Kidman All the Way to Summer

Stories of Love and Longing
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-434-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

A powerful collection of stories exploring love and longing, from the award-winning author of This Mortal Boy.Two mothers fight about wearing a hat on their children's wedding day. A needle is lost inside a woman's body. A writer waits with a suitcase for a man who never comes.In thirteen short stories written over several decades, Dame Fiona Kidman vividly evokes the glow of desire and the pain of heartbreak, the thrill of illicit liaisons and the twists and turns of unconventional love. Sometimes joyful, often devastating and always beautiful, All the Way to Summer is a searing account of love and loss from a pioneering feminist icon.

Dame Fiona Kidman OBE, Légion d'honneur, is one of New Zealand's foremost contemporary writers. A novelist, short story writer and poet, she is the author of more than 30 books. She has worked as a librarian, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film. She lives in Wellington.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kidman, Fiona

Leseproben

HATS

Like turning your hand over, things could go either way with the weather. Six a.m. and the bay is turbulent and green, but at that hour of the morning anything can happen. Standing at the window, just listening, the whole house is a heartbeat. Looking at the bay, the water, the clouds, I think I can hear the busy clink and chatter of the rigging on the boats parked on the hard at the bay, but that can’t be right, it’s too far away. Oh, you can hear anything, see anything on a morning like this, it’s the day of the wedding. Our son’s getting married.

There is a stirring in the back rooms; there is so much to do, I will never get done, it’s crazy this, but the wedding’s to be here, not at her place but mine. I am speaking now of the bride’s mother and myself. Well, it’s a long story, how the wedding comes to be here instead of there, but that’s the way it is. She’s bringing the food later in the morning, and there’ll be crayfish and scallops like nobody ever had at a wedding before, and mussels of course. They are mussel farmers from the Sounds. They. Well, I mean the bride’s parents.

I love our daughter-in-law to be, I really do. You might think I don’t mean that, mothers-in-law rarely do, but it’s true. Our son’s on a win. I want to see him married.

Perhaps they know that. There are times when I think they haven’t been so keen. Perhaps they think she could have done better. I don’t know. It hasn’t been easy, getting this wedding together. But, if you knew him, our son, you’d know she wouldn’t settle for anyone else. Anyone less. Now there’s a mother talking, but I’ve fallen for it, that same old charm of his, and I’ll go on forever, I guess. He puts his arms around me and says, ‘Love ya, Ma’ and I’ll forgive him anything.

It’s true. He brings out a softness in me. That and rage. But the anger never lasts for long.

There is no time to go on reflecting about it this morning though. There’s the smell of baked meats in the air, I need to open up the house and blow it through, I’ve got the food warmer to collect from the hire depot, and the tablecloths aren’t ready, and I have to set up a place for the presents, and there’s his mother, my husband’s to be got up, and there’re relatives to be greeted, and oh, God, I am so tired. Why didn’t anyone tell me I’d be so tired on our son’s wedding day, it doesn’t seem fair because I want to enjoy it. Oh, by that I mean, I want it to be all right, of course, and I want to do it graciously. We’ve been at it a bit over this wedding. Them and us. But I want to make sure it goes all right today. They’re bringing the food and the flagons of beer; we’re providing the waiters and waitresses in starched uniforms, and the champagne. You have to cater for everyone at a wedding.

Eleven a.m. The food hasn’t come. The flagons haven’t come. She hasn’t come. That’s the bride’s mother. The wedding is at two. I am striding around the house. The furniture is minimal. We’ve cleared everything back. There’s hardly going to be standing room. That’s if there ever is a wedding. There is nothing more I can do. Nothing and everything. If only we had another day. It would have been better if we’d held off another month. The weather would have been better. Not that it’s bad, but the breeze is cold. It’ll be draughty in the church.

The church, ah, the church. It looks so beautiful. The flowers. They are just amazing. Carnations and irises, low bowls of stocks . . . There are the cars now, all the relatives bearing trays and pots and dishes, straggling up the steps. The food looks wonderful. God, those crays, there’re dozens of them. I’m glad they’ve done the food. I could never have done it so well. And the cake. Our daughter-in-law’s aunty has made the cake and it’s perfect too.

Everyone’s exhausted, it’s not just me, they’ve been up all night. Still, I wish they could have got here a bit sooner, and we all have to get dressed yet. It’s cutting things fine. I feel faint, even a little nauseous, as if lights are switching on and off in my brain. She can’t be as tired as I am, nobody could be that tired. How am I going to make it through the rest of the day?

‘I’d better be getting along,’ says the aunt to the bride’s mother. ‘I’ve still got to finish off your hat.’ The aunt has a knack with things, clothes and cakes, she’s the indispensable sort.

