Fresh Fields Read online

  The youth could tell she was special by the way she behaved with customers. She was always friendly but without being pushy or silly like the other two. The way she worked was different too. She didn’t skylark like the others but carried on calmly, doing one thing properly and then moving on to the next. When the salon door was open the youth heard snatches of talk, mostly from the two silly girls. He learnt that the special one’s name was Polly. Seeing Polly every day began to be very important.

  Polly mostly ate her lunch at an open-air section across from the salon where some tables and chairs were set up. She usually sat with her beautiful legs crossed, reading a book and making little circular motions with one foot. The youth loved the way she sat and would steal lingering side-on glances at her. Once he walked over close enough to see the title of her book. It was called For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  One day Polly came out of the salon and went to cross the street. She paused a moment at the kerb right beside the youth. He tried to look the other way. “How are you today?” he heard her ask. He looked around and saw she was smiling at him. He felt stricken, as if he’d been caught in the act, but managed to mumble, “Good, thanks.” Polly smiled again and crossed the street.

  He avoided the area for a couple of days. But it was too hard to go without seeing her. So he drifted back to the bench and she gave him a smile and a nod another few times.

  Apart from the shopping centre, the youth’s favourite place was a park a few streets off. It had a shady avenue of big old trees, and a pond, and a sports field. The youth went there every afternoon on his way back to pick up the boy from school. It was lovely at that time of day, with the light gleaming on the leaves and the breeze ruffling the water of the pond. Sometimes he saw a man in a tatty brown coat near the public toilets on the other side of the sports field. One day the man wandered across and sat down near him. The youth stared straight ahead.

  “Just waiting for some friends of mine,” the man said. His voice was quivering.

  The youth said nothing.

  “Funny couple,” the man said. “Specially him. Always, um, wanting me to massage his, um, privates.”

  The youth said nothing.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like me to, um, massage your privates?” the man asked.

  The youth tried to think exactly what “massage” meant and what “privates” were.

  “That’s alright,” the man said, after a long pause. “No harm in asking, is there?”

  “S’pose not,” said the youth, still not sure what the question had been.

  “You don’t mind that I asked?”

  “S’pose not.”

  “Academic question, really, as most things are,” said the man. He made as though to give an offhand sort of laugh, but it came out like a groan.

  The youth gave him a cautious glance and saw that his face was very pale, and that he was drawing his tatty brown coat around him as though he was bitterly cold, and that his hands were shaking. The youth began to worry that the man was ill and might collapse. And he had a feeling that he was upsetting the man somehow. He thought he should go. Anyway, it was time to pick up the boy from school.

  “I have to go . . .” he started to say.

  “No, no, I’ll go,” the man broke in, getting up hurriedly. “I’ll leave you alone. There’s no problem. One is harmless, you know. Completely.” His voice quivered away almost to nothing.

  He seemed to want to say something more, but then turned and walked quickly away.

  Sometimes there were spoiled moments, like if the youth had to alter his familiar route because of a barking dog in someone’s yard, or if some woman watering her garden gave him an odd look. Such things would send him into the beginnings of a rage, but mostly he was able to let the enraged feelings float off. As long as he had plenty of time and space to himself he seldom needed the Diestl mood. By the time he had to collect the boy from school he usually felt relaxed enough to face the evening cooped up inside the flat.

  The youth had made a corner for himself in the flat by pulling the wardrobe out at right angles to the wall so that when he lay down on his mattress he was well hidden. He could lie there and fondle his pillow and think about Polly. He had a reading lamp and some Women’s Weekly magazines to browse through. There was the radio. He felt cosy enough. The woman always came home tired from the shirt factory and after she’d cooked the meal she didn’t have the energy to do anything but sip a few quiet sherries. Only the boy was restless in the evenings.

