Beneath the Blonde Read online

  Home again home again jiggety jog. To buy a fat hog. Or pig. Maybe it’s pig. But do they eat meat? Well, who doesn’t these days? Even the cows eat meat now. How much meat can this cow eat?

  I watched them. Kissing and fondling. Both so public and unashamed. I hated her then. Weaving herself around that table, that room. She thinks she’s Pygmalion, looks at what she’s made, plays with herself, with them, with her creation. Plays with me. I should never have let you take it this far. I should have told the truth from the beginning. You’ve got away with far too much.

  But she is beautiful. They are beautiful. You are beautiful. A conjugation of loveliness.

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Does she have any idea just how beholden she is to me? Don’t worry, I won’t forget the debt.

  This place used to be much nicer, I’m sure. Smaller. More real. Now it’s full of Americans and Japanese and the tourists with their bloody tourist dollars and their bloodier tourist minds. I would expect that in London, in New York. Somehow I’d hoped for better from here. I’d hoped that this little piece of the world wouldn’t change. I believe in the sanctity of stasis. But you can see it has started already. The small towns are all decaying—those that aren’t dead already. Shutting off shops and whole streets in an attempt to beat the gangrene of poverty, to stem the flow of dollars that props up the economies of the fat greedy cities. I lived years in a small town, they are the same the world over. I loved it. But its life blood has been siphoned by Auckland and Wellington and Sydney and LA and Tokyo and Paris and London. Spirit killed off to feed the names on a plastic carrier bag, a T-shirt. You’ll see them as you drive north from here, follow the spine up the islands where the mountains turn into white-crossed roads, all those little towns slaughtered, sacrificial cows to feed the rampant drive, the empassioned “we can be as big as the rest of the world”. Yes, we can be that big. We can be big and bad and beautiful and deny the little people too. We can forget our pasts. Pretend it never happened. We can turn our land inside out and change it all. We can be brand new. And no doubt she thinks it’s worth it. After all, she did the same to herself.

  Can you imagine how hard it is to find yellow roses in Queenstown at this time of year? It was the devil’s own job to get enough to make a bouquet. But, as always, it was well worth the effort. “Must try harder” they used to say on my school report. Term after term. Not these days. These days I can’t try hard enough. I really am a great success. In my own way. Just like her.

  THIRTY-TWO

  It was a sober and embarrassed Saz that greeted Greg and Siobhan at breakfast the next morning. Saz felt sick and confused, Siobhan was bright and strangely excited, given her unhappiness of the night before. Saz assumed it was to cover up what had happened between them and arranged her breakfast with little appetite, avoiding Siobhan’s eyes as much as she could. Greg was subdued, fielding questions with “Don’t no’s” and “maybes”. Dan hadn’t made it down to breakfast, nursing his hangover and the late-sleeping waiter in his bedroom with a tray of dry toast and two vast glasses of orange juice retrieved an hour earlier from the breakfast table.

  Saz waited until Siobhan had eaten her third piece of toast before she told Greg about the flowers, acting as if Siobhan didn’t know about them either. He looked concerned enough until she told him about the card when he jumped up from the table, spilling lightly poached egg all over the polished wood.

  “Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough of this shit. We’re leaving. Now. Siobhan, you can get your bags, I’m transferring the flights, we’re going straight to Auckland and then getting out of here.”

  Surprisingly, Siobhan didn’t argue with him. She merely ignored him.

  Greg continued, “Siobhan? Did you hear me?”

  Siobhan smiled at him, her mouth full of toast and boysenberry jam, “Yep. But we can’t go just yet. The flight’s not till four this afternoon.”

  “I know that. We’ll go on to Auckland instead of changing at Rotorua. I’ll call Aunty Pat and tell her we’re not coming. We’ll just go to a hotel in Auckland, book in under someone else’s name—Saz, you’ll do. We’ll just be the Martin party, then get the first flight out. There must be one tomorrow. I don’t care what airline it is, we’ll just go. Ok, Saz?”

