Etiquette for a Dinner Party Page 3

  I wondered, in those early days, why Jack had never bothered to finish vet school. Once, just after he had calmed and treated some poor animal, I asked him.

  He just said it wasn’t for him, the whole university thing. You wouldn’t believe what it was like, he said, unless you’d been there yourself. He said he couldn’t handle the pressure of exams, everyone competing. And he was quite happy as a vet’s assistant, even if he couldn’t do everything.

  I knew one thing for sure — Charlie Boyd was rapt to get him. Charlie was forever whinging how he couldn’t get a vet to come and work in Tokoroa. He reckoned the vet school graduates got too much of a taste for the city life while they were at university, then they’d go soft and want to stay in town. Treating small animals, Charlie used to say: rats and hamsters and gerbils and other fucking rodents. When Jack applied for the job, Charlie was grateful. More than happy to do the big stuff on his own, let Jack do what he could manage. Charlie told me this himself. .

  Velocity turned up on Jack’s birthday.

  It was about five in the evening; there was a northerly breeze blowing the stink from the mill away from the town. It was cold, but a big red sun was going down over the back of the pine forest. That’s a sight worth staying outside for, no matter how cold it is.

  Jack was sitting on our back steps, picking mud off his boots with a stick. I’d brought us out birthday beers and settled down on the steps with him.

  Roly Smythe came up the driveway in his new red Rodeo truck. Roly is Jack’s mate. He’s farmed all his life next door. We’ve never got on, me and Roly. He’s one of those guys who hates women because they steal a man’s friends. Consequently, Roly is a bachelor and a lonely soul.

  He slowed to a stop and the driver’s window went down. ‘Happy birthday, mate. Gotcha something,’ he said to Jack.

  ‘New truck. Thanks, Roly.’ Jack raised his bottle. ‘Come and have a beer.’

  ‘Na, mate. Something else.’ Roly jumped out of the truck and walked around to the back. He lifted a cane hamper, just a bit smaller than a washing basket, off the deck and carried it over to where we were sitting. He put it on the ground at Jack’s feet.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Jack.

  ‘Open it, see for yourself.’

  Jack lifted the latch and opened the lid. Sitting inside was a grey bird, slightly smaller than a seagull. It had iridescent green feathers around its neck — the colour you see inside paua shells sometimes. The wings had a frill of black feathers near the edges.

  ‘What’s the problem — is it injured?’ Jack leaned forward and gently lifted the bird out of the box. He lifted one wing, then the other, checking them over for damage.

  ‘Nup. It’s a pigeon,’ said Roly, grinning away. ‘A racing pigeon. Thought you might enter it in the competitions, have a bit of fun with it.’

  ‘Christ almighty. Where’d you get it?’ The bird sat calmly in Jack’s hands, black eye watching him.

  ‘At the saleyards today. Old fella had it, said it was a great racing bird. Said his wife had got sick of the whole scene and he had to give the game up. He was giving her away, so I grabbed her for you.’

  Roly smiled at me. Wanker.

  ‘Cheers, mate. What the hell do you do with them?’ Jack passed the bird to me. It crapped into my lap.

  ‘Buggered if I know.’ Roly went into the house, then came out with a beer in his hand. ‘It’s a girl, and her name’s Velocity, the old guy said. He named her after the fastest pigeon to deliver mail between Auckland and Great Barrier Island, back whenever.’

  ‘Shit, is that right?’ Jack was impressed. He always liked to hear about animals’ achievements.

  ‘Yep. First ever pigeon airmail service in the world, apparently.’

  ‘Jeez. Amazing, eh?’ Jack stroked the pigeon’s head again.

  ‘Yeah, sure is.’ Roly took a swig from the bottle, then clunked it against Jack’s. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said.

  Next morning Jack went off to the library for books on racing pigeons. He came back with a few, and a mountain of building materials on the back of his ute.

  ‘The thing is, Sandy, these racing pigeons live in lofts.’ He dropped the pile of books on the kitchen table and flicked open the top one. ‘See, look at this. This is what I need to build.’