  They had been at Ashvale a couple of months. The stove in the kitchenette didn’t work properly and the woman was fed up with it. She mentioned the problem to Ida. Ida replied that the previous occupant hadn’t complained. After that Ida wasn’t so friendly. She still sometimes came into the flat to ask, “How you managin’, lovey?” But it had a different tone and she didn’t stay for a cup of tea and a talk. And then one evening the boy was playing on the old car at the back and someone came and told him to leave it alone. And then Ida asked them to keep their radio turned down because it was disturbing the rest of the house. The woman replied that the radio was always kept low. Ida said something about “airs and graces.” The woman asked why the boy had been warned off the old car. Ida said something about “little brats.”

  A day or two later, news came from Mrs. Hardcastle’s agency about a job. It was assistant manageress of a guest-house in a suburb called Bankington. Accommodation was provided. The woman gave Ida notice that she was leaving and Ida said, “Good riddance!”

  On the day they left they were putting their things into the taxi when Ida came to the front door and yelled that they’d damaged the stove and must pay for it.

  “Malarkey!” said the woman.

  “I’ll have you up in court!” Ida shouted. “Just see if I don’t! I know your kind! You’re a flighty bitch! And I’ll say it to your face! I’m not formal!”

  “Not normal, you mean!” the woman called back as the taxi pulled away.

  THE NEW place was a three-storey building with balconies and turrets. The front door was painted a pale yellow and there was a sign saying Miami Guesthouse. There was a courtyard where the taxi pulled in. They noticed a small dark man with a spotted bow-tie, talking earnestly with another man who looked unhappy. The small dark man was spreading his hands appealingly as he talked, and now and then he’d touch the other man’s sleeve as though to soothe him. They unloaded their things and the woman paid the taxi, and then they went inside to the reception area. They were met by Mrs. Stott, the manageress. She told them that Mr. Stavros would be there in a moment to greet them. He was just sorting something out with one of the guests. Mr. Stavros was the owner, she explained.

  The small dark man with the bow-tie came in from the courtyard. He looked very neat and clean and smelt like perfume. He spoke with a soft musical accent. Mr. Stavros told the woman that he liked to have a happy staff and that he hoped she would be happy with them too. The woman asked about accommodation for the youth. Mr. Stavros smiled that it was not a problem, that they had many rooms. Mrs. Stott would see to everything. Then he looked at his watch, spread his hands appealingly and hurried away.

  “He’s always like that,” said Mrs. Stott, smiling. “You can’t pin him down for a minute.”

  She took the woman to show her the room she and the boy were to have. It was just off the reception area, near Mrs. Stott’s own little suite. Then she led the youth along a series of passages and up some narrow stairs. The further they got from the reception area the shabbier it became and the mustier it smelt. The youth was shown a tiny room on the third floor. It was part of a larger room that had been partitioned off with a thin ply wall. There were two single beds and two wardrobes, and these took up almost the whole space. There was a bare light bulb and no window. “You’ll have it to yourself at the moment,” said Mrs. Stott. She pointed to a faded and curled slip of paper taped to
the wall. “Mealtimes etcetera written there.” When she had gone the youth sat on one of the beds and looked around the room. It would suit him fine, he thought, as long as it was his alone.

  The woman’s duties were to attend to the reception area and the phone switchboard after hours and at weekends, and generally assist Mrs. Stott. There were two other live-in staff, a cook and a cleaner.

  The Miami Guesthouse was really four separate houses, each divided into as many rooms as possible, and linked to each other by a back lane. The dining room was in one of the other houses and at mealtimes the lane was filled with a straggle of guests going back and forth. The first and only time the youth tried the soup he truly thought they’d served up the dirty dishwater by mistake. Then the main meal came and he realised the soup hadn’t been an accident. After that the youth ate with the woman and the boy in the staff tea-room. There were often angry scenes in the dining room and at the reception desk. Few guests stayed longer than a week, but that didn’t matter. The whole operation was based on a constant turnover.