  Saz nodded, unnerved by Siobhan’s disinterest, “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want. I mean, I think there’s probably more I can do to find this person while we’re still here though. I plan to go downtown and check later, as soon as the shops open. They’ll know if the flowers were ordered here or by phone. At least then we’ll know a bit more. Um, and about this Gaelene …?”

  He ignored her question, watching as Siobhan stood up and crossed to the dresser, picked up a thin china bowl and spooned homemade muesli into it, topping it with slices of peach and apricot and a dollop of plain yoghurt.

  Greg stood with his fists clenched, glaring at her, “Siobhan, what are you doing? This is hardly the time to develop an appetite.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it is.” She slowly returned to her seat at the table. Greg and Saz both watched each deliberate move, neither convinced that she wasn’t about to pick up the bowl and throw it at them, Saz terrified of what it could be that Siobhan was gearing herself up to say. When Siobhan finally picked up her spoon and pointed it at Greg, Saz could have sworn she saw him flinch.

  Siobhan’s voice came out, just above a low whisper, “Greg, my darling, I’d love to do just as you say. In fact, in three hours’ time I won’t have any choice. But just for now, until I make that rash promise to obey, you’ll have to excuse me for not doing what you want. We’re not going direct to Auckland tonight because Aunty Pat will have spent all day making ham sandwiches and tiny sausage rolls and we don’t want to upset her. Uncle Dennis is probably polishing the family silver as we talk. Anyway, you don’t really have time to spend the morning on the phone to Auckland, you probably ought to pop into town and do a little shopping.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Saz had no idea either and while she was wondering whether she should get a cloth to wipe up the congealing egg yoke or just run away then and there, Siobhan spooned up another mouthful of muesli and fruit and held it out to Greg, “Marry me?”

  Greg, confused by the contrary action and words, looked at the cereal and at the woman offering it, “I don’t like mue … I mean … what … I can’t, you know … I’d love to, we’ve both said that … what?”

  Saz stood up, desperately wanting to get out of the room, away from the bizarre scene, away from the vomit she felt rising through her stomach, away from the eyes fixed on her, but Siobhan had already put down her spoon and grabbed Saz’s hand, “See, my darling, we’ll have Saz and Dan for our witnesses. Won’t we, Saz?”

  Siobhan looked at Saz and her eyes were both hard and pleading, “I’ve checked it all out. I took our passports in yesterday when you were looking in the ski shop, it took no time at all. I filled out the forms …”

  Greg shook his head, “I must have to sign something?”

  “Forged it. Told the nice lady you were taking a photo, went outside and forged your signature. Been doing it for years, you know that. What a wonderful country this is! Normally you have to wait at least a couple of days but when I explained who we were to the woman on the desk—you see, darling, we are a little bit famous here after all—she said she’d see what she could do. I told her we wanted to avoid the English press. Seemed perfectly plausible.”

  Greg seemed to come to his senses for a moment but Siobhan didn’t give him a chance to jump in, “So then the nice lady came back and said we were in luck, her boss had agreed that they’d process the forms fast for us. All we had to do was bring ourselves and a couple of witnesses. Isn’t this just so cool? We’re fitted in right between a couple of Americans who only decided to get married on Friday and this Japanese couple who’ve come to New Zealand just for the ceremony. Apparently they do it all the time. The Japanese, that is.”

  Saz
managed to extricate herself from Siobhan’s hand, rubbing her fingers where her rings had been squashed together, her skin pinched from the strength of Siobhan’s grip. She forced herself to sit calmly beside Dan who had arrived at the table during Siobhan’s speech and was immediately wishing he hadn’t.

  Saz stuttered, “But Siobhan, it’s so soon.”

  Siobhan shook her head, “No. Greg and I have been talking about getting married for years. We just didn’t know we could do it, that’s all.”

  Greg came and sat beside her, “Sweetheart, we still can’t. This is crazy.”

  Saz interrupted Greg, “Don’t they have to read the bans or anything?”

  Siobhan kissed Greg lightly on the mouth and leant her forehead against his. “Haven’t you always told me what a groovy country this is? Apparently our passports would have been enough. I brought our birth certificates with me just in case.”

  Greg questioned her again, “She saw the birth certificates?”