  On one page there was a photo of a little house on stilts. It had chicken wire across the front, and inside were various pieces of miniature furniture — they looked like tiny chests of drawers — which turned out to be feeding and water equipment. On the opposite page were drawings showing how to construct this loft.

  Jack settled into the task, which ended up taking most of the weekend. I went out and gave him a hand, passing nails and reading out measurements. I was sort of hoping we would get it all done on the Saturday, but it was obvious by about five o’clock that it would be a two-day job.

  We ended up finishing late Sunday afternoon. We put water in the little container, and Jack mixed some concoction of feed for the bird. Peas, maize, oats, rice, barley; apparently you had to have the ratio just right to keep the bird healthy.

  As he tipped this mixture into the feed container I lifted Velocity out of her hamper. ‘There you go, girl,’ I said. ‘Welcome to your loft accommodation.’ She tilted that head of hers to one side and, like lightning, nipped me on the wrist.

  She drew blood. It oozed out of the wound, which was shaped like the point of her beak. It was surprisingly deep. I dropped her; Jack quickly scooped her up and put her in the loft. ‘Jesus, Sandy, be careful.’

  ‘She bloody bit me.’

  ‘Well, you were probably squeezing her or something.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I was holding her just like you do. I’ve probably got some disease now. What do they get, these birds? Rabies?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. He stayed outside, watching the bird strut around its new home, while I went inside and found a sticking plaster. I waited a bit, thinking Jack would probably come in and check I was okay. But he didn’t.

  Velocity and I quickly reached an understanding. I fed her; she attacked me. I didn’t like her. It’s hard to like something that wants to kill you.

  The weird thing was, after that first time she behaved herself with me when Jack was around. He would give her to me, and she would sit quietly in my cupped hands, little black beady eye in its yellow ring sussing me out.

  ‘See,’ Jack would say, ‘she’s fine with you. My two girls.’ His face would glow with a love that appeared to be divided equally between me and Velocity.

  The night before Velocity’s first race, Jack and I took her to the pigeon club and put her on the pigeon truck going south. The guy driving this truck was called the Liberator. Imagine that. Like some kind of superhero.

  Anyway. Off the Liberator went, da da da into the night with a truck full of pigeons. To Christchurch, where he would set them all free to fly home. Jack was beside himself, seeing her off. I was quite excited about it all too. Christchurch, I thought. Across Cook Strait and its howling storms. All that way.

  Jack had calculated how long it would take her to fly back — ten hours, he reckoned, seeing as she would be flying into a head wind. The birds were due to be released at dawn. That meant we had most of the next day to ourselves.

  ‘I’ve arranged something special for us,’ I told Jack on the way home. ‘Tomorrow morning. We’re going through to Hamilton. We’ll have a look at some new furniture, then have lunch somewhere nice.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ The disbelief in Jack’s voice twisted it, gave it an ugly, high-pitched tone I had never heard before. When he turned towards me he was frowning and laughing at the same time.

  ‘No, what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘We can’t go anywhere. We have to wait for Velocity.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s not due back until four in the afternoon. We’ll be back well before then.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’ll probably get back early. She’s a bloody champion flyer, you know, San
dy.’ His whine sounded stressed now, like a truck being driven too fast in low gear.

  ‘What — so we have to sit around all day and wait for her?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, I’m not spending all day waiting for that fucking bird.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Though I thought you might care how she got on, in her first race.’

  The rest of the drive home was one of those quiet, uncomfortable, stuffy ones, where you can’t get enough air circulating, even with all the windows down. .

  I won’t bore you with the details of the pigeon racing season. I’ll just say that Velocity lived up to her champion reputation, and Jack spent a hell of a lot of time feeding, training and exercising her.

  We argued a lot that winter — usually about the need for us to hang around home every weekend, waiting for the bird to arrive back from other places. When we weren’t arguing about that, we found other things to disagree on. Anything, really. Jack laughed at me a lot, accused me of being jealous of a bird. A bird! and he’d crack up laughing in that new whiney voice of his.

