Kate Mahony – The Good Deed

Mahony LE P&W 3 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three November-December 2024

Aotearoa Poets and Writers Special Edition

Good seed, story by Kate Mahony.


The Good Deed

It had begun to rain and a southerly wind was already whirling down the main street of the city. It was 9.45pm and the electronic bus timetable showed Anna and Tom’s bus due to arrive any minute. It was then Anna saw the slightly built Japanese girl. She was almost hidden in her black puffer coat in the darkness of the shelter. She had two bags – one a large suitcase, the other a carry bag that looked almost as big as her.

Anna looked back at the electronic timetable expecting to see a notice for the airport bus which went directly through the suburbs to the airport. But there was nothing in the long list of destinations. Perhaps it did not stop there. Or it had been cancelled.

Their bus pulled in and the door opened. Anna paused at the entrance and looked across at the girl. ‘Where are you wanting to go?’

‘The airport,’ the girl said in hesitant English.

This bus did go near the airport but Anna and Tom’ s stop was well before that. Would the girl know where to get off? She turned to the driver. ‘Can you let her know when you reach the stop for the airport?’

The man shrugged. The airport was some distance away and she began to doubt he would remember the girl was on the bus by then. It was pitch black outside and the girl couldn’t stay here. This bus would have to do. She gestured for the girl to get on the bus with them.

The girl picked up her heavy bags and followed Anna and Tom onto the bus and sat in the space for wheelchairs and suitcases at the front.

Anna turned to a woman behind her. The other passenger was wearing headphones which she took off. ‘Are you going to Southgate?’ It was the final destination after the airport.

‘Yes,’ the other said.

‘Can you let this passenger know when to get off for the airport?’

The woman said she could.

Her duty done, Anna relaxed in her seat. They had left the city’s main shopping area and were heading to Anna and Tom’s stop. She had a sudden thought. It was already past 10 pm. Domestic planes didn’t leave through the night at the airport. The last plane out was well before 10 pm. Perhaps the girl was taking an international flight. She had no idea when they stopped.

She got up from her seat and went over to the girl. ‘What time is your flight?’ She had to repeat this several times before the other understood her.

‘Eight am. To Christchurch.’

Anna had seen the big notices on the front doors of the airport which stated that the airport building closed between 3 and 5 am. The girl couldn’t wait inside the airport and it would be cold and dark outside. Dangerous even.

She tried to explain this to the girl. Some of the other nearby passengers joined in, agreeing with her.

‘You will need to stay in a motel.’ Anna looked at the girl to see if she understood. Other passengers began calling out the names of motels that were near the airport but none of these were really within walking distance of the bus and Anna could imagine this girl – with her poor understanding of English – getting lost, trying to lug her heavy luggage along badly lit streets.

Tom meanwhile had been looking up a hotel within the airport vicinity itself – there was one, right next door to the departure area. He held up his phone for the girl to look at. ‘One hundred and eighty-seven dollars,’ he said.

The girl blanched. She looked downcast. Clearly the price was too much.

Anna tried to think what to do. Should they offer to pay the cost of the room at the hotel? For a girl they had never met before today. A stranger? What would Tom say if she suggested this?

‘No rooms available,’ Tom said, while she was still deciding.

She felt herself relax. They had done what they could. Surely.

A woman sitting opposite them leaned towards Anna. ‘My friend lives in your street,’ she said. ‘We see your husband walking your dog.’

The streets around their house were often busy with walkers. People did a particular route which took them to the rise at the top of the hill and then back along another street. Walking Oscar was Tom’s job. Anna looked at him.

‘Oh, yes?’

Anna suspected he had no idea who the woman was.

‘My friend has a little white dog,’ the woman said.

‘Oh, yes, ‘Tom said. ‘I know the one.’ Perhaps he did. Anna was sometimes surprised at the number of people he seemed to recognise on the street.

The woman now spoke to the young girl. She said something in what Anna assumed was Japanese. The girl responded.

Anna looked enquiringly at the other woman.

‘I learned a little Japanese back home in the Philippines,’ the woman said. ‘Not much, but I told her she can stay at my house.’

That was amazing, Anna thought. Problem solved. She felt so relieved. She did not have to worry about the girl any further. They were nearing her stop. A man in his sixties in a faded blue anorak and wearing a black beanie, who was seated nearby said, ‘I thought of offering the same, but…’

Quite, Anna thought. It would not have been at all suitable for him to suggest this.

She stood up as their stop came closer. ‘You will be ok with this lady,’ she said to the girl. ‘She says her friend lives on our street. She’s a good person.’

