In a Fishbone Church Read online

  Gene sticks his copy to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pineapple. Every time he goes to get the milk or the cheese, there is Clifford beaming at him beside his cabinets of stones, holding a perfect specimen of Atinotocarcinius stiltoni which he found at Glenavrick one Tuesday afternoon.

  Most of us know Clifford Stilton as the cheerful local butcher who had the shop on Durham Street for 40 odd years. But not everyone knows that Clifford’s lifelong hobby of rockhunting produced not only one of the most extensive rock and fossil collections in the South Island, but also an important scientific discovery.

  ‘He’s pretty famous in some circles, you know,’ Gene tells his family, who fail to be impressed. ‘He has the only five Atinotocarcinius stiltoni ever found.’

  Even at 85 years old Clifford can spot the minute signs betraying the contents of a rock.

  ‘That’s how he found the spider crabs,’ Gene says. ‘The Atinotocarcinius stiltoni.’

  Gene wishes he had been there. Perhaps he might have detected what Clifford had: the tiny tip of a pincer in the smooth surface of stone, as if something were trying to hatch.

  In the article, the Canterbury Museum commends Clifford on the way he opened the crabs, the care he had taken to preserve the contents.

  Some amateur collectors are so impatient to see what’s inside a stone that they ruin the specimen. It doesn’t take much: a chip here, a gouge there, and the piece is valueless. Mr Stilton has shown the utmost respect for his discovery. He spent hours tapping away (like a sculptor, imagines Gene), slowly removing stone, until the rare (perfectly petrified) creatures inside were revealed.

  ‘A very exciting find indeed,’ quotes Etta from halfway inside the fridge. ‘These are an entirely new genus of crab. The scientific community has Mr Stilton’s remarkable eyesight to thank – ’

  ‘It is exciting,’ says Gene, remembering the hours spent with his father on assorted beaches, gathering empty stones. ‘Don’t you think it’s exciting?’

  Clifford had good eyes and a bad heart, which was one of the reasons he became even more keen on his rockhunting during retirement. Ever since 1954, when his doctor had detected his erratic heart (and at the same appointment had congratulated him on his excellent vision), Clifford had been waiting for his Time to Come.

  Pulse 84, he would write in his diary, which he kept more as a record for future generations than for his own reference. He knew how facts could be buried over the years, how layers of interpretation could settle and harden. He fully expected the diaries to be published one day, and more than once in recent years he had urged Gene to ‘look after them’ when he was gone. Gene didn’t enjoy these moments at all, and tried to soothe his father by saying, now I’m sure there’s no need to talk like that. Which usually made Clifford even more agitated, and he would clutch at Gene’s sleeve and say, ‘But you will look after them, won’t you? There’s a lot of valuable information in them that shouldn’t be lost. God knows I can’t rely on Colin, or even Jim.’ And Gene would say yes, yes, of course he’d look after them, there was nothing to worry about.

  Clifford did worry, though; it was one of the things he did best.

  Pulse 93, he would record. The exercise helps keep it down, but it is a worry…

  His daughters and his grandsons were quite accustomed to finding goodbye notes when they popped round to visit, often scrawled on toilet paper. Goodbye all, the notes read, tried to phone but everyone engaged no answer at Beryl’s no bloody hymns please goodbye.

  Gene and Etta didn’t pop round, of course, living in Wellington as they did. They’d never been forgiven for leaving the South Island.

  ‘It killed your mother,’ Clifford told Gene whenever the subject came up. It came up quite often.

  Violet Stilton had died when Gene was thirty-three and had been living in the North Island for seven years. She had been in hospital a few times with chest trouble, but nobody thought she would be dead by the age of sixty.

  ‘It was very sudden,’ Gene’s sisters told him. ‘She just sat down on the couch and lifted her arms in the air and died.’

  Gene did not blame himself for her death. He had always visited regularly; after they shifted to Wellington he and Etta were summoned at least annually because Cliff was about to die. Once Christina and Bridget were born, well after Violet’s death in 1964, they had to visit him too.

  ‘He has an erratic heart,’ the Stiltons kept explaining to neighbours, friends, employers. ‘He could go at any time.’

