Etiquette for a Dinner Party (21 page)

You tell him what they looked like, what they did to his wife. You tell him everything you know; you make up what you don't.

You remember a promise, but he needs to know that perfection is a matter of perception. That there is hope for a lonely, ordinary man. It falls upon you, now, to be there for him.

I was wandering around downtown Dunedin early one Saturday morning, just before Christmas a few years back, when I saw a bargain in a shop window. It was in a secondhand bookshop, tucked away in one of those streets up off the Octagon.

Right in the centre of the window, on a grey display stand,
was a book I had read many times.
The Stories of Frank Sargeson
, it
was called. I wanted that book. The price was fifty cents. That's what the
little round red sticker said.

It was a while ago that this happened. It might have been 1984, the same year Rob Muldoon had a couple too many then went on telly and announced the snap election. Maybe it was later. But fifty cents was cheap at the time, I remember that much. Cheaper than the cup of tea I'd just had at the bus station.

I stared at the book for ages. The shop was open and I could have just walked in and bought it. But you know how it is when you've been down on your luck. An unexpected pleasure comes along; you want to take your time enjoying it. Standing there in the sunshine, it felt as though things just might go my way that day. I felt like I was twenty, not fifty. Like I was a girl again, setting out to discover a wondrous world.

It was quite possible, I thought, that the owner had made an error. Quite feasibly, he or she had meant to write a dollar fifty, or even five dollars, for a book like that. It had a dark blue cover and a photo of old Sargeson himself peering out through those black-rimmed glasses of his. Sure, it was a paperback, and the corners were turned back slightly. But you could see, even without picking it up, that it had been looked after.

Then it occurred to me that the shop owner might be watching me from within the dark shadows, and might realise, just then, the costly mistake. Or he or she could be thinking that I was a shoplifter. So I stopped staring directly at the book and made out I was thinking about other items in the window.

I noticed another lucky thing. The bookshop was the only place in the street that was open. Now you might say what would you expect at twenty past seven in the morning, and I would have to agree with you there. It doesn't matter which town or city you are in — and I have lived in a few over time — not much happens until eight-thirty at the earliest. So maybe I was meant to end up in front of that early-opening bookshop, looking at
The Stories of Frank Sargeson.
I hadn't had a drink that morning, but I swear I could hear the drifters and misfits in that book talking to me, inviting me in. .

It'd been in the back of my mind to stay put in Dunedin for a while, spend a bit of time in the place where I grew up. I had sort of made plans. Lay off the booze, maybe even have another go at those courses I'd started years earlier. I'd been a keen student, before things got messy and out of control. But that's another story.

I went on in and put the book and a twenty-dollar note on the counter. There was no one around.

The rest of the shop turned out to be a huge disappointment. There were a few tired copies of Louis L'Amour westerns lined up on a shelf just inside the doorway, and a pile of Mills and Boon love stories stacked on the floor. The rest of the shop was wall-to-wall magazines. And aside from a few old issues of
Woman's Weekly
and the like, it was all porn.

But here's the funny thing. Somewhere between standing outside in the sunshine, and in front of a shelf of nude women, the whole student thing got under my skin. I pulled back my shoulders, imagining a backpack full of books instead of clothes. I needed to buy the book, and get a move on. Get myself sorted.

'We don't sell a lot of them any more.'

He must have come from the back of the shop. He was maybe seventy, tiny, with little wisps of white hair sprouting from his chin, cheeks, ears and the bottom of an otherwise shiny scalp. He looked like a boiled egg in an eggcup. His little grey bird eyes never blinked.

'What's that, sorry?'

'Mills and Boon. Can't sell them. Not enough sex.'

'Really.'

'No. They've asked the writers to put more sex in. But even when they do, there's still no market. They've had it, Mills and Boon.'

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. He wore a grey tweed jacket and, underneath, a dirty pink wool vest stained the colour of tea. He looked proudly around his shop as he talked.

'That's the trouble with people now. They don't want a plot. Just sex. You'd be amazed what they come in asking for. Disgusting.'

As he stood up straight again, he picked up my book and my twenty dollar note and put them on another counter behind him.

We looked at each other for a bit. I didn't have time for this. I needed to get a move on to the university, to the enrolment office. So I could look over the options.

I thought he'd sensed my impatience, because he turned and opened the top drawer underneath the back counter. There was a long black metal tin inside it, the sort bus drivers keep change in. He put his hand in his trouser pocket, and pulled out a filthy brown handkerchief and a small key. He opened the black metal tin. His trousers, I noticed, were stained the same colour as the vest.

'I'm in a bit of a hurry,' I said. 'Need to get over to the university and sort out my courses for next year.'

'Where are you from?' When he turned back towards me, he had a thick wad of paper in his hands. The pages were held together with a black plastic binding and the pale blue cardboard cover had black typing on it.

'Just Christchurch today, but up north before then. Auckland.'

I didn't want to discuss my business with him, but the alternative
sat between us on the counter.
A Parliamentary Inquiry into Pornography
the big bold black letters said.
Public Submissions.

'Auckland eh? My part of the country too. Joseph's the name, by the way.'

The beady bird eyes looked at me, waiting. I didn't speak.

