‘Gone to the hospital — make yourselves at home.’
They tried to imagine where the hospital might be. The area was remote, and a hospital within close proximity seemed hardly likely. They wondered, too, why their host was at the hospital. The girls speculated about death and disaster in rural New Zealand and ran from room to room delighting in the quaintness of their accommodation.
Inside the floors were highly polished matai, flawed and original. To the right was a sitting room with an inviting armchair covered in faded red and gold. The walls were painted pastel yellow with pale almond stripes, and there was a picture rail (but no pictures). Above the fireplace was a Grecian bust (endearing Adam to the absent host) that was gathering dust, a frame minus its photo, an ashtray minus ash (he could soon fix that). In the grate, pine cones sat on yellowing newspaper, granted a respite, but sooner or later someone would set them alight.
Caitlin and Frankie bagsed the room at the back with two single wrought-iron beds; the mattresses were lopsided but the bed covers were white synthetic lace. It was the sort of detail Adam detested — all fluff and frill and no comfort — but the girls adored it. There were candles in the bathroom, the dining room and the bedrooms. The girls wanted to light them all immediately, but Adam insisted they unload the car and placed a curfew on candle-burning until that evening (and reminded himself to be vigilant).
The bathroom wasn’t so much rustic as rusty. The shower attachment was a crude rubber device attached to the bath taps, and when he tried it out there was barely a trickle of water until he adjusted the rose up to a particular height and angle. There was an enamel basin filled with used soaps of every colour and shape. Ness fingered each soap, sniffed, stroked and chose two for herself. Caitlin and Frankie argued over what was left, and agreed to try them all.
Oh, it was going to be a great weekend.
He had a room at the front. The double bed was barely big enough for two, so just as well Louise wasn’t here — she would have grumbled. A mosquito net had been hung from the ceiling to drape across the bed … romantic notions, he hoped, and not real mossies. The net had two gaping holes in it, so blood-sucking missions would not be hampered if he was wrong.
‘We’re going for a walk!’
From where Adam stood on the veranda, the vista was sweeping paddocks and grazing sheep. They could hardly get lost. Ness had curled up in an armchair in the front room with a book of poems. Adam succumbed to the tattered love seat out on the veranda — a squab that sagged. He watched Caitlin and Frankie running across the paddock screaming like … like only Caitlin and Frankie could scream, in a mixture of adolescence, childhood and something flirtatious. He wished they could stay like that forever.
The sound of bees feeding in a lavender bush had lulled him almost to sleep when he heard a car in the driveway. A harassed woman emerged from a station wagon, followed by two young children and then an aggressive-looking man.
‘Hello, you must be Adam.’
She thrust her hand towards him and he hastily stood up, woke up.
‘Yes, yes, we got your note. Is everything all right?’
‘No, it’s not, actually.’
He was startled by the frankness of her response. She turned and motioned towards her husband, who was carrying an armful of provisions.
‘These are for you.’
The husband handed Adam eggs, avocados, bacon and a large posy of parsley. On closer inspection, the man looked more troubled than aggressive.
‘Our daughter is lucky to be alive.’
He sounded as if he was going to cry.
Ness appeared on the veranda. She relieved Adam of the eggs and avocados and chatted to the children, who were bored and curious. The wife warmed to Ness. This left Adam having to continue his conversation, one he didn’t particularly want to have. But how did you ignore a statement like that?
‘What happened?’
‘I almost ran over her.’
Christ almighty. He couldn’t believe it. How far did you have to go? You could run forever and still there it was; whatever you ran from, it chased you.
‘She’s all right, I take it.’ His voice sounded insincere, insubstantial.
The woman turned from Ness, looked at Adam and back at her husband.
‘Yes, but only just. We’ve had X-rays taken, nothing broken, and you can see for yourself — she’s okay.’
Evidently the little girl who had almost been run over was one of the two girls now dancing around Ness, wanting to help her carry the groceries into the house.
He’d booked this place to get away from people, to spend time with his family. He didn’t want to know about other people’s problems. Everyone stood there. In the end it was Ness who rescued the situation. She offered to make coffee for them all. They refused politely. The husband had regained his sense of self. The wife seemed to have recovered from her anger now she’d told someone what had happened. They resumed their roles as Adam’s hosts.
‘Sing out, whatever you need … we’re just down the path here … and by the way, one of the elements at the back of the stove doesn’t work … and if you run out of firewood we’ve got plenty more.’
They were off now, back in their car, a family reunited.
Ness waved the car off and turned to Adam.
‘What neat people!’