  Then when they arrived in Christchurch, Clifford would be sitting up in his armchair sucking peppermints, and the kitchen would be full of baking and casseroles.

  Carnelian and Beryl would glare at Gene and say, ‘You don’t know what he’s like, he’s a very sick old man, you don’t see him every day.’

  Then Clifford would call out, ‘Where are my geologists?’ and Bridget and Christina would have to go and sit with him and look at shells and stones. He gave them presents: brooches he’d made from cloudy pieces of amethyst; polished discs of paua, in which, he assured them, entire landscapes could be seen; smooth lozenges of petrified wood; translucent slices of forest floor.

  ‘Hold out your hands,’ he would say, scraping a chunk of soapstone with a razor blade. As the white dust collected in the creases of the girls’ palms, he would look up and announce, ‘Talcum powder!’ as if he had invented it himself, or conjured it out of air. If Colin and Jim – the older, local grandchildren – were there, they would smirk at one another over their small glasses of beer. Clifford had given up forcing his demonstrations on them.

  The home-made artefacts were a bit of a joke between Etta and Gene. The girls joined in too, when they were old enough to have acquired good taste, or at least that of their parents.

  Whenever they were visiting Christchurch they stayed with Theresa, Etta’s sister, who lent them her car and stayed out of their way.

  ‘The last thing you want is me showing you the Square and the Gardens and everything else you’ve seen a million times before,’ she always said.

  When they lay in their tight twin beds with the pink candlewick bedspreads in Aunty Theresa’s spare room, Bridget and Christina would wonder to each other why they couldn’t be shown those things, which they had never seen. It wasn’t fair, they whispered, they’d come all this way and they didn’t even get to look at the shops.

  On one visit when Clifford was, he assured them, nearing the end, and Gene and Etta and the girls were driving round to see him twice a day, Christina mentioned this to Gene.

  ‘Da-ad,’ she said as she was climbing into the car, stretching the word into two syllables the way she always did when she wanted something, ‘how come we never get to do any sightseeing?’

  ‘Dad’s very sick,’ was all Gene said, buckling up his seat-belt, and Christina was so surprised, almost shocked, to hear him call someone Dad that she left it at that.

  ‘Wait!’ Etta said just as they were pulling out of the drive, and she ran back inside to Theresa, emerging a few moments later with a selection of Clifford’s jewellery.

  ‘Here, put these on.’ She thrust huge mounted agates at the girls and a greenstone ring the size of a golf ball at Gene, and she hung a chunky obsidian bracelet from her own wrist.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ said Bridget, leaning forward from the back seat, ‘don’t go swimming with that on.’

  ‘I hope there’s room in the boot for today’s lot,’ said Christina, laughing.

  ‘If he keeps giving it to us at this rate we’ll be charged excess baggage on the way home,’ Etta said. She turned to Gene. ‘Are you sure you’re all right to drive wearing that?’

  Nobody was more surprised than Clifford when he fell to his death at Glenavrick. Simply failing to see the edge of the rocky precipice was rather disappointing for a man whose sharp eyes had spotted the only five Atinotocarcinius stiltoni ever found. He was out with fellow rockhound Cyril Palmer when the accident happened, just three weeks after the article had appeared.
They were looking for more specimens. There were those who muttered darkly about Cyril’s role in the accident, citing ancient disagreements over bits of crystal, dredging up incidents that had either been forgotten by both Clifford and Cyril or had never happened at all. The business of rock collecting was a competitive one, and it was true the two had often argued. What really happened that day at Glenavrick, however, was very simple: Clifford, buoyant with the triumph of his crab discovery, forgot about gravity. Killed instantly, of course. Or rather, as soon as he hit the ground. Gene wonders if, as his father whistled through the air, his erratic heart even fluttered.

  Stanley

  Graham’s

  ashtray

  Nobody would call Gene Stilton a violent man. Etta cannot recall him ever raising his voice, and his daughters know he never so much as smacked them when they were little. He tells them this quite often.

  ‘Your father never swears,’ says Etta.