  “Don’t you trust me? I did everything right. It’s all real, babe. I checked.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yep. Right down to the last teeny tiny little detail.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes! It’s all done, all legal, all above board. It really is possible.” She looked at Saz, “They don’t do the bans thing here.”

  Turning back to Greg, she continued, “I called last week and checked everything. Then the nice lady went and checked everything. Again. We can do it, we can have the lot, you and me, Mr and Mrs Siobhan Forrester-Marsden and Greg Marsden-Forrester just like all those silly dream plans we’ve ever had. All those three-in-the-morning talks. The world is actually going to let us do it. All you have to do is say yes.”

  Greg was crying when he said yes and Siobhan was crying when she whooped with joy and Saz was crying when she went upstairs to find something to wear for the immediate ceremony. Saz knew her tears were jealousy and betrayal and anger, but she wasn’t certain if she was jealous because she wanted Siobhan or angry because Siobhan and Greg were about to do what the world wouldn’t let her and Molly do or just furious with herself for having let things get so out of hand. Taking her clothes out of the wardrobe to pack, she was hoping the local shops held more variety than her suitcase.

  Siobhan was right. Everything was in order. They went to the local courthouse where their forms were checked again, Siobhan and Greg signing a couple more declarations. The ceremony was conducted in a small ante-chamber by a Justice of the Peace who made a lovely speech about joy and love and spontaneity turning into permanence and reality, Siobhan and Greg read the simple vows from a card she gave them and improvised a couple of their own. Siobhan didn’t promise to obey, but Greg did. Siobhan wore a fulllength green satin skirt and a very fitted red Chinese silk top, with maximum cleavage exposure. Removing the clothes from her bag, she’d confessed to Saz that the wedding was her main reason for coming to Queenstown all along. Greg had told her ages ago that couples on holiday there were able to marry with a minimum of formalities and with maximum speed and ever since she had thought how exciting it would be to get married that way. In response to Saz’s hurried question, she told her that Alex and Steve’s deaths had simply prompted her to turn the whimsical thought into a reality. In Siobhan, the finality of death provoked not despair but an overkill on life.

  Answering the other question, Siobhan merely told Saz she’d been interested—”Wanted to find out the difference, babe. Between a boy and a girl. I mean, you have a girlfriend right? It was just sex, yeah? I wouldn’t want to come between you and her, that’s not what I meant. I know you love your girlfriend and I know I drive you crazy, but I do really like you, so I figured, well, I assumed you felt the same as me.” She stopped her ironing long enough to look up and ask, “Did I fuck up?”

  Saz shook her head. “No, Siobhan, you didn’t fuck up, you probably didn’t even do anything wrong. I did.” And then she went shopping, hating herself all the way.

  Greg wore an old red shirt and a pair of jeans, the shirt ironed by Dan while Saz dashed out and took half an hour to shop. Five minutes in the florist to confirm that, yes, a woman had come in early the day before asking for a huge bunch of yellow roses, they’d even had to send to several other shops in the area to make the number up—she did hope the flowers were ok? Saz assured her they were lovely, the scratches on her back beginning to itch and took another five minutes to get a full description of exactly the same woman Ben Kaserov had described to her. Except this one had bleached blonde hair. Saz remembered the blonde head in the jacuzzi in LA and felt sick. She looked forward to getting through the ceremony and on to Greg’s aunt’s house where she had decided she would force Siobhan and Greg to go to the police. And if they wouldn’t, then she’d just go by herself. She then took just twenty minutes to buy a long summer dress in pale pink silk for herself and a pink linen shirt for Dan. As he said when he handed over his cash, “I don’t care what you buy, but I do think the two witnessing queers ought to make some sort of a statement.”

  So the witnesses were gay and pink and Greg was tearful and casual and Siobhan was, of course, stunning, beautiful, charming and completely over the top. She also—just in case a certain someone was looking—carried the biggest bouquet she could buy. Forty, long stemmed, velvety dark red roses. With a single yellow rose set in the middle.

  THIRTY-THREE

  She really thinks she can get away with it. That no one will find out, that her little secret won’t be uncovered. She thinks she can smother it in white lace and satin and I won’t see.

