Bromhead by Peter Bromhead

Author:Peter Bromhead [Bromhead, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743487273
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

17

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

When a girlfriend once invited me to spend New Year’s Eve at her parents’ house in Rotorua, I readily accepted as I had no other plans. At the time I was a bit of an invalid — I was recovering from a fall after tripping over a concrete ledge in a city parking building on my way to work and was nursing a couple of cracked ribs, and the editor had insisted that I take a few days off to recover. It was close to the Christmas holidays, so the timing was perfect. Anyone who has suffered ribcage damage will know how difficult and painful it is: the affliction affects one’s breathing and the ability to laugh or cough.

Anne’s parents, Moya and Gordon, greeted me with caution and assigned me to a separate small bedroom, as far away from their only daughter as possible.

My hosts were a conservative couple with unusually fastidious ideas about domestic hygiene. Not only did they keep a spotless house, they were seemingly mesmerised by the domestic actions of their cat: the moment the moggie stirred, Gordon or Moya would hurriedly spring into action to make sure it was sitting on fresh newspaper. ‘We don’t want fur all over the carpet,’ Moya would murmur testily, and Gordon would nod in stern agreement. They seemed to spend a lot of time picking up microscopic bits of cat fur — it was a major preoccupation for them around the house.

It was their usual habit to go to bed early, but on New Year’s Eve everybody stayed up to watch events on television. Earlier, Moya had cooked an excellent roast dinner and, suitably wined and dined, I was content to doze in front of their television waiting for the magic hour to strike. Sometime around 10 p.m. I decided I needed to have a session on the toilet before seeing the New Year in, so I discreetly rose and slipped away into the bathroom — a small cubicle that had the hygiene standards of a hospital operating theatre. I’d had a bit of a struggle over the past few days in the bowel department: I blamed a prescription a doctor had given me in early December for a possible peptic ulcer — stuff that had insidiously turned my waste matter into concrete blocks. (Apparently the medical practitioner had forgotten to give me an antidote prescription to counterbalance the potential cement mix.)

Anyhow, I now found myself straining and puffing away, sitting on a toilet belonging to a family of comparative strangers and feeling increasingly uncomfortable and apprehensive as minutes turned into an hour and continued to roll around towards midnight, when Gordon intended to break open a small bottle of bubbles to celebrate the occasion.

At some stage the family became alarmed at my prolonged absence and Anne came and whispered at the toilet door to ask if I was feeling okay. In a moment of supreme embarrassment I had to admit that no, I

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