Indeed, what lucky people. To almost run over your daughter — what a luxury. He swallowed his bitterness.
‘Yes, what neat people, Ness.’ More than that, he hauled up some spirit, gave himself a stern lecture about self-pity.
‘It’s going to be a cracker weekend, my girl.’
They drove to the pub near the lake, so they could join the locals watching rugby on the big screen, hoping to catch a glimpse of Richie. Late in the afternoon a tanker pulled up and a hose was hooked up, running from inside the pub back out through the beer garden. Frankie and Caitlin thought it was pumping beer into the pub.
‘Beer on tap?’ queried Frankie, delighted, sipping on lemonade.
Adam didn’t have the heart to tell her that they were pumping poo out of the pub, not beer into it. Some smart-arse across at another table said he could smell something, but Adam managed to distract the girls.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘That’s the South Island.’
And they looked up and watched what could have been clouds (or were they snow-capped mountains?), something faint blue-grey with frosting, fading in and out.
Later, because the girls were bored with the rugby, even though Caitlin’s mum loved Richie McCaw, they walked on the grey gravel and black sand beach. Over in an almost stagnant lagoon they could hear frogs winding up like lawnmowers with the choke out. A car got stuck in the gravel and the four joined the enthusiastic locals, pushing and shoving to get it started.
After fish and chips they drove back to their cottage under a sky drenched with stars, swamped with sparkle. The closer they got to their remote farmyard and the blacker it got, the brighter those stars seemed. There was no wind, just the vast sky and the chatter of three young women.
They lit the fire, and all of the candles. He made the girls promise to let him extinguish each and every candle at midnight. Ness agreed to read from her assignment. He had hoped to hear something from her creative project, but she’d been holding it close to her heart, not wanting to share. He knew Phillip had seen some of it. Still, he couldn’t let jealousy drive a wedge between him and Ness. So he mustered enthusiasm for Huxley, Burgess and this woman Lessing, hoping to learn something.
‘Ness, help a less-than-literary man out here. What is soma?’
‘Oh, I guess it could be the equivalent of Prozac … something to numb your normal responses.’
He was sipping on a really nice red.
Ness licked her lips. She took a breath.
Adam watched closely as she read. The slant of her shoulders, how they folded ever so slightly inward towards the written word, protectively. He tried to concentrate on the content but w
as distracted by pride. There she was, almost an adult, so clever, so passionate and so like her mum (oh, and her dad too: he’d have to give George the credit for her jawline, perhaps even her nose).
‘Sex as re-creation, or pro-creation.’ Ness spoke clearly, emphasising the syllables, playing with the meanings. The narrative was political and philosophical; it looked at the idea that sex could be both dangerous and life-affirming (well, he knew that). She was ending with something about morality and free will, when this was overridden by a fit of giggles from inside the cottage.
Caitlin and Frankie appeared in the doorway.
‘Sex as recreation!’
They harmonised in falsetto, mocking something they didn’t yet understand.
‘Oh, go away, you two babies.’
‘Settle down.’
Adam tried to be stern and steer the conversation into safer territory. He was at pains to keep his role as a stepfather on neutral territory. And he could never underestimate the repercussions of some stray conversation being taken out of context and reported back to Caitlin’s mum.
Ness knew what he was doing. She was a grown-up. He was flattered she felt confident to read him her assignment and share her thoughts. He wondered though, just how much of Ness’s writing was speculation as opposed to experience. When George had left, Louise was busy following her career and Ness had been an easy kid, taking on the role of the sensible sister (even though she was only seven). Perhaps they’d overlooked her a bit with all of their own personal dramas. Did she have a boyfriend at the moment? He didn’t even know that much. Maybe her devotion to study and the time she spent up at university were about a boy. He was tempted to ask her, but it wasn’t his place. If she wanted to share that stuff, she’d start with Louise.
‘Great stuff, Ness. You’re a born writer.’
‘That’s what Phillip says. You know he worked for Granada and the BBC back in the early eighties?’
Bloody Brideshead Revisited.
‘Yes, I’ve heard, many times … he’s told me himself.’
‘You don’t like Phillip much, do you?’
‘Oh, he’s okay. He’s just not my sort of guy. You know how it is … a bit pom—’
He’d been going to say pompous. ‘A bit ponderous sometimes, don’t you think?’
There, ponderous wasn’t slanderous. Phillip was a pompous ass actually, but no point spilling his guts on that one.
Ness giggled.
‘I know what you mean. He’s kind of vague, too, at times. But he adores Judy.’
There, serves you right, Adam. He adores Judy. And Ness wasn’t even trying to punish him.