Well, she hoped the woman was. Too late to worry about this now, anyway.

Their stop came. Their house was at the top of a small sharp incline, a short walk away. She was pleased she had not invited the girl to stay. It would have meant her dragging those heavy bags all the way up the hill in the dark.

Later, in bed, the evening still on her mind, she remembered another time long ago. In London, late at night also, on a near empty street. Two young men with Scottish accents stopping her to ask if she knew any B and B accommodation nearby. They had got lost. The streets with B and Bs were back some distance behind them, a long walk. She didn’t know what to suggest. Then, unbidden, the thought came to her. ‘I live nearby,’ she said. ‘You can stay at mine.’

She shared a comfortable flat in a former city council apartment block with two flatmates, one of whom had gone to a musical festival, the other was staying over at her boyfriend’s. As she opened the door, the flat suddenly felt too large and empty. She ushered the boys in and showed them the two small couches in the living room they could sleep on. She made tea for them all.

They told her they were both hairdressers in Edinburgh, down to London to sightsee and hoping to spot some celebrities in Notting Hill Gate or Camden. The boys were gossipy and fun. She found some blankets and they set themselves up on the couches. It was getting even later and she had her part-time weekend job at the local florist’s to go to in the morning. They said their good nights amicably.

She had brushed her teeth and removed her make up in the bathroom and then gone into her bedroom. She had got into her own bed. She had been unprepared for the cold harsh fear she would feel once she had pulled the cover up to her face.

What if they attacked her? What if they murdered her? For most of the night, she lay awake.

The night stuttered on until eventually it was morning. The two lads made their farewells presenting her with an array of mini sample hair-dressing products. They were immensely grateful. They both pecked her on the cheek. She went back to bed after they left, slept for a time, and was late for work. She lied to the florist. Her lie was long and involved but she could not face explaining she had let two unknown young men sleep on couches in her flat for an entire night and because of this had been unable to sleep. The craziness of it.

Now as she recalled this event from her long ago past, she felt guilty. She had allowed an unknown girl to stay with a kind woman who she also didn’t know. The girl could have done something to the woman. Murdered her in the dead of night. She knew neither of their names.

She kept an eye on the news for the next few days. Nothing.

Two weeks passed. It had rained heavily but had now stopped and she and Tom went out for a walk with Oscar on the Saturday afternoon. Two women with a little white dog approached them from further down the hill, one waving excitedly. It was the woman from the bus. She was happy and smiling and very much alive. She told them about taking the girl back to her house that night. It was very late and her mother-in-law, who lived with her and her husband, had been astonished to see her arrive with a stranger. They offered the girl a futon to sleep on. She was delighted to see it, the woman said.

The woman’s mother-in-law had made the girl a hot chocolate drink and they had all talked a while. The girl explained she had travelled to Auckland for a job but it hadn’t worked out. She was intending to go back to Christchurch where she had previously lived. She was 31 years of age. Not the ten years younger she had looked at the bus shelter. The woman from the bus was pleased to share all this.

Not only that, but in the morning, the husband offered to drive the girl to the nearby airport. He needed to fill up with petrol anyway, he had said. The girl had handed him some cash for petrol, as a thanks when he dropped her off.

Anna was silent. She wasn’t sure what to say. She thought of “All’s well that ends well.” Instead, she said to the woman that she had done a good deed. ‘You are a good person.’
‘No.’ the woman said looking steadily at Anna. ‘I did it, because once I was stranded at Sydney airport and no one helped me. So I knew what it was like for her.’

Anna opened her mouth. She would tell the other woman about what had happened in London, how she, too, had reached out late at night, also to help strangers. They were not so different, she could say. But Oscar saw another dog coming towards them and started straining at his leech and the little white dog became agitated.

It occurred to her as they walked away from the women that she was now a different more cautious person. And she wasn’t sure she liked her.


© Kate Mahony

Kate Mahony’s short fiction has been widely published in New Zealand and internationally and been shortlisted and longlisted in international competitions. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Litro New York (United States), Meniscus (Australia) Blue Nib (Ireland) Fiction Kitchen (Berlin), Fictive Dream (United Kingdom) and in New Zealand in takahē, Blackmail Press, Best New Zealand Fiction Vol 6, Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand 2018, Flash Frontier and Mayhem. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. Her novel, Secrets of the Land, published by Cloud Ink Press, was voted number 21 in the Whitcoulls Top 100 books, 2024-2025 www.katemahonyauthor.com

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