  Gene is concerned about the rising level of violence in New Zealand. He remembers the days, he says, when a murder was big news, when the whole country sat up and took notice. Now there are a couple a week, and nobody blinks an eyelid. He watches the news as many times a day as he can manage, and he talks to the television set, making outrageous demands. Video arcades should be shut down, he says; there should be a greater police presence in certain areas; stiffer penalties for thieves. A return to corporal punishment. The streets are not safe, he says, and nobody cares. It’s enough to make you weep.

  He is a difficult person to buy for.

  Whenever Bridget and Christina don’t know what to get him for his birthday, or Christmas, or Fathers’ Day, Etta says, ‘Well, you can’t go wrong with a good war book.’

  Gene has shelves of them, and, more recently acquired, several videos, which he has politely viewed. One subscription to a Reader’s Digest series on the SS spawned a succession of gold envelopes announcing that he may already have won a million dollars, or a car, or a cruise.

  When he retired, the company where he had worked for forty years, and not many people can say that, presented him with a fishing reel and a limited edition print of the battle of Chunuk Bair. Since they’ve moved to their new low-maintenance townhouse, however, Gene and Etta haven’t quite managed to hang the print anywhere.

  ‘We must get my Chunuk Bair picture up,’ says Gene from time to time, but as yet it’s still in the garage with the stag’s antlers and the stuffed pheasant and other souvenirs. Etta says it depresses her, and Gene isn’t sure if she means the actual picture or the plaque confirming his retirement.

  Christina arrives home two weeks before Christmas. She lives in Sydney now, and works at a hospital there. Her new Austrian boyfriend is coming over in a few days too, she announces. He is also a doctor. His name is Thorsten.

  Gene wonders whether he should move all the war books out to the garage with the other things.

  ‘I think he’ll cope, Dad,’ says Christina. ‘He has been to see Auschwitz.’

  Gene says that’s different, this is his home, and he doesn’t want Thorsten thinking he’s obsessed.

  Christina just looks at him.

  Odd things happen in war time. People help complete strangers; the most placid men learn to kill; women operate machinery. Gene’s father never went to war; he was a butcher and was needed at home. It was Gene’s job to tear newspapers in half with a ruler, and stack them on the shop counter for his father – or his mother – to wrap the meat in. He was so jealous the day Robert Dalgleish didn’t come to school, and it was announced his father had been killed. A few days later Gene had to tear and stack the papers reporting it. Dalgleish, Gunner Edwin Charles; Dalgleish, Gunner Edwin Charles, over and over, as if Robert had dozens of heroic fathers.

  Mrs Dalgleish came into the Stiltons’ shop for some chops a few days after the announcement, and Gene’s mother Violet quickly checked the top sheet of paper before her husband wrapped them.

  ‘That poor woman,’ she said at the table that night. ‘I hope you’re being kind to Rob at school.’

  Gene nodded, his mouth full of mashed potato. Just that lunchtime he’d informed Robert of his decision to let him into their gang, and to seal it had shot him and shoved a grenade down his trousers. Robert had started to cry.

  After the dishes had been dried and the table wiped down and Gene’s father had settled into his chair to listen to the news, Gene’s mother produced the sticky bottle from the cupboard.

  ‘One spoon and then bed,’ she said. She was plotting to turn Gene into Johnny the Califig boy, who beamed in black and white from the newspaper advertisement.

  Temper? Or is it that Johnny needs a laxative?

  ‘Don’t want to play,’ says Johnny amid upturned toys.

  Father: ‘Needs the doctor you say? Needs the stick I reckon.’

  Mother: Clasps chest.

  ‘No,’ says Doctor. ‘What you call temper is the result of constipation. California Syrup of Figs will clear up the trouble.’

  Now Johnny is a different boy.

  Gene always placed the pages with Johnny on them face up on the counter. He liked the thought of blood soaking his regulated grin.

  He held his breath and swallowed.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Violet. ‘Now go and say goodnight to your father.’

  ‘Night Dad,’ says Christina, leaning over the reclined armchair and kissing Gene on the cheek.

  ‘Off to bed already?’

  ‘I’ve had it. I’ve been on nights all week. And I want to drive up to the lake on Tuesday.’

  ‘All right then, Dr Stilton.’

  ‘You’re probably still a bit jetlagged, too,’ calls Etta from the kitchen.