  The youth liked it at the Miami. There were always things happening, always different people. It might be two New Zealand girls on a working holiday, or a bloke down from the bush in moleskins and a wide hat, or a family from interstate. The youth heard all the staff gossip and knew everyone’s business, but without being personally involved. And because he seemed vaguely part of the staff he was often asked things, like where the bus stop or the post office was, so he began to get the hang of being conversational with people. It was like having a grandstand seat at the parade of life.

  The best thing was that he had his little top-floor room to himself. He could retreat up there when he chose and lie on his bed with his Women’s Weekly magazines, or he could cuddle his pillow and think about Polly. He went back to Ashvale once on the train and sat again on the bench outside the salon and looked through the window. But Polly wasn’t there. Maybe she was off that day, or maybe she’d left the job. Anyway, it didn’t seem the same at Ashvale and the youth did not go back after that one time. In a sense it didn’t matter if he never saw Polly again. He had the image of her to focus on when he needed it—like when he was alone in his room, or when he daydreamed himself into other places and other times and needed to picture the beautiful girl whose lover he was.

  One night about ten o’clock the youth heard shouts from downstairs. It did not sound like an angry guest demanding a refund. The youth went to the top of the stairs and got a faint whiff of smoke. As he went down the stink of burning got stronger and he saw people in their nighties and pyjamas gathered at the door of the staff tea-room. “It’s alright,” Mrs. Stott was telling them. “It’s under control.” The youth looked into the tea-room and saw someone lying on the floor under a blanket. There was smoke circling from a little room like a cupboard which opened off the tea-room and which had belonged to Beryl, the cook. One of the guests was in there, pouring water on the mattress from a plastic bucket. The youth found the boy beside him. “Where’s Mum?” the youth asked.

  “Ringing up,” the boy replied.

  The woman came from the switchboard and pushed through into the tea-room and told Mrs. Stott the ambulance was coming. Then she knelt beside the figure under the blanket.

  “Just take it easy, Beryl,” she kept saying. “Just take it easy.” The figure under the blanket was shuddering violently.

  “Someone fill this up for me,” said the guest with the plastic bucket.

  The woman looked over and saw the youth and motioned him to take the bucket. The youth filled it at the sink and handed it back to the guest and watched him pour the water carefully on those parts of the mattress that were still smouldering. There were burn marks up the wall beside the bed, and photos and other personal things were lying broken and jumbled on the floor. The youth filled the bucket a couple more times, trying not to look at the figure under the blanket. The shuddering had stopped and there was just the smell.

  Mr. Stavros arrived as the ambulance men were carrying Beryl out on a stretcher. He went out with them and then came back and examined the burnt room. He was serious-faced but calm and businesslike and there was something in his manner that made the youth think that maybe Mr. Stavros had seen many bad things in his life and had no sense of drama about them anymore. Then he noticed that Mr. Stavros was glancing sharply at him. A moment later he noticed it again. He wondered what was wrong. His mouth felt stiff and tight and he realised he was grinning. Maybe he’d been grinning the whole time. He tried to make his mouth straighten to normal but the grin stayed. He put his hand to his face and pretended to be stroking his upper lip reflectively. Mr. Stavros glanced sharply at him again and the youth knew that Mr. Stavros knew he was still grinning behind his hand. The youth went up to his room and lay on the bed. After a long time his mouth began to relax and he could stop grinning.

  Next morning he heard that Beryl had died in the ambulance.

  IT WASN’T long after that the youth got a room-mate. His name was Sal and he was about twenty, thin and dark and quietly spoken. When he was shown into the room he apologised for intruding and said he probably wouldn’t be staying long, so the youth made an effort to be friendly. They gradually began to talk and sometimes had good conversations. Sal talked mainly about girls. Each evening he would spruce himself up and go out to clubs and dances. Next day he’d tell the youth about the girls he’d danced with or kissed. At first the youth tried to appear knowledgeable, as though it was all familiar stuff to him, but after a while he let the pretence drop. It was easier then. He could ask questions. How does one approach girls? What does one talk to them about?

