The Name on the Door is Not Mine Read online

  I suppose I won’t be believed when I say this but if it hadn’t been for an idea that came to me one morning while I was watching Julian lying on his back flapping on the ironing board he would probably have had to risk jumping off a building. It came to me right out of the blue that if the ironing board had wheels and Julian was wearing his wings he would shoot along the ground faster and faster until he took off and left the ironing board behind. I don’t think I realised what a good idea it was until I said it aloud and Julian stopped flapping and stared at me for I don’t know how many seconds with his arms out wide still holding the ten-ounce sinkers and then he said very loudly my god why didn’t I think of that. The next moment he was gone, clattering up the stairs, and then he was down again kissing me and saying I was the brightest little bugger this side of Bethlehem and for the rest of the day he got nothing done or nothing that had anything to do with his flight. Of course Julian dropped the idea of actually putting wheels on the ironing board and the take-off vehicle he did use is the only publicly owned relic of his flight. I find it strange when I go to the museum sometimes and see a group of people standing behind a velvet cord staring at it and reading a notice saying this tubular-steel chromium-plated folding vehicle on six-inch wheels was constructed by the late Julian Harp and used during the commencement of his historic flight. It puzzles me why no one ever says good heavens that’s one of those things undertakers use to wheel coffins on, because that’s what it is. Julian had seen undertakers using them—church trucks they call them—when he was working in the hospital morgue, and when I suggested putting wheels on the ironing board he immediately thought how much better a church truck would be. I don’t know where he got the one he used but I think he must have raided the morgue or an undertaker’s chapel at night because one morning I came down to breakfast and there it was gleaming in the middle of the kitchen like a Christmas present.

  If I am going to tell the whole story of the flight and tell it truthfully I might as well come straight out with it and say Julian didn’t get any help or encouragement from the organisers of that day’s gymkhana. It makes me very angry the way it’s always written about as if the whole programme was built around Julian’s flight, and the way everyone who was there, Vega for example, talks as if she went only to see that part of the programme and even tells you she had a feeling Julian Harp would succeed. Up in the museum under glass that’s supposed to be protected by the most efficient burglar-alarm system in the southern hemisphere they show you the form Julian had to fill in when he asked the gymkhana organisers to put him on the programme. They don’t tell you he had to call on them six or seven times before he got them to agree. Even then I don’t think he would have succeeded if he hadn’t revived two of his letter writers and had them send letters to the Herald, one saying he had seen an albatross flying in the Domain and another, a woman, saying she didn’t think it was an albatross, it looked remarkably like a man.

  Then you find there’s a lot of fuss made by some people about the fact the Governor-general was there and how wonderful it is that the Queen’s representative went in person to see Julian Harp try his wings. The truth is the Governor-general was there because the gymkhana was sponsored jointly by the fundraising committees of the Blind Institute and the Crippled Children’s Society and he agreed as their patron to present the prizes for the main event of the day. And in case like everyone else I talk to you have forgotten what the main event was and allowed yourself to think it was Julian Harp’s flight, let me just add that it was an attempt on the unofficial world record for the 1000 yards on grass. In fact Julian had to sit around while the Mayor made his speech, a pole-sitting contest was officially started, twelve teams of marching girls representing all the grades competed, the brass and Highland bands held their march-past, and the police motorcycle division put on a display of trick riding. And when he did try to begin his event at the time given on the programme he was stopped because the long jump was in progress.

  Of course now it’s different. It’s different partly because Julian succeeded, partly because he’s supposed to be dead and everyone likes a dead hero better than a live one, but mostly because he made us famous overseas, and when all those reporters came pouring into the country panting to know about the man who had succeeded where men throughout history had failed—that was what they said—everyone began to pretend New Zealand had been behind him on the day. People started to talk about him in the same breath as Snell and Hillary and Don Clarke, and then in no time he was up with Lord Rutherford and Katherine Mansfield and now he seems to be ahead of them and there’s a sort of religious feeling starts up every time his name is mentioned.

  There’s nothing to get heated about, I know, but when I hear the Prime Minister (Our Beloved Leader, Julian used to call him) on the radio urging the youth of the nation to aim high like Harp I can’t help remembering Julian so nervous that morning about appearing in public he even cleaned his shoes and with me just as nervous the only person there to give him any help or encouragement. And then when we got to the Domain Julian was told he couldn’t have an assistant with him because the field was already too cluttered with officials and sportsmen, so there he was crouching down in front of the pavilion with his shiny coffin carrier and his scarlet wings for hour after hour waiting his turn while I sat on the far bank knowing there wasn’t a thing more I could do for him. We were nervous partly because he hadn’t given the wings a full test and partly because he had tested them enough to know they would carry him. They couldn’t be tested in broad daylight and remain a secret, so Julian had to be satisfied with a trial late one night. I remember it almost as clearly as the day of the flight, Julian’s church truck speeding across the grass getting faster and faster until I could just see the wings, black they looked in the dark, lift him clear of it. Each time he was airborne he let himself drop back on to the truck because he didn’t trust his vision through the periscope at night and he was afraid of colliding with overhead wires. But there was enough for us both to know what he could do and to put me in a terrible state of nerves that afternoon watching the marching girls and the bands and waiting for Julian to get his chance.

