Bespoke

In memory of Cesare Pavese

1

Horizon of eyes
don't oversee me;

words hold
back those predators.

Heart be more than
fissure; artery

carry the light.

Everything I tell you I tell you in confidence. It must not be repeated. I arrived in Goldsborough like a travelling salesman, a case of samples in my left hand and the index finger of my right hand poised in air, as if to stop a passer-by for directions. Tired and slightly underdressed given the temperature I headed for my hotel. The wind lipped the collar of my jacket and my shoulders were tight. I was home again.


After I checked in I wanted nothing so much as a long bath and a longer sleep. The men in my address-book, those familiar friends who changed their partners more often and with less thought than they changed their brand of aftershave could wait. My eyes ached so I closed out the world, withdrawing into the languid swirl of colour under my lids. My ambition shrank into this tub - I could feel it dissolving with the soap-bubbles on my skin. For an hour or so I had nothing to prove.


It had been a long while since I'd relaxed like this. I didn't have to count the years. Back then (and who cared when 'then' was?) the streets meant adventure instead of employment; my smile was for the wide world, not just customers. Barrer Park offered merry-go-rounds and clowns swallowing ping-pong balls, not just an opportunity to hustle. There was my sister Marlene's laughter as the stares of sailors were swept into our wake and we turned the corner with hearts that were faster than our fishnet legs... When the telephone rang I stretched the length of the tub and pushed the hot tap on with my toes. I wasn't going to answer. Right now I liked being alone. Whoever was trying to reach me hung up.


There was a knock at the door. "I'm not here."


"Excuse me, I have a message from reception."


"I'm too tired, bring it with breakfast at seven tomorrow."


"But...."


"I said tomorrow."


"As you wish."

2

rest in bed wearing a tight smile
thumbing Catholic magazines for teenage mothers

discover the way to a street that doesn't exist
it's not just your reduced figure
in shadow I know you are lost

your umbilicus reaches out
as if perfection interested men after bed

I don't know how long I slept or what I dreamed of. I remember the heaviness of too many blankets and the sense that I was nine years old again, the new kid in town, without bearings or any idea where a friend might be found. I suppose everyone wakes more or less unexpectedly. When I stirred I heard urgent but unintelligible voices from the corridor. I could not make out my name and there was no knocking so I pulled the covers over my head. They weren't so deadening that an approaching siren couldn't penetrate. I gave up, got out of bed and went to the window.


An ambulance had pulled up outside the main entrance to the hotel. My view was spoiled by the sprawling silhouette of a eucalyptus but I could still see the attendants bearing the stretcher. Their white trousers flicked inside the lobby. While I wanted to keep watching my eyes stung from lack of sleep so I went into the bathroom and soaked a flannel in cold water. Then I held it against my sockets alternately. By the time I returned to the window there was a police car parked alongside the ambulance. A few minutes of blue moon passed before the body was brought down the steps.


Age, sex and facial expression were matters for speculation. There was a blanket below and something that used to be someone was underneath. This 'unfortunate mishap' was destined to be a series of inaccurate anecdotes traded by hotel employees. I simply happened to be here, my lips pursed for no purpose other than to prevent a cynical smile . It was all too maudlin - four-in-the-morning philosophy. I still couldn't leave the window until the ambulance had vanished.


Of course in the morning I found out - not all about it but a little more. She was eighteen, her blue evening gown had been ruined by the blood and the maid wondered if the stains would come out of the carpet. They might have to replace it. Such a nuisance. She had checked in yesterday morning, spent the day in bed and only ordered mineral water around three in the afternoon. No one on the staff suspected anything. Yes, it was suicide. Surely there was a boy involved - perhaps she was pregnant, God forbid. The night porter thought he'd seen her before, maybe at 'Janus'. They were mainly wealthy types who went there. It was all very curious but the coroner would get to the bottom of it.


I did not hear the rest. Really it was not my affair.

3

a womaniser's petty
ambition has many influential friends

the draft that fills her blue gown
the candle that flickers over her breasts
the pillow that breathes in the scent of her hair

and one enemy
the louse on her eiderdown
she knows
it is not like her man
it will not suck
every last drop of blood

The message that arrived belatedly with breakfast was from Antony and I went to meet him, as fate would have it, at 'Janus'. I took care to wear the earrings he had given me three years before, after we had squandered a long weekend together: a weekend of tender pretence and affected sexuality. He had schemed and practiced his strategies at every opportunity until the prospect of listening to his entreaties endlessly was so horrible I consented to go with him. His fantasies foiled my ennui perfectly. 'Janus' was the ideal complement to Antony's antique chic. Like him it combined the precision of a nineteenth century engraving and the sophistication of a Fellini film. Timeless, it was up-to-the-minute. On either side of the entrance there was a copper figurine holding aloft a glass ball which took on the shades of the diners' designer outfits. In this way you became part of the place even before you were seated. Antony lifted his eyebrows and slowly lowered his glass. "You're here" he laughed.


