow,’ I said.

And my heart leapt within me at the thought
of being out with Chris for the whole day, just the two of us,
together.

An extract from Chris’s notebook

Dear Andrea,

When you said ‘Yes’ I could hardly believe
it. That

night I talked Dad into lending me the car.
To begin

with he wasn’t happy about it. He asked why
I wanted

it. I told him I was going to take someone
out. There was no point trying to disguise the fact that I wasn’t
going to need the car just to drive myself around.

‘
A girl?’ he asked me. So I
said that it was. When he asked me who you were I didn’t want to
tell him, because I didn’t think it was any of his business but he
insisted, saying since it was his car he had a right to
know.

So I told him that I’d met you in my
classical studies class. I thought I would throw in the classics
connection, as Dad also has a passion for it. It helped. He was
mollified. I told him you were a keen student.

Of course I wasn’t one
hundred percent certain on that point but as far as I knew it might
have been true. I told him we might even do some homework together.
That was also a true thought. I had the happy inspiration of taking
my copy of
The Bacchae
, thinking we could read it together, maybe.

So that was that. He said I could take the
car but that I’d have to have it back by six when he needed it and
that I’d better introduce you to him. I said I would sometime but
I’m sure he meant sooner rather than later. My Dad’s not what you
call easy-going but he’s OK really.

Outed

‘What were you two talking about?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

‘
Nothing my bum,’ said
Becs. ‘That swine was

asking you out wasn’t he?’

‘
So what if he was? It’s
got nothing to do with you.’

‘
Because it makes the rest
of us insanely jealous,

that’s what.’

But for once Becs wasn’t sounding her usual
brittle self. She sounded almost relieved. ‘It’s about time you
started behaving normally,’ she said.

‘
Normally?’

‘
Like any other red-blooded
girl.’

‘
What!’

‘
Good on ya,’ said Becs,
quite fondly for her. ‘Go for it. Give him a good time. Have one
yourself.’

She made me nearly want to cancel the date.
The ‘daytime outing’.

Nearly. But not nearly enough to do so.

My young man

At ten the following morning on the dot,
Chris drove up in his father’s car. I heard it, before I saw it,
crunching up our metalled driveway.

‘
Your young man’s here,’ my
father called from outside where he was clearing weeds in front of
the house.

Last night I’d told Mum and Dad what I was
doing the following day. If they were surprised they didn’t show
it. Just exhibited a suppressed curiosity. Pleased, possibly.

‘
It’s been a fair while
since . . . what’s-his-name,’ said Dad.

‘
Robbie,’ I reminded
him.

‘
Robbie.’

‘He’s not my
young man
,’ I called
back knowing Dad

couldn’t hear me anyway.

I sneaked a quick peak from a window. I
don’t

know what I’d expected in the way of cars.
For some reason I had imagined Chris’s father to be loaded with
money and I’d been prepared for anything from

a flash crimson Ferrari to a yellow, yuppie
VW. But Chris’s Dad’s car looked as if it could have been vintage
material. It was sharp edged, not smooth; square, not streamlined.
A real battler.

I ventured outside for a closer look. Dad
was already chatting to Chris. They were talking about the car.

‘
So how old would she be?’
Dad was asking.

‘
About fifty years,’ said
Chris.

‘
In good nick,’ said
Dad.

‘
Well, we don’t use it
much,’ Chris said. ‘Dad buses to work and I bike to school. The
Austin’s more in the garage than on the road.’

‘
Did you learn to drive in
it?’

‘
Yes. But I also had to
drive the instructor’s car. Compared with hers our car felt like a
shopping trolley without wheels.’

Dad laughed. Neither of them had noticed me
yet.

‘
Solid though,’ said Dad.
‘Built like a tank. She’s safer in some respects than most of
today’s cars. Column change too I see.’

Chris nodded. ‘It’s easy once you’re used to
it.’

‘
Had one of those back
home,’ said Dad. ‘Drove all through Ireland in her. By the time I
got to the Ring of Kerry bits were starting to fall off but she
managed to bring me home safely in the end.’

I was getting annoyed and not just because I
was feeling ignored.

‘
If it’s like a tank why do
you call it a she?’ I joined in the conversation. ‘Tanks are male
aren’t they?’

They both turned at the same time.

‘
Hi,’ said Chris. A smile
so big I couldn’t help but smile back. ‘You could have female
tanks,’ I said.

‘
Maybe,’
said Chris. ‘I’ve never thought of that before. Ancient Greek
triremes had women’s names
and
they were boats of war, used as battering
rams.’

‘
Really?’ said
Dad.

‘
Well, at
least one of them had a woman’s name,’ amended Chris. ‘There was a
ship in the Athenian navy called
Salaminias
.’

‘
And who was she before she
got turned into the name of a ship?’ I asked.

‘
It’s actually the name of
a place,’ said Chris. ‘Where a famous battle was fought. The Battle
of Salamis. The ship was named after it.’

‘
So how did a men’s battle
turn into a female ship?’

‘
They
just changed the ending,’ said Chris. ‘
Salaminias
has a feminine
ending.’

‘
Like in Latin?’ said Dad,
surprising me. But then I remembered he would have been an altar
boy when they still said masses in Latin.