  Everyone knows what happened when that chance came. I don’t think many people saw him climb on to his truck and lie down and the few around me who were watching were saying look at this madman, he thinks he’s a Yuri Gagarin. But by the time the little truck and the scarlet wings were shooting full speed across the grass everyone was looking, and when somebody shouted over the loud speakers look at the wheels and the whole crowd saw the truck was rolling free there was a tremendous cheer. There was a gasp when he cleared the trees at the far end of the ground and then as he veered away towards the museum with those scarlet wings beating and beating perfectly evenly something got into the crowd and it forgot all about the athletic events and surged over the track and up the slope through the grove of trees by the cricket scoreboard, then down into the hollow of the playing fields and up again towards the museum. I would have followed Julian of course but I didn’t have to make up my mind to follow. I was one of the crowd now and I was swept along with it running and tripping with my eyes all the time on Julian like a vision of a heavenly angel rising on those wings made out of hundreds of stolen bits and pieces. He rose a little higher with each stroke of his wings and even when he seemed to try for a moment to come down and almost went into a spin I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t think about whether he intended to go on climbing like that I was so completely absorbed in the look of it, the wings opening and the sunlight striking through the fabric showing the pattern of the struts, and then closing and lifting the tiny figure of Julian another wing-beat up and out and away from us. I had stopped with the crowd on the slopes in front of the museum and Julian must have crossed the harbour and crossed the North Shore between Mt Victoria and North Head and got well out over the Hauraki Gulf towards Rangitoto before it came to me and it came quite calmly as if someone outside me was explaining to
me that I was seeing the last of him. I don’t know any more than anyone else whether it was a fault in the wings or whether flying put Julian into some kind of trance he couldn’t break or whether he just had somewhere to go, but it seemed as you watched him that once he began to climb there was no way to go but higher and further until his energy was used up. I stood there with everyone else watching him get smaller and smaller until we were only catching flashes of colour and losing them again and finally there was nothing to see and we all went on standing there for I don’t know how long, until teatime anyway.

  After that I was ill and I lay in a bed in hospital for ten days without saying a word seeing Julian’s wings opening and closing above me until I was sick of the sight of them and all through the day hearing people talking about him and reading bits out of the newspapers about him. By the time I began to feel better he was famous and I remember when a doctor came to see me and explained I was pregnant and asked who the father was I said Julian Harp and I heard him say to the sister she needs rest and quiet. Soon I learned to say nothing about Julian. He belongs to the public and the public makes what it likes of him. But if you ever came out of a building and found your umbrella missing you might like to believe my story because it may mean you contributed a strut to the wings that carried him aloft.

  Marriage Americano

  IT WAS EVIDENT THAT the young couple crossing the crowded park were uncomfortable. It was not merely the sultry heat of August that troubled them, but uncertainty about where they were, and perhaps anxiety about what they were embarking on. They stopped every few yards to look at a piece of paper which the young man held, and then to turn this way and that, looking beyond the square to the streets that bordered it.

  ‘I’m sure this is wrong,’ Paula said. ‘The Avenue of Rodriguez is over there.’

  Peter shrugged irritably. They turned and walked back in the direction they had come and, at a junction, struck off along a new path.

  Paula was tall, with a strong, handsome face. There was something fresh and healthy in her appearance and in her movements, suggesting the countryside, not the city.

  ‘Yes, this is better,’ she said. ‘I’m sure this is right.’

  Peter did not argue. He did not trust her sense of direction, but his own had already failed them and he did not want to be wrong a second time. He kept looking at the park benches, hoping to find one unoccupied on which they could rest; but when one with space for them came into view he did not, after all, suggest they stop. There was a black man occupying one corner of it, and his appearance was so depressing Peter preferred to walk on in the heat. The man was ill. He held himself upright with difficulty. His face was drawn and his teeth chattered. In sympathy, Peter was assailed by a feeling of the same lassitude. How he must long to lie down! But where? If he’d had a better place to go he would not have been here in the square. He could not lie on the grass, as you could, for example, in London parks. Even to step on it was forbidden. If he lay down on the seat someone would come and demand he make room. If he lay on the path one of those gum-chewing, baton-twirling cops would take him in. After nightfall, if he could last out the day, he would be tolerated lying in certain doorways and on certain steps. In the meantime he must hold himself upright, shivering, wedged in his corner of the seat.

  They were past him now. Dust and paper blew about their feet. Paula had not noticed the black man. She was still turning her head this way and that, as if steering a ship through narrow straits. Peter wanted to tell her what he had seen, but instead he said, ‘If we had to get married, why, for God’s sake, in America?’

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘There. Didn’t I tell you?’

