Around a curve of the coast the sand was dimpled with bleached driftwood and the bush near the shore was thick and tangled. The beach ended in an estuary, green water running out through stands of bright mangroves. They looked across the estuarine flats, to where the steamy channels ran through the swamp. There was a sign warning them not to go further, because of the crocodiles. The salties could be three metres long, and they were aggressive. They would even jump up at you when you were in a boat. Marcus wanted to go to the edge of the mangroves, but Simon pulled him back. They lay in the shade of a dead tree stump, bleached white by sun and salt, its branches reaching up like arms.
Marcus poked the sand with a stick.
He said, ‘Elke went in the pool last night.’
Simon sat up. ‘She’s not allowed to do that. How’d she get through the gate.’
‘She went out into the corridor and round that way.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us.’
‘Claire said not to.’
‘But she could drown.’
Marcus looked at him. His mouth twitched. ‘Claire said don’t get her in trouble.’
Simon started to speak and gave up. He stared along the shoreline. The three of them were coming along the edge of the water.
They lazed in the shade. When Karen and the girls got there, he could tell immediately that something was up. Karen’s answers were clipped. She shrugged away and didn’t look at him.
He took her aside. ‘What’s wrong.’
‘Why didn’t you wait for us. You went ahead and left us. I had no way of catching up. We couldn’t call, you were too far away.’
He was exasperated. ‘Look around you. Look at the beach. The sky. It’s beautiful and all you can do is throw a sulk?’
‘You wouldn’t wait. I wanted to stop. I’m tired. I didn’t want to go all the way to the end.’
‘So why didn’t you stop.’
He jammed his cap on his head. His lips were cracked with sunburn. Jesus. Family life.
All the way back Karen acted hurt that he’d left her behind, and she didn’t thaw out until that evening, when they were sitting at a café in the main street having dinner. She sipped her wine and her mood started to break. She put her hand on his arm: making peace. He squeezed her hand but didn’t say anything. She made a tsking sound and drew away from him.
Claire said, ‘Stop it.’
‘Stop what.’
‘Elke kicked me.’
Karen said, ‘Claire.’
Claire went red. ‘It’s not me. You always think it’s me.’ She nudged Elke hard, Elke flung out her arm and a drink spilled across the table. Simon got up fast as the cold, sugary liquid cascaded into his lap.
Karen took Claire by the arm. She dragged her out into the street and told her off in savage whispers. Elke licked her sticky fingers and watched.
‘Stop looking,’ Simon told her roughly. He mopped the table with napkins.
He thought how it would be to live alone, without all the fights and bitching and tears. He’d had the thought before, but it had always served as a way of confirming how much he did want it: family life. He watched the young waitress swinging through the tables, tossing her hair out of her eyes. He thought about leaving. Living alone. Breaking free of it all.
That night Simon and Karen drank a lot of wine. They went back to the hotel, put the kids to bed and watched the TV news channel. He reached out for Karen, wanting her, but she pushed him away. ‘I hate it when you’ve been drinking.’
‘I’m not drunk.’
But he was, so drunk in fact that he forgot to wire the pool fence shut.
Karen slept restlessly beside him. He was hot and uncomfortable, scratchy with sunburn and dry-mouthed from the wine. He dozed. Everything was out of alignment, jagged, spoiled. Something was breaking up inside him. He had lost faith or conviction; a force had been unleashed that would break up everything they had. Karen believed passionately in the family. She thought everything was fine; she couldn’t see it coming, but it was coming, whatever it was. The falling apart, the breaking down. The fearful, disjointed thoughts ran through his head until he slept.
He woke later and heard the gate creak open next door. He went through to the connecting room and found Elke in her togs, about to get into the pool. She looked up at him with a blank, hard stare, as though they had discussed this already and agreed. He couldn’t be bothered speaking.
She slid into the water, and he followed her, swimming in his boxer shorts. They swam without talking, in the cool silence. The spiky plants hung over the water, making shadows like spears. There were strong scents of tropical flowers and damp earth. The water danced and shimmered in the dim lights from the hotel corridor. The cool streams swirled around his body. He thought of all the night hours he’d spent with the strange little girl; her silence that seemed to hold in it understanding, her self-contained, unchildlike ways.
She swam close and put her hands on his shoulders. She moved her thighs slowly. He felt her breath on his face. He closed his eyes and they floated in the silence. He lifted up her hard little body and set her down with a bump on the edge of the pool. He got out and pushed her ahead of him into the room. He put a towel on her and dried her off, then turned away while she put her pyjamas on. He tucked her into bed.
‘Don’t tell Karen we did this.’
She looked up at him.
‘I mean …’ He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. The water was cold on his shoulders, trickling down his back. He was suddenly chilled. ‘Don’t tell Karen I let you swim in the pool.’
They flew back to Auckland, landing in an afternoon filled with blinding rain. It rained every day for two weeks. The house had been rented out while they were away. It smelled damp and looked shabby. Karen went into overdrive fixing it up.
Simon liked the rain. He drove through the streets in his big car, between his private practice and the public hospital. Late at night he wrote in his journal. Elke’s waking was worse after they got back. She came and sat with him regularly.
