Replacement Girl Read online

  To my family and friends,

  in memory of some of those old times.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BUDAPEST 1975

  WELLINGTON 1967

  WELLINGTON 1969

  WELLINGTON, 1970

  WELLINGTON, 1971

  WELLINGTON 1971

  BUDAPEST, 1975

  WELLINGTON 1979

  BUDAPEST 1981

  WELLINGTON 1983

  GLOSSARY

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Some books have assisted me in the writing of this novel. I would especially like to acknowledge The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten from where several of the jokes are drawn.

  Many people have helped. A special thank you to Bill Manhire, to Heidi Thomson and to the members of the 1998 MA in Creative Writing class at Victoria University of Wellington for their perceptive and helpful comments. I owe a huge debt to Lloyd Jones for his support and encouragement, to Jane Parkin for her helpful comments and encouragement and to Kathryn Walls and Vincent O’Sullivan who helped enormously by giving me a space to work.

  BUDAPEST 1975

  Pus-yellow light streamed from the naked ceiling lamp in the kitchen of the dingy Pest flat sublet to us by a friend of my mother. Janet was asleep in the bed/sitting-room, the sole other room in the flat. Until Douglas’s announcement, the only sound was the drip, drip of the nappies onto the parquet floor.

  ‘I’m going to detach myself. From this relationship.’

  Before I had a chance to respond, he repeated it:

  ‘I’m going to detach myself from this relationship.’

  I opened my mouth to say something.

  ‘Don’t shout, you’ll wake the baby.’

  ‘What! Why?’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  I grabbed him then by the arm.

  ‘Don’t shout. You’ll wake Janet.’

  I ran straight to her and before Douglas could block my way, I was by her bed, heaving her out of the cot, shouting, ‘Janet, up you get, your father wants to speak to you.’

  He tried to stop me dragging the baby out of bed, but I shoved him out of the way.

  ‘Your father wants to say bye-bye to you, Janet, say bye-bye to your Daddy.’

  She stood, stupefied with sleep.

  ‘Say bye-bye to your daddy, Janet, say goodbye to your daddy.’

  ‘Bye-bye,’ Janet said.

  ‘I don’t want you to do this in front of the child,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to do this in front of the child?’

  ‘I want her to see what her father’s really like. I want her to learn.’

  ‘You are terrible.’

  He tried to force me to let her go, to let Janet go back to bed.

  ‘No, she’s not going, she’s staying. She’s going to learn what her father is like.’

  ‘Stop shouting. If you would only stop shouting, we could talk about this.’

  ‘Talk! You never talk. Talk! You don’t know what it means. You’re cold. You don’t have feelings. You’re…not a human being.’

  I let go of Janet, and Douglas picked her up and carried her back to bed.

  ‘I won’t let you leave. I won’t let you.’ On my knees, sobbing.

  But he made for the door, opened it. ‘I’m doing this for both of us. You’ll see. We’ll both be happier. It’s not my fault, Eva. It was a gamble that didn’t work. That’s all.’

  They were, for Douglas, eloquent words. When he left, I opened the window, letting in the sooty breeze. I saw him in the courtyard below, suitcase in hand, pausing for a moment by the grimy gate. He did not look up at my window but straightened his shoulders and patted the bulging trouser pocket holding airline ticket, passport, traveller’s cheques.

  After he disappeared from sight, I continued to gaze out of the window at the whirling dust in the yard, at the sour faced young woman in the right hand side apartment frying meat and cutting up dough for dumplings and, on the left hand side balcony, at the old woman bent double over her washing in the dented basin full of bullet holes. When she went inside, I closed the window and got out the new notebook I had been too busy to open since arriving in Budapest. I wrote:

  But I don’t want to write about the present. It’s the beginning with Douglas that’s on my mind – and my parents, their circle, Tomi, Joe, Zsuzsi. Writing down what I can remember might help bring back other memories.

  WELLINGTON 1967

  They watched me pack. She was in tears; he just managed to hold them back.

  She said, ‘Did those butchers not do enough?’

  He said, ‘You’ll get it back one day. From your children you’ll get back what you are doing to us.’ His arms were around her.

  When Mary Mundell and I found a flat and she announced that she was moving out, her mother had simply said, ‘That’s good, dear. I can do with the extra space.’

  My parents had no self-control.

  The others in our flat were Wendy, Carol and Jill. Mary and I had met them at a coffee bar called the Monde Marie. They were still at varsity. Mary and I had jobs in town, she in the Department of Maori Affairs, I in Child Welfare. But our real preoccupation was with Mr Right.

  Should you have sex with him before you marry? Wendy had already ‘gone all the way’. Carol had a steady boyfriend but wouldn’t let him touch her below the waist. Jill didn’t even have a boyfriend yet. Mary did it (almost all the way) with a student from Africa. Her ambition was to have beautiful brown babies (she thought pinky white ones were ugly) and to work beside her husband to relieve the suffering of his people. As for me, I was still getting over William, who had flown away to Australia.

  ‘When are you shifting home again?’ my father asked when I went home for tea on Sunday.

  The next item for comment was whether or not it was likely that I would be left on the shelf.

