True Stars Read online

  Rose met Kit, or maybe it was the other way round, one night by the lakefront when she was dancing on the flatdeck of one of Tom Diamond’s trucks, drinking beer and naked to the waist. Kit had come down to town for the weekend from the mountain.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ Kit’s mother said, the first time they met.

  ‘My mother’s dead,’ Rose had said quickly.

  ‘Oh dear, I am so sorry,’ Mrs Kendall said then.

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ said Rose. ‘Look, here she is, here’s a picture of my mother.’ The photograph showed her mother when she was very young, perhaps about the time when she left Malaya. She was sitting on a verandah surrounded by bougainvillaea. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, and a tremulous smile hovered about her mouth. Even in the black and white photograph her skin looked translucent.

  It wasn’t as if Kit’s parents were very wealthy, or superior. They were a pleasant family who lived in a modest house on the outskirts of Auckland. But they took holidays, read books, and believed in education in principle, although they didn’t make demands on their family to be educated. They were proud that Kit had done so well, that was all.

  But after she met them, Rose began coaxing her fizzy cloud of hair into a neat French roll, and stopped wearing red fingernail polish. She was teaching Standard Three at Weyville Primary, and her school inspection visits started going very well after she met Kit and began visiting his family. It was as if she had come home.

  She and Kit didn’t mean to stay in Weyville. But they had good jobs and they could get five per cent mortgages. It made sense to buy a section and build, which meant they also had to get married. People didn’t live together in Weyville, not then, anyway, and Rose had to get away from Elsie somehow. Tom Diamond gave Rose a flash wedding even though it was not what she wanted. In the local paper it was written up as the Weyville Wedding of the Year:

  The bride wore a shimmering gown of French lace, made in a princess line with piping at the seams. Roule roses scattered the train …

  The bridesmaids wore pearl-white picture hats and pale pink accessories. Their crinoline gowns were supported by hoops …

  The bridegroom’s mother wore a powder-blue suit with black accessories …

  The bride’s stepmother, Mrs Elsie Diamond, wife of well-known road haulage contractor, Mr Tom Diamond, wore a cheerful cherry red outfit and a large black and white hat with an appropriate diamond pattern …

  They did, definitely, mean to leave Weyville.

  But the article didn’t mention that either.

  Kit hadn’t been pleased about the article. ‘I didn’t say a word out of place,’ she said when he had looked at it, frowning.

  But she knew that it had revealed a chink.

  ‘Apparently forthright,’ he had said, and walked out of the room.

  She had sat and stared at the topaz ring. Later she put it away in a drawer for awhile.

  Like the dog, Rose began to relax. Clearly the phantom caller thought she was out.

  She opened the pull-down lid of the desk which Olivia used to have in her bedroom. Rose had taken it for her electorate work now that her daughter no longer needed it. There were piles of paper stacked inside it in methodical rows. On the left-hand side there was a pile of invitations to be answered: two to attend school functions, one to open a kindergarten, one to judge a flower show, one to present prizes at the rodeo when it came to town — with a follow-up for her and Kit to attend the country and western dance in the evening, and for the same evening was an invitation to have dinner with the president of the local businessmen’s association — and three to have afternoon tea with old-age pensioners.

  Appeal forms for campaign funds which she had prepared ready for handing out to fund-raising volunteers were stacked on the right-hand side of the desk. In the centre stood more letters, all from local party members, divided into two piles. The complaints were on one side, the good wishes on the other. In its fourth year the Lange Government was going through another crisis and the sheaf of good wishes was slim. Amongst the complaints there was an anonymous letter written in red ink which, of course, she could not identify as having come from a party member but it slotted into the category of things that had to be dealt with, and so she put them all together. The letter made certain suggestions about Rose’s sexuality, throwing in the possibility that she slept with seamen off foreign fishing boats when she visited Wellington. She had no answer for this, and if she did she would not have known where to send it, although the postmark was local.

  She sat at the desk, pulling an end of her hair, pondering whether to show the letter to the police or not. By itself, the letter was a routine fact of political life, but for the moment everything must be regarded as suspect. If there was someone out there, the police had warned (she had noted the use of the word ‘if’), who had a hang-up about her (no pun intended, they said, with melancholy humour), he might move on from phone calls to some more aggravating form of harassment. It was this decision, whether or not to visit the police again, which had been hanging over her all day. As much as the phone calls it was making her day unbearable.

  She did not want to see the police again. Life’s a bitch — and then you die, see Stevie Smith, passim her daughter, Olivia, had written on the lid of the desk, and underneath that SHAKESPEARE WAS A SEXIST BASTARD. Rose wondered sometimes if it was either of the children’s friends that rang her night and day. Or even the children themselves.

  But Olivia and Richard had gone. And anyway she trusted them. She loved them. She might not know them any more, but there was that, her love for them, a passion as clear as sunlight. She raised her head as if to smell them, but they were not part of this house.

  Rose replaced the lid. Kit was right. They should get new furniture. They should get rid of the rubbish. She, in particular, had to stop living in the past. She thought that it was immediately apparent to most people that she did this; she appeared to be an efficient woman with little time for reflection and less for regrets. Some said, when Kid entered Parliament, that she would have done the job better.