"Of course. I'm always here for you."


He flicked my sarcasm onto the floor. "I thought you might stay away after last night. Why did you refuse to take my call?"


"You know me - I was tired, your timing was poor."


"It always is" he acknowledged lightly, and his smile crinkled into something that might have been empathy. "I suppose your admirers are waiting?"


"We both have other places to go."


He nodded. He was even smarter than his clothes and his conversation was often sought by the type who find their photographs on the society pages of provincial papers. "What can I say?"


A shrug. "Surprise me for once." I could see he was disappointed with my diffidence. "I'm sorry - I got woken in the middle of the night. At the moment a simple sentence is too complex."


He leaned forward slightly. "What happened? Did Marlene ring half-cut and loveless again?"


"A girl in the hotel hurt herself."


Antony drew back and the folds in his neck vanished to reveal an immaculate collar. "I understand. I read about it in the Herald. Jenny Wren - I've done business with her father. He's a bespoke tailor, made-to-measure for the discerning gentleman...."


He paused so I obliged: "Like you."


"He's brilliant but unpredictable and apparently she inherited that, along with her mother's come-hither looks. Jenny was too much the object of boys and boredom to last long."


His description forced me back on myself, on the memories of men fondling my body as if I was their wife in an arranged marriage and had to do anything. It made me picture those occasional strangers whose elbows rested alongside my own in every bar from here to Queenstown. It brought me back to the grand tone of adolescence, to the endless fall from grace that informs all our days and nights once we have farewelled our first lover, to that laboured cough in the chilly courtyard we walk through the morning after. I felt awkward - portentous yet flip. Curious.


"Let's not talk about her anymore. You know you don't have to stay at the hotel. My place is always available."


He had to say that. "Antony, a debutante would think you cared. It's a pity I'm thirty-one." I made fun, a little unfairly, but it was the best way to cover my irritation at his attempt to change the subject. And to that of all things. Although he was better than most men I have known, when Antony spoke the supposed topic was secondary, merely an occasion to display himself. Not today. Surprizing even myself, I stood up and left.


The emptiness of the cafe anticipated the emptiness of the street. It was recent and I felt that something had just disappeared before it could lodge in the corner of my eye. I stopped and pretended to window-shop. What I saw was not to be found there. It was the blue gown of the small hours. Fuck Antony. I went to get my hair done.

4

what does consent mean
when its object has gone
when your girl turns the corner

with a smile that is the memory
and expectation of another
man? in her neighbourhood

people live in lobbies
they mutter nothing is certain
even altar candles flicker

in her neighbourhood
if there are angels
(and there often are)

they sit alongside the box
that holds the body
which is always ordinary

in her neighbourhood
this deciduous day
falls into the dark

eye of a god nobody believes in

When I left the hairdresser my step was lighter than before. It was the step of a Ponsonby blonde returning from a mission to the wonderbra stockist. I felt reaffirmed by the mid-afternoon light and headed for my parents' old house with the apparent nonchalance I had learnt in the capital, a nonchalance that disguises self-importance and renders one invisible to residents. I wanted to see without being seen; most of all, I wanted to find myself in the conversational corners, the necking spots of yesteryear.


If I knew the houses, despite their mismatched additions and countless coats of paint, I no longer knew the inhabitants. The buildings I had run past with 'friends for life' on my tenth birthday had naturally outlasted those friends. The streets were dirtier than I remembered and I felt dirtier for observing as much. The grain store where my father had popped me on top of stacked sacks while he talked horses with thick-jawed Mr Henderson had gone and in its place there was a concrete-block realtor's office with a green neon sign.


Trying to measure the distance I had come since Mum's misplaced lipstick was first applied for boys with sad hands who would 'never forget' I found the width of a paving stone was sufficient. Like the migrant workers who clustered under factory roofs in Manukau, their navy overalls deftly rolled clear of red jandals, I never belonged where I was.


They say belonging is an attribute of love, but the sticky love I first understood as a teenager thirsty for experience just alerted me to the death inside myself. And perhaps it was like this for Jenny Wren, troublesome daughter of the bespoke tailor and now the talk of the town she never called home. Perhaps she felt compelled to pull that death out of herself and hold it up to the light. Perhaps - such thoughts are fickle as the skirts of a girl in a fitful wind.


I stood still for an eternity on the corner. I stood there until the black Mercedes pulled over, a fifty dollar note crisp in the long fingers of its driver. I was going home.

Keep in
touch. If she is beautiful still
she won't say
hello: she fell
into the world without
a tongue to confess as much
or more. Call it her original sin: silence
winding up 'your' day. But it's how she keeps
faith with the non-place she came from: surely
a man can understand, a man can
weigh her heart against a feather
teasing air

northerly southerly easterly westerly
there?

---

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