  Christina pats Gene’s hand. ‘You look exhausted. You should get an early night as well.’ She picks up the newspaper, which he has let slide to the floor, and puts it back in his lap. ‘I’m picking Thorsten up from the airport at nine in the morning.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ says Gene.

  In the kitchen, Etta is loading the dishwasher.

  ‘So how’s Dad coping with retirement?’ asks Christina.

  Etta smiles. ‘Oh, you know, a bit of fly-tying, a bit of gardening. He’s been threatening to go shooting. What’s this about the lake?’

  ‘Ah,’ says Christina. ‘I wanted to go up this week. You couldn’t entertain Thorsten, could you? Just for a couple of days?’

  ‘But we’ve never even met him,’ says Etta. ‘And neither of us know a word of German. Apart from Achtung and Jawohl and so on.’

  ‘Mum,’ says Christina. ‘He does speak English. He’s been working in Sydney for three years, remember?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Etta. ‘Yes, of course he has.’ She starts the dishwasher. ‘I suppose we’ll manage for a couple of days.’

  ‘Great. Just as long as Dad doesn’t offer to take Thorsten fishing. He’s vegetarian too.’

  ‘Oh Lord, is he?’ says Etta. And I’ve gone and bought all this meat.’

  Gene swallowed. He couldn’t get rid of the taste of the syrup. His mother put the bottle back in the cupboard and handed him a cup of tea.

  ‘Take this through to your father, would you love?’

  Clifford had his eyes closed. He could have been asleep. Or dead.

  ‘Dad?’ Gene put his hand on the warm radio. The wood vibrated under his fingers.

  ‘The time is eight o’clock. Here is the news. Police are engaged in an extensive manhunt following the shooting of a police sergeant and two constables at Koiterangi today. A third constable, and a fifth man, an Education Board employee, were also injured.’

  Gene’s father opened his eyes. ‘Ssh!’

  ‘Stanley Graham, a farmer in the small town of Koiterangi on the West Coast of the South Island, had apparently had a dispute with a neighbour, whom he accused of poisoning his prize cattle. Mr Graham threatened the man with a rifle, and when this was reported to police, Constable Edward Best was sent to Mr Graham’s farm.’

  ‘Get your m
other!’

  ‘Reinforcements were called for when Mr Graham threatened Constable Best, and as they arrived at the house shots rang out. Two officers were shot dead when walking up the footpath to the house, and a third on the verandah. Constable Best was also injured. Mr George Ridley apparently went to help the police and was himself wounded by a shot.’

  That Stanley Graham case, now that was news. It was the talk of the school, of the whole country. Dalgleish, Gunner Edwin Charles was history. Stanley Graham was hiding in a deer stalker’s hut; Stanley Graham was living on tins of peaches which he opened with an axe; Stanley Graham could shoot the ace of spades out at a hundred yards. Gene wonders if Etta remembers it. They must tell Christina about it.

  Gene’s mother and his sisters were scared. Stanley Graham was possibly heading for Christchurch; his only escape route was through Browning Pass and over the Southern Alps to Canterbury.

  ‘If that bugger shows up here I’ll give him the biggest steak in the place,’ said Clifford. ‘Poor bastard must be starving.’

  Gene was not afraid. He had a plan. If he spotted Stanley Graham he’d sneak up on him (he could be very quiet when he had to be) and tackle him from behind. The man was wounded, how hard could it be? Then he’d bind his hands and feet together, tie him to the toilet and make him drink a whole bottle of Califig. And then Stanley Graham would shit until he’d shitted himself to death, and the papers would want to interview Gene Stilton, and photograph him pointing at the toilet.

  Gene had been in the paper before, sort of. With Clifford, when they found the fossilised groper’s head. They were walking on the beach when Gene first saw it.

  ‘Dad, look at this!’ he shouted, and Clifford rushed over to find him pointing at a large stone. ‘See the brown lines round the edges?’ said Gene, and Clifford nodded and said yes, well done, it might be worth having a glance at. Between them they managed to carry it to the car.

  Clifford said they’d put it in the boot, and began shifting the empty thermos and the extra jerseys and the fishing gear he’d packed just in case conditions were perfect, but Gene insisted on sitting next to it on the way home.