  ‘A woman is nothing on her own. I am warning you, Eva,’ my grandmother said. I tried to relax in front of the TV.

  ‘She is very pretty; she has nothing to worry about yet. Soon she will make a good marriage.’ My mother’s voice was not entirely full of confidence.

  ‘Do not waste yourself by marrying an ordinary man. Do as I did, love carefully,’ my grandmother said. ‘I divide men into two categories: those who are good enough to marry and those who are not. Keep yourself for the wealthiest, the best placed socially, and the most intelligent and energetic.’

  My father put down his creased copy of New Life, full of news about the new Hungary, which he devoured from cover to cover each week, and got up and left the room, slamming shut the door.

  ‘What matters,’ said my mother, giving the slammed door an anxious look, ‘is that the man is strong and reliable. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have very interesting conversations with his wife at the end of the day. I’ve never been attracted by tortured intellectuals.’

  But my grandmother wasn’t listening. She was listing the virtues of my grandfather Imre, who had, in her view, been all the things my father was not – assertive, persistent, clever, successful and someone who fought for what he wanted. Running out of desirable qualities, she paused for effect. ‘It doesn’t even matter if the man you marry isn’t a Kiwi, but he must be substantial. You must make sure he is in a position to give you security, if not luxury, for the rest of your life.’

  The following Sunday, Stephen Lucas, the youngest member of the circle, was in the lounge with his new wife Alison.

  ‘Eva, I am so happy. I have found a wonderful woman who appreciates an intellectual foreigner with refined European looks.’

  ‘I’ll give it two years,’ predicted my mother wh
en they left.

  Then it was my turn.

  ‘Look at the life you are living,’ my grandmother said. ‘How can you meet the right man in that flat?’

  ‘Zsuzsi and Ted are engaged. Look, Eva, what a nice card they sent from Sydney,’ my mother said. ‘If a girl like that is able to find herself a decent man, you can.’

  I made groaning sounds, but they were not deterred.

  ‘Joe Farkas is back from Melbourne, Eva,’ my father said. ‘He almost has his PhD.’

  ‘Such a nice boy, so good to his mother,’ said my grandmother. ‘Kati, ring Vera and arrange something for Eva and Joe.’

  More groans from me.

  ‘You know, Eva,’ my mother said, standing up to emphasise her words and blocking my view of the TV, ‘our people are not perfect, but they don’t get drunk and beat their wives…’

  Not this again. ‘Joe’s like a brother, don’t you see?’

  ‘All right, not Joe,’ my father conceded. ‘Someone else then from the community. There is…’

  ‘Stop, stop…’

  When I got back to the flat, I wrote, ‘I can’t stand their claustrophobic emotionalism. I can’t stand the way they drag me backwards.’

  I found my favourite lines from John Mulgan, whose books we had studied at varsity, and copied them into the diary:

  Everything that was good from that small remote country had gone into them – sunshine and strength, good sense, patience, the versatility of practical men.

  I was dizzy with those words. They were in my mind as I struggled with the curtains in my room in the flat. If I had been given the benefit of the right sort of practical upbringing, I would be able to take moving into a scungy flat in my stride. I might even have taken pleasure in freshening up a damp, dingy room with bright paint, making a bookshelf from cartons and a table for my records from bits of plastic, as did my flatmates. Mary, especially, had the knack of throwing gaudy cushions around a dull room with remarkable results. How embarrassing it was to not even know how to hang curtains. My only useful skill was the ability to cook the type of food my flatmates appreciated – they liked anything that did not remind them of the food their mothers used to make. Top of their list of hated food was junket, wriggling on the plate, and mushy sago pudding with bright yellow custard. The vividness of their childhood memories always surprised me, as my own recollections were few and non-specific (not that I thought about my childhood in Hungary very much anyhow). Mary could remember everything about her first day at kindergarten: her pink-and-white-striped blouse, the orange cardigan her mother made her wear, and the teacher’s kind face. Wendy could remember the tunes and the words of the songs her grandmother sang to her when she was two-and-a-half, and Jill the colour of the curtains in the hospital when she had her tonsils out at three.

  I gave up the battle to hang the curtains Mary had whipped up for me on the sewing machine borrowed from her mother, and thought about the next tiresome task – bringing inside the bookshelf that was lying in the yard. The delivery man had disappeared before I could ask him to do this. How to get it up the narrow outside staircase and inside the even narrower doorway? I decided to give it a go, but all I had to show after several minutes of heaving and shoving was one end of the shelf jammed tight against one side of the doorway and the other against the stair rail. The shelf refused to move in any direction at all. Nor could I get it into the flat. The shelf and I were both stuck. How long could I expect to wait until my flatmates got home?

  ‘Can I help?’ said a man’s voice.

  I turned to see looking at me a thin, clever face with pale ginger freckles.

  ‘Yes, yes please, yes.’

  In a jiffy, with a flick of the wrist and a tap of the arm, he had levered the shelf out of its current position, carried it inside and placed it in the space I indicated.

  He introduced himself: ‘Douglas Simpson. From next door.’ I liked his diffident manner.