  Of course they don’t do that though. White lace and satin would be too traditional. No, they take the fashionable route. The path that will give them maximum exposure and minimum truth.

  I know who is to blame. With their passive attitudes and glib natures, they have created this. A world in which that woman can swan around in red and green on her wedding day. A world in which an occasion of such dignity and solemnity can be reduced to this farce of hurried decisions and cobbled together vows and crude sexual innuendo. My darling is worth more than this, but she has forgotten. Has spent too much time with them. Has changed too much.

  That’s ok. She will be alone eventually. Alone and herself again. And anyway, we are going home. Going back to the beginning. A very good place to start. And finish.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  When Shona and Gaelene were nine years old their favourite game was weddings. Planning their own. Shona would draw up detailed lists of all the possible variations on dress, attendants, churches, reception venues. The groom would be added at the last moment, an afterthought, primarily there to stand smiling in a suit and take her hand from her first dad and place the shining golden ring on her perfectly manicured outstretched finger. Blissfully unaware of the laws of God and man, she usually nominated her cousin as groom because she didn’t yet like any other boys or, if she was planning her favourite combination—the double wedding for herself and Gaelene, then Gaelene was allowed to marry John and Shona would have whoever they minded least that week at school—Craig or Paul or Shaun or Mike—a seventies’ boy with a seventies’ one syllable name.

  The ceremony always started with both girls getting ready at Shona’s mum’s house. The two of them would be grownup ladies now, as old as twenty-two or twenty-three, getting dressed in Shona’s bedroom. This being a really special occasion, they would be allowed, once they were fluffed and flounced, to stand on Shona’s mum’s bed and look at themselves in the longer mirror above her dressing table, the added height of the bed allowing them a magical fulllength view of the total princess picture. Then, fairy-tale perfect, they would go outside to the waiting car—driven by Shona’s first dad, her real dad, come back home to her mother for the occasion and happy to be there, smiling at Shona’s mum, kissing her like all the fights and the shouting and the holes punched in the thin particle board walls had never even happened. Shona and Gaelene would get in the polished car, a Jag or a Rolls co
vered in ribbons and flowers, watched by all the girls they were at school with. Watched by the prettier girls, the clever girls, the girls with posh houses with separate loos and the girls with Raleigh Twenty bicycles and mums who didn’t work and dads who didn’t go away, girls with big sisters who were at nursing school in Rotorua or training college in Hamilton and wore mini skirts and maxi coats, girls who had big brothers in the First Fifteen. And these perfect little girls, who hung around in all the wealthy Pakeha groups, who didn’t have Maori friends, Maori family, who went to their cousins in Auckland for the holidays, not just down the coast to their rellies, these Debras and Andreas and Yvonnes with perfect blonde hair and perfect straight teeth would stand there in seething, thwarted jealousy as they stared at Shona and Gaelene, paragons of bridal superiority. And at the church, Gaelene and Shona would walk in, hand in hand, their fathers tall on either side of them, their mothers crying at the front. They would walk up the aisle, all the heads turning to look at beautiful Shona and beautiful Gaelene. At the altar they would say their vows to whoever was waiting, capture the rings and then waltz down the aisle together in a rush of satin and lace, married ladies, irrelevant things like husbands and parents and friends trailing after them. The reception at the rugby club would be the biggest the town had ever seen, the partying would go on all night and the next morning the two couples would leave for their honeymoon—a week in Auckland or Christchurch or, if Shona was really getting carried away, four nights in Sydney. The girls would of course share one room and the boys another. These were the plans of a nine year old.

  It was all Shona’s dream. Gaelene didn’t care so much. Knew her family might be moving to Auckland anyway, didn’t know if she wanted to get married, didn’t know if she cared, didn’t know if it mattered all that much. But it made Shona happy, making the plans, all the details, the dress styles, the shoes, her and Gaelene getting married together. Always the two of them together. And naturally, everywhere they went would be flowers, roses at the church and roses at the rugby club and roses for their first flight in a plane and roses for their first night in a hotel. Beautiful roses, red, white, pink and, of course, yellow. Shining yellow roses for Shona’s favourite colour.