A trivial pursuit

The sounds of home - their parents’ gentle murmurings from the kitchen, the clatter of cutlery in the sink, the kettle on the boil and coffee being ground. As familiar as the sight of vertical slopes along the Teviot Valley, shadowy blue fingers reaching in to the hills, skeletonised orchards and the slow winding magnificence of the Clutha cutting a valley far below the road.

Tom threw more bone-dry macrocarpa on the fire and opened the lid of the box. They had played since they were children, the same set. Marni long suspected that Tom had memorized all the answers – or was that just her excuse for why he so frequently won? The first time she returned home from uni for the holidays, they'd made a new rule allowing questions to be amended,  answers checked on iPhones. Which Vietnam film won the Oscar for Best Movie in 1978? morphed into which biographical drama in 2016. And still Tom won.

Tom absorbed facts. They soaked into his brain like spring rain into pasture. He could discuss anything from art history to scientific research, sports results to South American geography. Marni had always been the bookish one, the academic, her learning narrow and deep, and often short-lived. Long enough to get an A+, then forgotten. What’s the point? Tom had once asked, and she had no answer.

Tom set up the game: the dog-eared board, finger stained question cards, the familiar blue pink yellow green brown orange wedges and the circular playing pieces - pie-dishes they had always called them.

“Loser feeds out in the morning?”

“You’ll be getting a sleep-in then.”

“Hope so.” He rolled a 4 and passed her the dice. She rolled a 6.

“I’ll take that to start.” She stopped her piece on yellow. “So I’ve been thinking about what next. After I submit my thesis.”

“Oh yeah?” Tom picked up a card.

“They want me to do a PhD.”

“Is that right? I didn’t realize there was so much to find out about underemployed rural women. In what year did the Spanish Civil War end?”

“Oh God, I don’t know. 1927? There is, heaps more, and not just here either."

“Sorry, 1939.” He rolled the dice and picked up his playing piece.

“The Prof thinks I should do a comparative study, New Zealand and the US mid-west."

Tom’s hand stopped in mid air. “Seriously?”

“Sure. I’m tempted.” Marni hesitated, wondering if saying it out loud would commit her. “Or I was. At least I can, later… maybe.” His eyebrows drew together. “I thought I’d rather come home. Get a job, for a while. Work for the local women. See if what I’ve done so far makes a difference in the real world.”

“Yeah, good call.” Tom moved three spaces, and stopped on blue. “Let's play.”



Rosemary McBryde