  Well, yeah, maybe I was a bit jealous. But it seemed to me that the magic Jack had — that power, the strength — was disappearing day by day, leaking out the ends of his lovely fingers every time he handled Velocity. She’d sit in his hands, looking at him and me at the same time, and she soaked up every little bit of that magic for herself. The bits left over for me were the dregs. .

  It was early afternoon, a beauty of a spring day, still and warm. I was biking up the driveway on my way home from the delivery run when I heard tyres spitting stones, a vehicle coming up behind me. I turned around and it was Charlie. He followed me up to the house, driving slowly all the way.

  He got out of his truck and I asked him which animal he’d come to pick up, seeing as he didn’t have the horse float.

  ‘The crossbreed bitch in the kennels,’ he said.

  ‘You mean Jessie.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘Is that her name?’

  I asked him if I could have a ride back into town with him. I had a doctor’s appointment and I’d planned to meet Jack later at the pub.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  So there we were. Me and Charlie in the front of the truck, Jessie in the back.

  ‘Where are you dropping her off?’ I asked.

  Charlie looked at me. He’s got big hairy eyebrows, Charlie, and dark stubble all the time, even first thing in the morning.

  ‘What do you mean, dropping her off?’

  ‘Who owns her?’

  ‘No one. She’s a stray, a mongrel.’

  ‘So we’re off to the pound.’

  Charlie was looking at me hard.

  ‘The pound.’ He laughed. ‘Shit no. They don’t want her back. She came from the bloody pound. Came into the clinic with an abscess on her leg. No, what happened was, the pound thought they’d found a new home for her, so I treated her. Assumed the new owners would pay. But the new home’s fallen through. I’m putting her down, Sandy.’

  We pulled out onto the main road, both of us staring straight ahead. I didn’t ask about the other animals. All the sick, sad beasts that had been in our front paddocks. And the times Charlie had turned up with his horse float and taken one away. We drove to town in silence.

  Just before we got to the clinic Charlie asked me where I wanted to be dropped off.

  ‘Is Jack there?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he’s out all afternoon.’

  ‘When are you doing it?’

  ‘Right now. While he’s out.’

  We sat there for a minute, me and Charlie. Not saying anything. Not looking at each other either. We just sat and I understood some things about Charlie and Jack, about how it worked for them. One putting sick animals out of their misery, the other prolonging it. How this had never come between them.

  ‘Can I watch?’ I asked Charlie.

  Charlie kept looking out the front of the truck, at some invisible spot on the windscreen. ‘Sure,’ he said. .

  I stood under the harsh light over the vet’s table, patting the dog. The place was clean and white like a hospital. Charlie had gone out the back and I could hear doors opening and shutting as he moved through the building. I heard cats meowing, other dogs barking, but the dog on the table didn’t stir. After a moment Charlie returned.

  I patted her head — long, even strokes: her eyes closed each time. They would open again when the stroke stopped. She was a perfectly healthy dog.

  Charlie disappeared again, returned with a syringe and a long needle. He stroked the dog gently on its side, then inserted the needle and slowly pumped the liquid into the skin under her back leg.

  I watched Charlie’s face, looking for some kind of emotion. Sadness, or even pleasure — cruelty — as he killed the dog. There was nothing there. He was just doing his job.

  ‘Bye, Jessie,’ he said. The dog gave one long final sigh and then she was gone.

  ‘That’s it, Sandy That’s what happens.’ Charlie put the syringe back on the counter behind him. The dead dog farted, expelling the last of its air: last laugh to her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ Charlie said. ‘Doesn’t matter that he can’t bring himself to do it.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. .

  I asked Jack whether he wanted to move out, or whether I should go. Jack said he wasn’t leaving — how could he, with Velocity at the peak of her racing season and all those other animals in the paddocks to care for?

  Fair enough, Jack, I replied. Fair enough. It didn’t take me long to pack. .

  Jack and Velocity did very well. I kept track of them through the newspaper. Ribbons, cups, cash prizes. Then Jack turned up in Tirau one day and told me, over a cup of tea, that there was a problem between him and Velocity.

  ‘Oh?’ I said.

  I confess, I’d already heard. Charlie calls in from time to time too, and he’d told me. But I wanted to hear Jack tell the story.