  It was since the phone calls began that she had been pushed back into the past, to re-examine every thread of her life. ‘It’s driving me crazy,’ she said to Kit one night when he was home, willing him to understand. She did not express a desire, even to herself, that he believe what she was telling him.

  He had glanced at her reflectively. ‘It’s over to you, isn’t it?’ he had said. When she turned to ask him what he meant they were interrupted by a caller with electorate business, and the matter hadn’t been raised again.

  She leaned and straightened a table resting on an angle because one of its legs with barley sugar twists was broken. When she had done that she opened the desk again with new resolve. She would write a list of all the things she needed to do, starting with the piles of paper in front of her. She wrote: answer letters; her eye strayed, which ones first? She crossed out answer letters and wrote answer invitations (decide which ones to accept), complaints from members, good wishes from members, ring Kit tonight, crossed out ring Kit, she had rung him the night before, and doodled. She put down get a conservatory, new dining room table, establish conversation nooks, get new covers on the sofas (probably dullish-coloured with shiny surface), look out new fillings for sandwiches for fund-raising mornings (because they had become the party of broad appeal now and scones were not enough), check out style book about food presentation (lately she had eaten a great deal of food that looked better than that which she cooked and tasted worse), do something about clothes, get a haircut; she crossed out haircut and wrote body wave. There were more ways than one to serve a cause. She wrote I am an emblem and was going to write for every woman but this didn’t feel right, maybe a bit unrealistic; even though she was the only person who would see it, she didn’t put that down.

  She looked back over the list. Shades of Elsie, she thought. God help us. Fortunately Elsie was dead. Finally.

  In the silence the
phone clicked, signalling that it was about to ring.

  She stiffened but nothing happened. A man had once sent signals to her in this fashion, dialling to let her know when she was working in the kitchen of her old house that he was thinking of her even though she would not be able to pick up the phone and talk to him. The silliness of it. Her face burned. Surely it was not him. She hoped it was not. Still, it was not the first time she had thought of him, for she had racked her brains for months thinking of anyone and everyone she had ever known. This was a possibility she had always dismissed.

  But it could be anybody.

  Nobody could be discounted any more.

  While she was thinking of this, the phone began to ring again, properly this time, a steady persistent buzz. Rose lurched towards it knocking over the table with barley sugar twist legs; it fell, scraping her shin, and the thing she had been holding back, because she had to be calm, had to remember at all times that this might be a genuine call, maybe one of Kit’s constituents, or a call from Wellington, even the Prime Minister himself, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility, leapt out and was said as she picked up the phone: ‘Go away you bastard, you fuckwit,’ she screamed. As she caught her breath there was a sharp indrawn one at the other end. ‘You horseshit. You. I’ll kill you, I’ll do it myself,’ she added, still shouting.

  She slammed the receiver down, and leaned against the wall, wondering what irretrievable thing she had done.

  In a second the ringing began again. She picked it up. ‘Rose Kendall,’ she said dully.

  ‘That was better out than two teeth I guess,’ her sister said at the other end.

  ‘So how long’s this jerk been ringing you?’

  ‘A year. On and off.’

  ‘For Chrissake. Why didn’t you tell me? Or did you think it was me?’

  Katrina did not look much like Rose. Her hair was dyed black, and in repose her face was tired. It was a handsome face with a large nose which she had talked about having bobbed for years, if only she could afford it. She was dressed in an ultra-short puffy black skirt and a sheer orange lace jacket over her bra. She wore laced black boots and heavy silver rings. One of her ears was bleeding slightly from having a new stud put in.

  Her square acid-blue Housing Corporation house sat in a straight row of houses that ran exactly parallel to another row, and another beyond that. The corner of the intersection nearest her house had a McDonald’s filled with a queue up to the counter; on the far side stood a dairy painted scarlet to advertise Coca Cola. Three doors up the burnt-out hulk of a car, and the charred remains of a cross as tall as a man, stood on a lawn. The people who had lived in this house, a Samoan and his white wife and their children, had moved away.

  ‘It’s the Klan,’ said Katrina with apparent indifference when Rose commented.

  ‘I know, of course, what happened,’ Rose said. ‘But I didn’t realise it was so close to you.’

  ‘Down among the boongs. You ought to come here more often. There’s some brides of Christ up the street, they’re out to get the Jews but the pickings are a bit lean. The Jews all live in your street.’

  ‘This is New Zealand, not the Bible belt of Middle America,’ Rose snapped.

  ‘Tell me about it. This is the Blake Block.’

  Katrina’s unfenced lawn straggled to the edge of the road, littered with paper and tins from the food barns. Her house smelled of ashtrays overflowing with Winfields. Her ancient car was like that too, Rose recalled. The only time she’d been in it she had to put her head out the window while Katrina drove. This afternoon there was a stack of dishes in the sink beside them. They sat on chrome-legged chairs at a green formica table with tea stains on it. Rose resisted the urge to get a cloth. Katrina would love that, the excuse to throw her out.

