Read Online Drowned Sprat and Other Stories by Stephanie Johnson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephanie Johnson
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recognised it on my list.
‘I want to tell you about something that happened to me. Someone I met.’
‘Recently?’
‘During the summer.’
‘Go on, then.’
There’s a silence then, during which I avert my eyes, watch the trees in the park opposite flail in the March wind.
‘I always drive myself,’ Coral begins slowly. ‘On business trips in foreign countries I will sometimes permit a driver, but on all journeys, the one I want to tell you about included, I prefer to drive myself. I had Robert with me.’
‘Robert?’
‘My husband. As we headed out of town we talked a little about Samantha’s baby. Robert asked me if I thought she’d be awake when we got there. I said Samantha hadn’t got her into any kind of routine, so who was to know. Robert took this as a criticism of Sam, somehow, and told me to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble when we got there, giving instructions or whatever.’
‘Samantha is your daughter?’
‘Yes. He went on about how I’d always thought that Sam was hard or tough, when she was actually soft as butter, and nothing like me. His implication was that I’m a nasty bitch.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘He thinks I’m — what is the word he uses? Impercipient. Impercipient to his needs and desires. He sometimes says things about the “mannish carapace” of my business clothes, asks why I won’t let my hair grow a little.’
‘And what do you say in response to that?’ I ask her. There are only three tissues left in the box, which with some of my more tearful clients would already be little sodden mounds on the low coffee table between us. Coral doesn’t seem like a crier, although her voice is cracking a little.
‘I say nothing, because it would lead us nowhere,’ she says firmly.
‘Tell me the story, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was like this: I required the Ladies. In the days I allowed Robert to drive I would sit with a bursting bladder for miles. He could never stop without plenty of warning: to lift his foot off the accelerator and apply the brake was anathema to his driving self. If I gave him a ten-minute warning he could manage it — a warning gleaned from my prior knowledge of the exact location of each convenience; something he called my mental crapper map. I expanded it on every family summer holiday. And believe me, there was a quarter of the number then, compared to now …
‘On the Pohuehue Viaduct a Rest Area sign flashed past — you know, that little man and little woman separated by a single line — and up ahead there was the building itself in a picnic spot, a gravel scallop scooping out at the side of the road, the bushy gully high around us. I swept in, took the car up onto the grass beside a vast macrocarpa and Robert lurched forward against his seatbelt only slightly. There was a wooden table of heavy slats, a rusting Ford Cortina and two toilet blocks — an old granite one boarded up with a bird nesting in one of the small ventilationgrilles high under the iron roof; and a new one with plastic walls the colour of the purest, palest urine. I remember thinking it was the colour of baby pee, which must have been because I was on my way to visit a baby.’
‘Your granddaughter.’
‘Yes. The building had a red plastic cap, like a piece from a child’s garage set, or a Monopoly house. I told Robert I’d be back in a minute and he nodded and sighed, reclined in his seat and I knew for sure as I walked away from the car that he had closed his eyes. You can’t work as hard as he does at the age of sixty-three and not spend your domestic downtime exhausted. Robert is perpetually, tediously exhausted.’
Emotionally absent husband, I note.
‘The toilet, it appeared, was electronically controlled, with a wide red button and automatic locks. Just as I reached the concrete-slab porch, the door began to slide open. Someone was on her way out. I paused and turned around to wait. Robert’s profile was in
‘I want to tell you about something that happened to me. Someone I met.’
‘Recently?’
‘During the summer.’
‘Go on, then.’
There’s a silence then, during which I avert my eyes, watch the trees in the park opposite flail in the March wind.
‘I always drive myself,’ Coral begins slowly. ‘On business trips in foreign countries I will sometimes permit a driver, but on all journeys, the one I want to tell you about included, I prefer to drive myself. I had Robert with me.’
‘Robert?’
‘My husband. As we headed out of town we talked a little about Samantha’s baby. Robert asked me if I thought she’d be awake when we got there. I said Samantha hadn’t got her into any kind of routine, so who was to know. Robert took this as a criticism of Sam, somehow, and told me to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble when we got there, giving instructions or whatever.’
‘Samantha is your daughter?’
‘Yes. He went on about how I’d always thought that Sam was hard or tough, when she was actually soft as butter, and nothing like me. His implication was that I’m a nasty bitch.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘He thinks I’m — what is the word he uses? Impercipient. Impercipient to his needs and desires. He sometimes says things about the “mannish carapace” of my business clothes, asks why I won’t let my hair grow a little.’
‘And what do you say in response to that?’ I ask her. There are only three tissues left in the box, which with some of my more tearful clients would already be little sodden mounds on the low coffee table between us. Coral doesn’t seem like a crier, although her voice is cracking a little.
‘I say nothing, because it would lead us nowhere,’ she says firmly.
‘Tell me the story, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It was like this: I required the Ladies. In the days I allowed Robert to drive I would sit with a bursting bladder for miles. He could never stop without plenty of warning: to lift his foot off the accelerator and apply the brake was anathema to his driving self. If I gave him a ten-minute warning he could manage it — a warning gleaned from my prior knowledge of the exact location of each convenience; something he called my mental crapper map. I expanded it on every family summer holiday. And believe me, there was a quarter of the number then, compared to now …
‘On the Pohuehue Viaduct a Rest Area sign flashed past — you know, that little man and little woman separated by a single line — and up ahead there was the building itself in a picnic spot, a gravel scallop scooping out at the side of the road, the bushy gully high around us. I swept in, took the car up onto the grass beside a vast macrocarpa and Robert lurched forward against his seatbelt only slightly. There was a wooden table of heavy slats, a rusting Ford Cortina and two toilet blocks — an old granite one boarded up with a bird nesting in one of the small ventilationgrilles high under the iron roof; and a new one with plastic walls the colour of the purest, palest urine. I remember thinking it was the colour of baby pee, which must have been because I was on my way to visit a baby.’
‘Your granddaughter.’
‘Yes. The building had a red plastic cap, like a piece from a child’s garage set, or a Monopoly house. I told Robert I’d be back in a minute and he nodded and sighed, reclined in his seat and I knew for sure as I walked away from the car that he had closed his eyes. You can’t work as hard as he does at the age of sixty-three and not spend your domestic downtime exhausted. Robert is perpetually, tediously exhausted.’
Emotionally absent husband, I note.
‘The toilet, it appeared, was electronically controlled, with a wide red button and automatic locks. Just as I reached the concrete-slab porch, the door began to slide open. Someone was on her way out. I paused and turned around to wait. Robert’s profile was in
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