  I watched with delighted satisfaction as my neighbour hung my curtains and fixed the dripping tap in the bathroom, all before accepting a cup of coffee. He said he would also like to fix the jug, but I insisted that he had to have the coffee first.

  As I boiled water in the pot, I racked my brain for the sort of remarks an intelligent graduate in English with a job as advisory officer in a government department might be expected to make.

  ‘When can I see you again, Eva?’ said my rescuer as he left the flat.

  Please let it be soon, very soon.

  ‘I’ve met a marvellous man,’ I told Mary when she got home. I leapt and danced around the flat in my jubilation. ‘A perfectly marvellous man!’

  Douglas was a quiet person. Sometimes half an hour passed and he had still not said a word. I didn’t really mind; his silence was peaceful, even comforting.

  ‘For me, the most interesting questions are those that have no answers,’ I confided to him.

  ‘As a scientist, I’ve no interest in such questions,’ Douglas replied. ‘What’s important is to have your feet on the ground, to be in touch with reality.’

  He was simply wonderful.

  I didn’t say, ‘Oh yuck, the ground is too muddy – let’s go back,’ as we galloped along the Five Mile Track to the Catchpool. I was counting on my past acquaintance with tramping customs – two days in the Tararuas with Mary and her family – to see me through. For this was a test that I was determined to pass.

  The sun was trying to shine after weeks of rain. I was in front, Douglas behind. Fleeting glimpses of huge trees caught my eye as we fled by.

  ‘Beech forest,’ Douglas said.

  I stomped right through the mud covering the track, although in some places it came over the top of my boots, to show that I wasn’t the namby-pamby sort who wasted time clambering on edges.

  From time to time, Douglas pointed out the sights:

  ‘Look, a rimu,’ or ‘an orchid,’ or ‘a fantail,’ he would say. ‘Do you know you can eat that plant?’

  I gazed intensely at the objects named, just for a moment, before continuing my race along the track.

  ‘Great day,’ passers-by called out cheerily. They were also slurping and sliding their way along.

  When we came to the end, I scampered down the steep track to the shingle bed.

  ‘The Orongorongo River,’ Douglas said.

  ‘Nice,’ I said, pausing for only a moment before boulder-hopping gracefully (I hoped) to our picnic spot.

  ‘I’ll get the wood,’ I offered.

  Douglas expected to light the fire, thank goodness, for the ability to do this, using only two or three matches, still eluded me. As the billy boiled, I unpacked the scones, not forgetting to mention that I had made them myself.

  Douglas fried eggs and bacon. The bacon had a huge fatty edge. I tried surreptitiously to separate it from the edible bit.

  ‘Hey, eat that up,’ Douglas laughed, ‘it’s the best part; it’ll put hairs on your chest.’

  When we had gulped down our food and tea, I was enticed by a sunny, almost dry, flat bit of ground next to the flax. But I didn’t yield to the temptation to lie down and sunbathe, even for a moment.

  ‘Let’s explore,’ I suggested.

  ‘Hey, slow down,’ said Douglas. ‘What’s the hurry?’

  But I was already on my feet, leading the way, criss-crossing the sparkling river.

  Comfortable in the surroundings he loved, Douglas opened out to me a little. He talked eloquently about the properties of copper and magnesium, and about white crystals gleaming in the test tube. But what about the rest of his life? And how did he feel about me? Had I passed?

  On our next date, as we climbed towards Wrights Hill, I could think of nothing much to say. There seemed to be no suitable topic to talk to Douglas about. Nor did he say a word. We walked in silence until I noticed a tree.

  What’s that called?’ I said.

  ‘A pittosporum,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘The name is from pitta,
meaning pitch and spora, seed. The allusion is to the black, resinous coating of the seeds. There are about eighty types of this kind of tree.’

  By this time we were at the top and meandering along the ridge, pausing from time to time to look at the blue-green haze of hills, ocean and city spread beneath us.

  When he had finished telling me about the pittosporum, I asked about another tree, which turned out to be some kind of pine, and then Douglas told me about all the different kinds of ferns.

  When we were nearly back down again at the car park, a desperate feeling came over me that we mustn’t end up just talking about the vegetation.

  ‘Tell me about your mother,’ I said boldly. My question unleashed not a trickle but an outpouring of Daphne Simpson stories.

  ‘Stand up straight, Douglas,’ she would say. ‘Straighten your shoulders. Don’t hunch them.’ His mother was cultivated, lively, intelligent – an adoring and adored wife. Yet he always had the feeling there was something missing in his family. He had thought so from the time he was little, gazing at the faces round the dining room table – Mum, Dad, brother, sister, nanny. Something was wrong, something was missing. The nanny came when his mother was away with his father. His father, of course, had to go away to work, to do research. That was only to be expected.

  ‘But my mother? Why did she have to go?’

  He stopped walking for a moment, rummaging in his pocket for the pipe he always seemed to have with him. Finding it, he filled it carefully with tobacco. As we drove back to my flat, he said not one word more about his mother, nor any of the others in his family.

  It was not until he was leaving to go back next door to his flat that he mentioned that his mother, just back from a year of travel, was having a party. Would I like to go with him on Sunday?

  ‘Yes, she will want to see you,’ I said.