Inside me, something freezes. ‘Hat,’ I say, foolishly, in a loud voice. ‘You’re wearing a hat?’

There is a silence in the kitchen.

‘Well, it’s just a little hat,’ she says.

‘You said you weren’t going to wear a hat.’ I hear my voice, without an ounce of grace in it, and I don’t seem able to stop it. There is an ugliness in the air.

The aunty, her sister, says, ‘She needed a hat to finish off the outfit. It wouldn’t look right without it.’

‘But we agreed,’ I say. ‘You said you couldn’t afford a hat, and I said, well, if you’re not wearing one, I won’t.’

The silence extends around the kitchen. She fumbles a lettuce leaf, suddenly awkward at my bench.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, ‘it’s nothing.’ My face is covered with tears. I walk out, leaving them to finish whipping the cream.

‘Where are you going?’ my husband says, following at my heels.

‘Out. Away.’

‘You can’t go away.’

‘I have to. I’m not going to the wedding.’

‘No stop. Don’t be silly.’ He’s really alarmed, I’m right on the edge, and he’s right, I might go off at any moment and make things too awful for everyone to endure. At the rate I’m going, there mightn’t be any wedding.

‘Come into the shed,’ he says, speaking softly, like a zookeeper talking down a wild animal. ‘You’re tired, just tired.’

I follow him. Inside the tool shed I start to cry properly. ‘I want a hat,’ I say, ‘I wanted to wear a hat all along, but I promised her. I promised I wouldn’t get a hat.’

‘I’ll get you a hat. Come along, we’ll go into town and buy you a hat.’

‘It’s too late, the shops will be shut.’

‘We could just make it to James Smith’s,’ he says. But it is too late, I can see that. Even if we broke the speed limit, I’d only have five minutes, it being Saturday. The shops are due to close in half an hour.

‘I can’t go without a hat. What’ll I do?’

‘You’ll think of something,’ he says. ‘You always do. Hey, we can do anything, can’t we?’ He pulls my fists out of my eyes. ‘What can we do? We can . . .’ He waits for me to join in the refrain with him.

‘We can walk on water if we have to,’ I chant.

But I’m not sure how I will.

Back in the kitchen everyone is tiptoeing around. ‘It looks wonderful,’ I say heartily. ‘Just great. Don’t you think you should be getting along, I mean, if you’re going to get dressed?’

They nod. They are not deceived, but they are glad to be excused. They have been afraid to take their leave in my absence.

They are gone, and our son and his best man are dressed, preening in their three-piece suits. Oh, they are so handsome. It calms me, just seeing them. As for him: I want to stroke him. My boy. In a suit. Oh, I’m square, when it all comes down to it. But he’s proud of himself too.

‘Y’okay, Ma?’

He doesn’t know what’s been going on, but he sees I’m pale.

‘Of course I’m okay,’ I say, and for his sake I must be. I must also have a hat.

I ring our daughter. ‘What about all those hats you bought when you were into hats?’ I ask. I think of the op shops where she has collected feathered toques and funny little cloches. I have a feeling that none of them will suit me. She is so tall and elegant. ‘I think they’re in the baby’s toy box,’ she says.

‘Have a look,’ I command.

‘God, I’ve got to get dressed too.’

I hold grimly onto the phone. She comes back. ‘There’re three: the black one with three feathers, the sort of burgundy one, and the beige one with the wide brim.’

‘That’s it, the beige one. I’m sending Dad over for it right now.’

‘But Mum.’

‘It’ll be all right. Well, look, I can try it anyway.’

‘But Mum,’ – this time she gets it out – ‘the baby’s been sick on it.’

‘How sick?’

‘Really sick.’

No one is going to put me off now. I think she is conspiring with the odds to stop me making a fool of myself. I won’t let her save me though. ‘Dad’ll be right over,’ I say.

But it’s true. The baby has been very sick on the hat. I’m sure our daughter shouldn’t have put it back in the toy box like that. I resolve to speak to her at some later date.

In the meantime, there is work to be done. I fill the sink with hot soapy water and get out the scrubbing brush. In a few moments, the sick has gone. I have a soggy felt hat dripping in my hands, but at least it is clean.

The husband and wife team, available for cocktail, waitressing and barman duties in the privacy of your own home, has arrived. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ they say. ‘You just enjoy yourselves, and we’ll take care of everything from now on.’

In the clothes drier, the hat whirls around.

Our son has left for the church. Soon we’ll have to go too. My husband is resplendent. He wears his father’s watch-chain across his waistcoat. His father was a guard on the railways, back in the old days. That watch has started a thousand trains on country railway stations....