One night he delivered a baby for a woman whose partner was drunk. The drunk man insulted a midwife. Security was called. Simon came out of the hospital at dawn. The sky was streaked with pink cloud; in the car park the drunk man was getting in a taxi. The grass in the park was all sparkling with dew and the first birds were starting up.
Simon drove home and let himself in to the quiet house. He walked through the rooms. It was getting on for six o’clock in the morning. He stood in the kitchen looking out at the garden. Elke came in and sat down at the kitchen table.
He thought about the baby he’d just delivered, the drunken father, the mother pleading with the security guard to let him stay. He thought about a paper he’d read recently. Research showed that girls who lived with their biological fathers had their periods later than girls who didn’t. The presence of the natural father suppressed development in girls. He thought, what does that show but that we are animals. Creatures. Regulated by hormones, by forces we can’t control. You can’t trick the body.
He sighed. He was suddenly so tired he could barely stand. He leaned over Elke and put his arms around her. He put his face in her hair.
‘It’s always you and me, getting no sleep. Why don’t you go back to bed, LK.’
She looked up at him, her gaze wide and blank. ‘Yes, Dad,’ she said.
Simon was on call during a weekend when a lot of the staff were down with flu. There was an air of crisis, of heroic making do. Everyone was tired; everyone had been rostered on for too long.
At nine in the evening a woman was wheeled in. She was ten days overdue, and the labour wasn’t progressing.
He walked into the room and picked up the chart. He read it and then looked at her. She was twenty-one. She had a round, handsome face, glossy black hair and green eyes. The eyes were striking — too pale for the dark face. She grimaced with pain, showing a couple of missing teeth.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Mereana.�
�
There was a hefty woman in a beige uniform at the side of the bed.
The patient needed her blood pressure taken. He went to do it himself, since they were short-staffed. He said, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’
He pointed. ‘Take it off,’ he said.
The woman in the uniform looked where he was pointing. She said, ‘Oh yeah. Sorry. I forgot. I had to go out for a minute …’
Anger and tiredness made him shaky. He said, ‘Look at her. Look at her.’
His pager went. He looked at it and swore. He said, ‘She’s in labour. How far do you think she’s going to get if she tries to run away. Even you could catch her.’
The woman smirked. ‘Sorry. My mistake.’
Simon and the patient stared at each other. She panted and suddenly screwed up her eyes.
‘It’s a contraction,’ he said, feeling her stomach. ‘You’re doing fine.’
The big woman picked up the plastic handcuff that attached the patient’s wrist to the metal edge of the bed. She took it off, giving Simon a hard, ironic smile.
Simon said, ‘Mereana. Your baby’s in the posterior position. That means it’s going to take a bit longer to push out. I’m going to give you something to bring it on. I think you should have an epidural. For pain relief.
She agreed to all this, rubbing her wrist. He saw the mark from the plastic cuff.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he told her, and squeezed her foot through the sheet.
He left her to the midwife and went to get hold of the anaesthetist. He got the patient set up and went to another woman down the hall. He went between the two for a while, then drove home. The drive took him less than five minutes. Later in the night, when he was writing in his journal with Elke beside him, they called him back.
The patient, Mereana was sweating, crying and distressed. She had progressed quickly, and they had allowed the anaesthetic to wear off so she could push. The drugs were making her shake, and she was vomiting.
The prison guard was standing by the bed holding a stack of paper cups. The midwife was peering between the patient’s legs.
‘Mereana?’
The patient cried and moaned. The midwife looked sideways at Simon, communicating silently. He bent down beside her.
‘Is she all right?’ the guard asked.
The midwife handed her a cup full of vomit.
‘Oh shit,’ the guard said. She passed another cup off her stack and carried the full one to the bin, averting her face.
Mereana shrieked. She clutched the sheet and writhed, throwing the monitor off her stomach.
‘Careful.’ The midwife connected her up again. Simon read the scroll of paper the monitor had turned out.
He said, ‘Mereana.’
She was hissing between her teeth. ‘Oh god help me.’
‘I’m going to turn the baby round.’
The prison guard made a moaning sound. She put her hand to her forehead.
They got her ready, and Simon took up the rotation forceps. He didn’t do this very often. It was difficult, but he was confident about it.
The guard did a little skip of tension and knocked into the drip stand. ‘You sit down over there,’ the midwife snapped, and the guard sat down like she’d been slapped.
There was a silence, just Mereana’s sobbing. He angled the forceps and tried to get a grip. Sweat ran into his eyes. The midwife blotted his face.
He got the grip right and began to turn the baby to the anterior position. Mereana cried out. You needed to be strong. It felt brutal. The grind of metal against flesh, the resistance of flesh, the strange textures of skin and cartilage and bone. It seemed to take a hell of a long time. The patient was swearing and pleading. The guard had her face in her hands. He stopped, steadied himself, carried on.