  Jack had had enough of pigeon racing, he said. But the problem was, Velocity had not had enough. Of racing, or of Jack.

  He’d tried to sell the bird, then give her away. But she’d attack anyone else who came near her.

  ‘Really?’ I said. Then, just because I couldn’t help myself, ‘Maybe Roly might take her back.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Jack.

  So there he was, in a bit of a fix about things.

  Now, you’d have to agree, there was an obvious way of dealing with this problem, having exhausted other options.

  But instead, Jack entered Velocity in a race that started in Invercargill. There was no race scheduled for Stewart Island, otherwise he would have sent her off there, he said. So he entered her in this race, and then he went out and bought that ugly Lilliput caravan.

  Two days before the race, he took Velocity to meet the pigeon truck. She was safely tucked in her travel hamper, sufficient food and water for the long journey south. Once he’d handed her over, he raced home, hitched the caravan to the ute and took off.

  I know, I know — crazy, stupid plan.

  Turns out he could run but he couldn’t hide. Velocity had spent enough time eyeing up that caravan through the chicken wire of her loft to bond with it, or whatever it is those racing pigeons do. When she arrived home from Invercargill and found no one there, she simply followed State Highway One north until she spotted the caravan.

  ‘Did you know that racing pigeons actually follow, from the air, roads that they have already travelled on by car or truck?’ Jack asked me. ‘That they will take left and right turns directly above the roads?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’

  So, that first day of playing fugitive, Jack woke up in a camping ground on the outskirts of Cambridge to find Velocity sitting on the bonnet of his ute.

  He tried again. And again. He’d drop that bird off in Whangarei, run for Auckland. She’d track him down.

  To this day, she tracks him down.

  I’ve told Jack to bring
Velocity with him sometime, when he’s coming through Tirau. Told him I wouldn’t mind seeing the little bird again, holding her tightly in my hands. He just does the Hugh Grant thing on me when I suggest it.

  Never mind. It’s always nice to see him, when he passes through.

  THE DEATH OF MRS HARRISON

  Mrs Harrison is dying. She has cancer in her brain, stomach and throat. Possibly other places.

  Her body is shutting down, her organs are failing. First dehydration set in, then her kidneys stopped functioning. After that, her liver. Her heart will be last to go.

  Her death has been under way for five days, although the cancer is much older than that.

  She is asleep in her hospital bed, her head propped up on bloated white pillows. A sheet covers her, up to her armpits. She wears a pale pink nightie, broderie anglaise trimming pure cotton. The straps of the nightie are thin strips of plaited satin.

  Mrs Harrison is a widow and seventy-nine years old. The lines on her face look like furrows in a field. Her false teeth have been removed to reduce the discomfort of gum abscesses. This has given her supermodel cheekbones, but her lips have fallen into her mouth.

  Her sun spotted arms lie uncovered on the bed, and her hands, stripped of their rings, rest on the sheet. A small clear plastic gadget is attached to her nostrils, and a tube runs from the gadget to a plug in the wall behind the bed. Above the plug, on an adhesive label, is the word OXYGEN.

  The hospital room is small but sunny. There is enough space around Mrs Harrison’s bed for three armchairs and a long bench stool. One of the armchairs is a recliner, used as a bed by whoever stays the night. French doors open out onto a long veranda running the length of the wing. Beyond the veranda, the grounds resemble a park. .

  Mrs Harrison’s overweight, middle-aged son Ewan is asleep in the chair; awkwardly foetal, a blanket fallen to one side. The chair’s footrest is broken and it slips downwards when extended. He and his sister June take turns to stay with their mother overnight. One or both of them have been here at all times during the last five days and nights.

  The room is cluttered — there are supermarket plastic bags of biscuits, fruit, bottles of lemonade and juice. Mrs Harrison’s friends, who are also elderly, bring books and food and drink when they visit. They think she can still sit up in bed and read. Eat and drink. They get frightened when they see the state of her. They quietly shove the bags of food into corners and under chairs, wherever there is a space. They stay for the shortest time possible without appearing rude. Generally they visit only once.