  ‘I know it’s not you that’s doing it, Sis,’ said Rose. ‘I could tell from the way you reacted. Well you wouldn’t have rung back and spoken to me, would you?’

  ‘But you thought it might have been me? Jesus, why would you think that?’

  Rose nearly said: because you’ve caused us a hell of a lot of trouble on and off over the years. But it didn’t seem like the moment for all-or-nothing honesty. Instead, she said: ‘I’m ready to think it’s anybody.’

  ‘One of your political buddies that’s gone sour on you? There must be plenty of those.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘But you’re not sure?’

  ‘I don’t know, Katrina. I feel like it’s me they’re out to get.’

  ‘You’re meant to. You’d make a lovely victim. You’d end up just like me.’ Katrina blew a smoke ring. Our father taught her to do that, Rose thought. She’s reminding me whose favourite she was.

  ‘I know it wasn’t you, Sis.’

  ‘So why did you come?’

  ‘You rang.’

  ‘And you came running. What’s happened? Have you run out of shoulders to cry on?’

  ‘I don’t … do that.’ Rose made as if to collect her bag. ‘So why did you ring me?’

  ‘I don’t see you that much. You’re too busy with good works.’ Katrina drew on her cigarette, eyeing her speculatively. ‘Or does that bore you now? What do you do when you’ve got everything you want?’

  Rose checked a quick response. She knew now that there was a course to be run, that she wouldn’t find out easily what it was that Katrina wanted. Her sister had caught her off balance for a moment and now she would have to wait until Katrina was ready.

  ‘Or haven’t you got what you want after all? Christ, you marched for this, and marched for that, and sat in for the workers here, there and everywhere, do they thank you now that Kit’s in Parliament? I mean, wasn’t that what it was all about?’

  Rose was silent.

  ‘You look done in,’ said Katrina, getting up. ‘Here, the sun’s over the yard-arm, drink this.’ She poured some Seagers into a couple of tumblers and slopped them under the tap. ‘I haven’t got anything to go with it.’ She put one down in front of Rose. Water trickled down the side of the glass, making a pool beside it. A match floated.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Katrina, producing a packet of opened Cheezels and flapping them in a cloud of their yellow dust onto a plate, ‘did either of you ever think what you were taking on? Or was it just part of the fun, standing for Parliament?’ She shook her head. Her voice was soft. ‘Kit never meant to get in, did he? It was the last thing either of you expected.’

  When Rose still didn’t reply, she said, ‘Not everyone liked him. Not everyone’s pleased about the Government.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Rose. ‘I’ve thought about that a hundred times. I don’t know where to begin looking. Which one of them it could be. But I don’t believe it’s that.’ She paused. ‘It does feel personal.’

  ‘What does Kit say? He must get it too.’

  ‘They don’t ring when he’s home.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I see.’

  ‘How’s Larissa?’ Rose asked, holding her breath and swigging the gin. It was best to swallow quickly, though she had to be careful or Katrina would fill it again.

  ‘That bitch. I hope I don’t see her for about a hundred years.’

  ‘She’s your daughter.’

  ‘Oh God. Here we go.’ She tipped the bottle sideways with a deft little motion towards her own glass. Rose covered hers with her hand, even though she could see how much this irritated Katrina.

  ‘Is she still with Gary?’

  Katrina shrugged.

  Rose supposed, whenever she thought about it, that it was easier now for Katrina to pretend that Larissa hadn’t existed. Like Paul, Larissa’s father. Maybe Katrina never thought anymore of Paul, the first of her children’s fathers. When she married him she wore her black hair in a lacquered bouffant and taught dancing. She tripped everywhere with a bright, studiedly alert expression and taught little girls to stand on their toes and spin, and adults to ballroom dance in the evenings. For these sessions she wore sequined dresses which she sewed at the
weekends, and when there was time she made extra ones for her pupils who were dancing in the competitions. She and Paul were dancing partners. He had slicked-back hair and sold cars on a second-hand lot. Rose used to think he was like a character out of a comic strip, he was so true to type. When he went off with a driving school instructor who used to be a marching girl she and Kit laughed, at least to themselves. It was later they learned how truly Katrina had grieved.

  Or perhaps they never really did. ‘You don’t understand,’ Katrina had said, in some excess of sorrow late at their house one night, and it was true. They still looked sideways at Paul when they saw him in town. He lived in a huge hacienda-style house in north Weyville and went to fundamental revivalist meetings with his wife and their three well-washed children. Richard said, last time he was home, that Paul grew cannabis in the greenhouse, but Rose didn’t know about that, nor did she ask Richard how he knew.

  In an adjacent room a baby cried.

  ‘Shall I pick her up?’ asked Rose.

  A flicker of apprehension darted across Katrina’s face. She caught her top lip between her teeth. They were big strong teeth. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, getting up. Straight away Rose guessed what condition the baby was in.

  As she sat thinking how she would kill her sister if the baby was sick, the back door was pushed open and a face appeared. It was Minna, Katrina’s friend, whom Rose had met a couple of times at the hospital last time Katrina was in, having the baby.