‘
That’s it,’ said Chris.
‘And the Greek word for ‘ship’ is feminine too. Interesting isn’t
it. But I don’t know the reason why.’

‘
No it’s not interesting,’
I said. ‘And feminine isn’t the same as female. Whether they’ve got
male names or female names, they’re all boys’ toys. Cars, tanks,
Greek triremes.’

Well, I’ll leave you two to argue it out,’
said Dad abandoning the wheels for the weeds. ‘Going to make a day
of it Andrea tells us. It’s going to be a

corker.’

I rolled my eyes. Dad’s attempts at sounding
like a Kiwi bloke always sounded off-key.

‘
I don’t actually know
exactly what we’re doing yet or where we’re going,’ I said, turning
to Chris.

‘
I thought we might go up
to the hills,’ he said.

‘
If that’s OK with
you?’

‘
Good idea,’ said
Dad.

‘
Keep out of it,’ I said to
him.

‘
Sorry, sorry,’ he
said.

‘
And do what?’ I asked
Chris.

‘
Go for a walk. Buy a pizza
on the way. Have a picnic.’

‘
A walk?’

‘
Yeah. You know. That thing
people do with their legs.’

‘
Really. I never knew
that,’ I said. ‘I’ll grab my boots then.’ I went back
inside.

Mum was already rummaging in the hall
cupboard for them.

‘
You’ve been
eavesdropping!’ I said.

‘
I couldn’t help overhear .
. . yes I was,’ she admitted.

‘
So what do you
think?’

‘
He’s what my mother would
have called a personable young man,’ she said. ‘What I would have
called dishy.’

‘
Mum, looks mean nothing.
You told me that once, remember?’

‘
I do. And you’re quite
right.’

‘
But he
is. And we’re going for a
walk
,’ I said.

‘
Ah, how old-fashioned,’
said Mum.

‘
Nice
and old-fashioned,’ I said,
reflectively. ‘ I think I’d rather do that than go to a party or
a

nightclub, at least to begin with.’

‘
You’re not quite old
enough for nightclubs yet anyway,’ said Mum.

‘
Oh Mum, you know how
easily people our age can get in if we want to. That’s not the
point. Chris isn’t all booze and . . .’

‘
Yes I know,’ said
Mum.

‘
He’s different from the
rest.’

Having found my boots Mum stood up and put
one arm lightly around my shoulders.

‘
Have a wonderful day
Andrea,’ she told me.

Brown

Chris held the passenger door open for me
and, putting my principles aside, I got in without complaint. The
inside of the car seemed huge. As I felt myself vanishing into its
well looked after upholstery I remember thinking that I’d just
crossed a funny kind of border and got my passport stamped to enter
a new country. What if it turned out that the countries ended up
being hostile towards each other, I wondered.

It was a different world out there. From a
distance the hills looked dry-dead and brown but up close they
magnified into life and colour. The tussock shifted between
golden-brown and tawny-gold. It resembled the colour and wildness
of Chris’s hair.

On either side of the path, pushing through
clumps of bracken fern, the dangerous broom had almost finished
flowering, a lingering smell of honey still hanging in the warm
breeze. Many of the prickly plants looked as if they had been
sprayed with the gauze of funnel-web spiders, which had built their
homes between their sharp spikes, safe from

predators.

As we started walking, crickets revved up in
amongst the vegetation, while in the background the

city hummed too, distant and almost foreign,
the white arc of the Events Centre briefly recognizable, cars
smaller than beetles passing along in front of it on the elevated
expressway. The University’s library

building stood up like a grey castle in an
urban forest. But soon everything was engulfed by the female curve
of the hills, even the distant mountains with their last light
coating of snow, and we were alone on the brown back of the
hill.

‘
It’s gorgeous,’ I said
after we’d been walking for a while, not saying much, just enjoying
each other’s company and breathing in the sounds and the
smells.

‘
Hot,’ said Chris. Sweat
beaded his forehead.

‘
Baked hills,’ I said. ‘An
unusual recipe.’

‘
Do you go walking lots?’
he asked.

‘
Used to. Haven’t for a
while. Too many homework assignments these days. Mum and Dad
belonged to a tramping club when I was small and we often went
somewhere in the weekends.’

‘
And I thought you were
just a stay-at-home girl who’d enjoy the novelty of a nice walk on
the hills,’ Chris said.

‘
Ah, that’s what comes of
making assumptions.’

‘
And you don’t like people
doing that, do you?’

‘
No, I don’t,’ I
said.

‘
Just don’t show me up too
much,’ Chris said.

‘
What d’you
mean?’

He stopped for a breather. ‘You’re obviously
much fitter than I am,’ he said. ‘You’re not even puffing.’

‘
Perhaps I’ve just got
bigger lungs than you.’

When I said that Chris’s eyes couldn’t help
but fall down to my chest. ‘Maybe,’ he said, turning away.

I felt embarrassed too. I was wearing a
light, loose fitting shirt over a tight sporty singlet. It kept my
breasts in place but, even so, I suddenly became very aware of them
and everything else about me that

stood out.

I pointed to a grassy clearing ahead. ‘Look,
there’s a bit of shade and a good place to sit. Let’s have a
breather and a drink. I could manage some lunch, too.’