Finally he got the position right and reached for the next set of forceps. He found the head and began to draw the baby out. The woman was frantic now, crying, flailing her legs, reaching down and trying to push him away. He slapped her hands off, and signalled to the midwife to control her. The head began to emerge properly. The shoulders came free, and then there was the rubbery slither as the rounded belly squeezed out.
He pulled the baby clear and held it up. One look and you could tell it was going to be fine. It let out a cry. In a sudden comic release of tension he thought of getting the guard to cut the cord.
He cut the cord himself, and the baby was placed on the woman’s chest. It was a girl.
He looked into the mother’s blasted, bloodshot, tear-stained face and said, ‘Well done.’
They tidied up. The woman clutched the child fiercely, whispering to it. She looked up at him. Her green eyes were wild.
The guard stood up. She swayed slightly with exhaustion. He heard the jingle of keys at her belt. He pulled her aside. ‘You’re not going to cuff her. She has to feed the baby.’
The guard just shook her head and sank down in the chair, watching.
He walked out of the room. He went to the nurses’ station and wrote in a file. He smelled a sharp waft of sweat. The guard was standing beside him.
‘What’s going to happen to that baby?’ he asked.
The guard leaned on the counter. ‘She’s got a long sentence. They let her keep it with her for six months and then they take it away.’
‘Take it away,’ he repeated.
She nodded.
He slapped the file down on the counter and walked out.
He drove home. The kids were in their school uniforms and Karen was rushing around getting them ready. He hugged each of them in turn and said goodbye. Karen hustled them out the door.
He called Elke back. He put his arms around her. His voice was slurred with tiredness. ‘LK. We got to change things.’
Claire called from the front path. Elke wriggled free.
He grabbed her arm. ‘No more night book,’ he said. ‘It’s all over with that. I’m not putting up with it any more. You gotta sleep.’
She went down the steps. ‘Sleep,’ he called after her.
She looked back at him and rolled her eyes.
He walked through the quiet house. He looked into the rooms, at the brightness and order. He lay down and the walls whirled dizzily around. He thought about the patient. She would look after the baby for six months and then they would take it away. She would see it only when it was brought to visit.
He slept without waking until the afternoon, and when he surfaced he had a feeling of ease. A beam of light came through the window and made a dancing pattern on the floor. The cat sauntered along the hall and sat in the doorway, its ear revolving to catch sounds. Birds squabbled in the branches outside. Down the street, someone was trimming hedges; there was the whine of a saw. The wind made the trees swell and shiver, flipping the silvery leaves.
The children were playing in the garden. He lay in the sunny room, listening.
THE BODY
They were crammed in the car: Bennie who’d had to be dragged because he didn’t want to look at a dead body, the other three children bouncing and chattering, Emily driving and her mother, Beth, reading the map.
‘You’ve gone wrong,’ Beth announced.
Emily turned the car around. They drove slowly, peering at signs.
‘There,’ said Beth in triumph.
They parked. There was a languid silence. They were in Mount Wellington, on a street of shabby wooden houses. Number one, on the corner, was a tiny bungalow with a porch and a scruff y lawn in front. It was hard up against the concrete warehouse that had its entrance on the main road.
Emily looked behind. Bennie, her nephew, was grimacing behind his hands, shaking his head. He was a big boy, nearly ten. She tried a wry, ironic tone: ‘It’s meant to be good to see the body. It assists in “closure”.’ She scratched quotation marks in the air.
And Beth, who felt strongly on the subject, having been denied a look at her father when he’d died, and having dreamed he was alive for years afterwards, chimed in: ‘It’s c
rucial.’
But Bennie said, ‘I didn’t know her.’
‘You met her,’ Beth said good-naturedly.
He sighed. Deep gloom was Bennie’s natural state.
They coaxed him from the car, watched by Antonia and Paul, his younger sister and brother, and Caro, Emily’s daughter. He stood jigging, his hands in front of his mouth. There was a wide, strained smile on his face.
On the porch were two empty beer crates and an old couch. There was a big pile of shoes.
‘I’m not taking mine off,’ Emily said.
The door opened. The Reverend Matiu stood at the door in his socks. ‘Aah, kia ora.’ He stretched out his hands, kissed, made sounds of welcome and professional sorrow.
The children took off their shoes. Beth, looking guilty and vague, took hold of Bennie and yanked him into the hall, keeping hers on.
Emily followed. The Reverend looked pointedly at her shoes, then stepped back, allowing her to pass into the sitting room. The room was dim and very small. Net curtains covered the windows. A floral couch against one wall, a three-bar heater and a small TV mounted on a bracket high in a corner. In the middle of the room was the open coffin, in which Emily’s aunt Jenny lay tucked up in a white lacy nightie. She’d been brought here, to her son Don’s house, from the rest home where she’d died. Her hair was snowy white; her face was swollen and faintly shone, as though glazed.
Bennie took one look and retreated, covering his down-turned mouth.
‘Ugh,’ he said.
Chrissie greeted them. She was Emily’s first cousin, and the Reverend Matiu’s wife.
‘Come and see Mum. You can talk to her, see.’ She patted her mother’s still forehead. ‘We’re glad you came, aren’t we, Mum?’ she said to the corpse.
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