'Brought up there, in a little bay quite a way out of the city. Just my mother and three sisters and me. Lived off the sea, we did.'

He opened the blue cover. On the first page was a Table of
Contents. His right index finger, with its blackened chewed-off nail, ran
slowly down the list of submissions, then stopped on number twenty three.

'Here's me. They contacted me, you know. Asking me to go up there. Up to Wellington, to Parliament. So I did. Went and told them what sort of porn people want these days.'

I couldn't read what was written next to number twenty three; it was in italics and upside down. I didn't care either. I could see, though, that the final item on the page was
Photographic Submissions
. It was in bold print. His finger was moving down the list towards it.

'So have you still got family up north? Do you go back there at all?' I was trying to delay that finger reaching the bottom of the list, but he ignored me.

'I explained to those politicians that my clients use pornography mainly for the purposes of masturbation. That they respond to many different types of photographic stimulation, not just women . . .'

He went to open the back section. I reached out and stopped him. A strange look — maybe a memory of lust — passed across his face. I kept my hand firmly on his, holding the page down.

He finally answered my question.

'No, don't get up there at all. There's only my mother there. I used to go up now and again for Christmas and see her. But I haven't been for years.'

'You should think about it sometime.'

'She always used to spoil me. The girls hated it. I got the best of everything, not that she could afford much. But she was good to me . . .'

As I took my hand away, he opened the pages.

That was it. I'd had enough. I didn't see whatever was in that
book. I left without looking back, without
The Stories of Frank Sargeson
and without my twenty dollar note. .

Out in the sunshine, I was at a bit of a loss about what to do. I should have marched right back in there and got that book and my money — I needed that twenty dollars — but I couldn't make my old boots step through that doorway again. So instead I set out along George Street, in the general direction of the university.

I started feeling better, getting myself along that street, pretty good in fact. Walking with somewhere specific to go was a treat. When I looked at my reflection in the shop windows, I appeared to be someone who was busy. I grinned at my purposeful self bouncing along from window pane to window pane, and my purposeful self grinned back at me.

I thought about the courses I would sign up for at the university. Languages might be fun but this whole Frank Sargeson book thing had really got to me and I was leaning towards literature. I wondered if I could do a whole degree on New Zealand writers, or whether I would have to mix in some other authors and subjects. I was prepared to consider whatever the experts at the university suggested would suit me best.

A few blocks on, I came across a little park with an overgrown lawn, a statue of some sad angel and a couple of long wooden benches. The park was surrounded by tall hedges, which gave it a cosy back garden sort of a feel. Seeing that park made me realise how tired I was, so I lay down for a snooze in the warmth.

It turned out to be more than a snooze; when I woke up the sun had passed over and was starting down towards the west. Quite a group of people had gathered around the other seat with beer, wine and a few other things besides. When they saw me get up, one of them, an old Maori guy with a moko on his face, called out: 'Come over here, love, come and have a drink.'

I thought hard about this. Drinking in a park wasn't part of my plan, but then again everyone needs friends when they arrive in a new place. So I pushed my backpack under the seat, and went on over. It was too late to go to the university that day anyway, and there was always tomorrow.

Meeting those good people turned out to be a lucky break — they were all planning to go to university. We talked into the night, making arrangements for the year; drinking and smoking and getting excited about getting an education together.

One of the men, Guy I think was his name, was especially nice. He was big and quiet, and did a lot of chuckling when the others got carried away about the whole university thing. Like when the young one, Gina, described us all graduating together, wearing those batman capes over our old clothes. She jumped up, her ginger dreadlocks bouncing away, and she marched across the grass with her chin up high and a joint in her hand. I was laughing too; right then I could see us all lined up there at the ceremony in three years' time.

It must have been getting pretty late when I told Guy about wanting to study Frank Sargeson. He leapt up and gave me a big bear hug. I got a bit of a fright at first, this huge dark shadow coming at me in the moonlight, but in the end it felt nice to be hugged by someone so big and warm.

'Oh man, you and me both, girl,' he said, swinging me round in a circle so my feet left the ground. 'Sargeson. One hell of a writer. So what's your favourite story?'

I told him it was the funny one, the one called 'The Hole That Jack Dug'. He knew it, of course, though he disagreed with me about the humour in it. He thought it was a tragic tale, with poor old Jack digging holes for no good reason except to make him feel manly, seeing as he wasn't at war. But I reminded him that Jack ended up making lots of money digging holes for people to hide from the Japs in.

As for Guy, he liked 'An Affair of the Heart', where that arsehole Joe Crawley is spoilt rotten by his mother. Joe grows up and leaves home and never returns, but his mother waits for him every night at the bus stop. Guy said he liked the fact that the waiting gave Joe's mother so much pleasure, especially at Christmas because she would prepare a big feast for him. He reckoned it didn't matter whether Joe Crawley turned up or not.

I said Joe was a prick and didn't deserve to be waited for by anyone.

In the end, we agreed that there were different ways of looking at life, and didn't Sargeson know it. But all that drinking and talking about 'An Affair of the Heart' made me remember my twenty dollars. And that made me angry, and it's when I get angry that I end up in trouble. So I gave Guy a peck on the cheek and slipped away in the dark to sleep, before things got messy and out of control. .