  “Do you know any girls at all?” Sal asked.

  “One,” said the youth, anxious not to appear too pathetic. “Her name’s Polly.”

  “How often do you see her?”

  “Not much now. We had a sort of love affair, but it wasn’t sex.”

  “What’s she like?”

  So the youth described Polly. He described how they used to meet every day for lunch and sometimes for a picnic in the park, or sometimes for an outing to the pictures. He explained that Polly was very religious, that in fact she wanted to become a nun, so of course it had never gone beyond just holding hands and a brief kiss once in a while.

  One evening the youth confided that he’d like to have sex with a girl just once, to find out what it was like.

  “Trouble is,” said Sal, “when you’ve had it once you want to go on having it.”

  This impressed the youth deeply, and chilled him. He’d thought of sex as something he might have just a couple of times in his life if he was lucky. But if Sal was right, if having it once meant being a slave to it . . . No, the youth thought bitterly, he had no intention of being caught like that.

  He thought of Diestl. There was a scene in the film where Diestl shelters for the night in an old barn. A beautiful French girl is by herself in the farmhouse nearby. She comes to Diestl just before dawn and kneels beside him in the straw. She is so lonely, she tells him, and frightened by the war. All she wants is a little tenderness. Diestl stares up at her with his cold blue eyes and says nothing. He has his knife ready to kill her if she makes a false move. The girl creeps away again. Then Diestl gets up to leave in case the bitch is alerting the partisans. He limps away down the road with the Schmeisser at the ready and his shadow long behind him, and the girl watches from the farmhouse window as he fades into the distance. The youth felt he understood that scene now. He must be cold and remote like Diestl, needing nobody but himself, scorning the trap of sex.

  The youth was reading a book about the rise and fall of the Nazis. Or rather he read the first few chapters and the last few. The stuff in between was mostly about policies and strategies and it bored him. It was the Nazis as underdogs that appealed to his imagination, Nazis relying on their own hardness and will, battling first to win the streets from the Reds and come to power, and th
en battling at the end as the overwhelming might of the world bears down on them.

  ONE NIGHT the youth was reading on his bed while Sal smartened himself at the mirror. Sal asked what the book was and the youth held it up for him to see. Sal said something about Jews.

  “I don’t know any Jews,” the youth said.

  “Yes you do,” said Sal. “I’m a Jew. So is Stavros.”

  The youth looked at him in surprise. He wondered if the sight of the book had offended him. But Sal kept on combing his hair and brushing his jacket the way he normally did. He didn’t seem bothered.

  “What do Jews actually do?” the youth asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sal. “I’m not a practising Jew.”

  “But what made Hitler want to . . . you know . . .”

  “Kill them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Search me. Ask Stavros. He was in the camps.”

  Sal waved his hand and went out.

  The youth would have liked to ask Mr. Stavros about the camps and the war and everything, but of course there was no way of doing that. Besides, the youth had felt a coldness in Mr. Stavros. Several times since the fire they’d passed each other and the youth had muttered hello and had only got a blank look. It was noticeable because Mr. Stavros was still affable and smiling with everyone else. Except perhaps the woman. He seemed a bit cold towards her too.

  One evening the youth was sitting by himself in the staff tea-room. He had a packet of crayons belonging to the boy and was idly making designs on a drawing pad. He began to do a big swastika. It was turning out better than the other designs he had tried, so he kept on with it. When he had the outline right he filled it in with black. He left a circle of white around the centre and finished the background in red. It looked good, a complete Nazi flag in the correct colours. It had dramatic power. Just then he heard someone coming and he turned the pad face down on the table. Mr. Stavros stood at the door. “Just doing some drawing,” the youth said awkwardly. Mr. Stavros came across to the table and turned the pad over and looked at it. Then he turned it face down again and went out without speaking.