  They stopped and surveyed the street they had come to. Peter looked again at the piece of paper. ‘That means it’s away down there to the left. It doesn’t look like the right area for a clinic.’

  The state laws required a VD test before marriage. They had slept together in five or six different countries across the world, but if they were to make it legal here they must first prove themselves clean.

  Ten minutes later they had found the building. They stood for some moments staring at it, then at the newspaper clipping advertising a ‘Blood Test Clinic’, then at one another. They had expected something of soaring steel and glass in which rubber-soled technicians in dazzling white pushed trolleys of stainless instruments through swinging doors. The building they stood before was of grimy brick, looking more than anything like a warehouse. Among the signs around its doors was one that signified the ‘clinic’ was on the second floor.

  Paula said, ‘I don’t suppose it can do us any harm.’ They went in and found the stairs.

  The clinic, they were told, was run by Dr Swartz, and they were shown at once into his office. He half stood as they came in, supporting himself against his desk and sinking back as they sat down. He smiled, but his eyes were vague, as if he had difficulty focusing on anything.

  ‘So you’re going to get married,’ he said. ‘That’s a big step. A great big wonderful step.’

  Peter was looking about the room. It was in complete disorder, papers, folders, books, bottles, racks of test-tubes, slides, instruments, towels—everything taken up and dropped at random.

  ‘You make a fine couple,’ Dr Swartz was saying. ‘It gives me real pleasure to help such a fine young couple. I don’t mind telling you I get some weird ones. I don’t always encourage a marriage. For example, I had a pair in a day or so back. He was six foot three if he was an inch. She came up to about here. About the size of an average ten-year-old. I took her aside. I said, “Have you thought about what you’re doing? You’ve been down on the farm, haven’t you? Seen the horses …?”’

  Paula had turned her head away and was staring through the open window. Peter was certain she would soon begin to laugh. ‘Couldn’t we get on with it?’ she said.

  Dr Swartz took two forms from the top drawer of his desk. ‘First the lady,’ he said. ‘Full name?’

  Paula told him.

  ‘Would you spell them please?’

  She spelled them.

  Each new question on the form Dr Swartz read slowly, articulating every word distinctly, breathing heavily, stopping from time to time to mop his brow with Kleenex tissues which he dropped on the floor.

  He also repeated each word of her answers as he wrote them down. Even ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ seemed to present problems of articulation, lengthened out into their separate letters as they were painfully copied on to the form.

  When Paula’s form was completed the whole business began again with Peter. Peter had been going to suggest that he might fill in his own form; but he had sunk into a stupor and was now enjoying the comfort even of this uncomfortable chair. He did not wish any longer to hurry.

  ‘Now begins the clinical bit,’ Dr Swartz said.

  He lumbered up from his chair and made his way around the desk to where Peter sat. ‘Remove your jacket please.’

  Peter removed it. The doctor unbuttoned a shirt cuff and began to roll the sleeve up Peter’s arm. For a moment he stared at the bare flesh, as if uncertain of what to do with it. Then he turned away to search among the papers on his desk.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said. He took hold of Peter’s arm with his left hand. In his right he held an old-fashioned blade razor. Paula could see that he intended only to shave a few tufts of hair from where the sample was to be taken; but Peter, seeing the blade brought up close to his arm, had turned white. His mouth was half-open in protest but no sound came from it.

  ‘Hold on to him, doctor,’ Paula said. ‘I think he might faint.’

  Half an hour later, when they were again crossing the square, Peter remembered the black man, and looked for him. He was still there, still alone on his seat, drawn up stiffly into one corner. The moment he relaxes, Peter thought, he’ll fall right down. That will be the end of him.

  They were past him before Peter stopped. He felt for his wallet and drew out a single dollar. ‘What are you doing?�
� Paula said.

  He walked back and held out the note. The black man shook his head slightly, sucked air in through clenched teeth, and looked away. Then he changed his mind. He reached out, took the dollar, and pushed it into his pocket. His eyes, when they met Peter’s, expressed neither gratitude nor resentment. He was past caring. There was nothing in them but despair.

  Paula stood watching. She said nothing when Peter returned to her. They continued together along the path. Peter ground his teeth, embarrassed by his own folly. What was a dollar to a dying man? Either you took him in or you left him alone.

  SOME DAYS LATER they presented themselves at the courthouse. They were asked to wait in a crowded room in which a single electric fan whirred overhead without seeming to disturb the air. To Peter every face in the room appeared vacant, hopeless. An official came and went, calling names, directing people this way and that.

  When their turn came they were shown to a door marked ‘Judge Whittaker’. The official knocked and guided them in, closing the door behind them.

  Judge Whittaker, sitting behind his desk, looked up at them. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he shouted.

  Neither of them could find a reply.

  ‘The law of this state says you register and wait three days.’

  ‘We’ve done that,’ Peter said.

  The judge looked down at his papers. ‘You’re Heinz and Dibble?’

  They told him they were not.

  ‘Donaghy!’

  It was a moment before Peter recognised that this was a name and not an oath.