‘Who adores Judy?’
It was Frankie, followed by Caitlin. Caitlin loved this family: so much intrigue. He wondered how much of this overheard conversation would be recycled and replayed back to him, via Louise, via Caitlin’s mum.
‘You used to.’
Frankie was being precocious. It wasn’t like her at all. Caitlin was the cause, he knew. She wouldn’t have dared say something so provocative in front of Louise.
‘You used to have good manners,’ he said. And he grabbed a magazine and chased her around the house, pretending he would catch and beat her. Caitlin hovered uncertainly, not part of the tableau, not sure if Adam was joking or not. Let her go home and tell her mother whatever she wanted. Frankie screamed, Adam growled and they ran around and around and eventually outside under the star-filled sky. The best thing about fatherhood was that you couldn’t take yourself too seriously, not ever. Frankie outran him and he was stuffed.
‘Truce,’ he called.
‘Loser!’
A happy loser, all the same.
Frankie snuck back in through the back door and he could hear her and Caitlin shrieking and yelling, followed by whispering and giggling and then just low murmuring, something about slut wings on a girl called Olivia.
Adam was out of breath and sweaty. He poured himself a glass of red, and half a glass for Ness who was still out on the veranda, now reading a book. She looked up at him, grateful to be his adult companion, and took the wine from his hand as if they always did this, making sure he understood that she was tolerating Frankie and Caitlin (a look of conspiratorial amusement at his dishevelled shirt and a toss of her hand back towards the house where Frankie and Caitlin could be heard going on about a freaksoid).
Ness’s book was an anthology of poetic forms — sestinas, sonnets, ballads, something called a villanelle, and the elegy. She had marked various poems with shocking-pink Post-it notes. Adam wanted to extend this moment between them. He asked about the poems, the Post-it-notes. Ness thought for a moment, bit her bottom lip.
‘I have a really sad one — do you want to hear?’
This was a serious question.
‘I’m up for it.’
But as it turned out, perhaps he wasn’t. And he realised afterwards that perhaps the question from Ness had been more serious than he’d realised.
‘“Child Burial”, by Paula Meehan.’ Ness’s tone had altered. She cleared her throat. The first word came out loud and a trifle strident, as if eschewing sentiment for dramatic effect. But as the poem progressed, her voice lightened, grew softer and each word landed like a landmine between them.
The poem was a mother’s retelling of her child’s interment. In carefully chosen couplets, she described the clothes she had chosen for her child to be buried in and then mourned the loss of light. Adam’s beating heart blocked his throat, filled his lungs, immobilised him.
And then, as if the poet knew him personally, she took the poem backwards, so that the grief of the mourning mother became a lament for the cancellation of the very act of procreation; so that the child, dead, would spill from her womb (menstruation now a murderous act, undoing birth in order to bypass grief).
Ness’s voice had a new confidence as she finished the poem. Undone as he was, he felt her compassion, knew that she knew and that was enough. More than enough. In all these years since Michael’s death, this was the closest he had been to a shared acknowledgement of his grief.
Muffled laughter erupted from inside, followed by Caitlin’s shrieks. Frankie was heard to say ‘gay’, to which Caitlin responded ‘feral’, then there was a chorus of ‘feral skanks’ and more laughter.
‘Mates, eh?’ said Ness.
She might have meant Caitlin and Frankie, but somehow he didn’t think so.
‘Yeah, mates!’
They toasted one another, clinked glasses and sat, their silence broken only by sheep coughing.
When they arrived home late Sunday afternoon, Hagen’s car was in the driveway. Adam guessed that Nakita had called around for another round of life coaching. He was wrong. To his surprise, and then annoyance, Hagen was at the breakfast bar, wine in hand, talking with Louise.
Since when had Hagen’s friendship extended to wine with Louise, he wondered? But he worked extra hard at not showing annoyance and tried to fake nonchalance.
Adam’s idea of nonchalance was to slap Hagen across the shoulder and shake him, asking, ‘And what brings you here to see me on a Sunday, old man …’ He knew in his heart that Hagen had known he wouldn’t be home, and that Hagen was here to see Louise.
They still had Caitlin with them. Her mum was going to call around to pick her up and say thanks in person. He could imagine the conversation on the way home. Caitlin and her mum unravelling his family and all the connections, let alone Hagen popping up in the equation.
‘Hagen’s helping me with my new proposal for the Queen of Air Points.’
Louise didn’t usually bandy nicknames about in front of outsiders, but she obviously wanted to be inclusive, make Adam feel part of things. This made it worse, because normally she didn’t care.
What the hell was going on?
Hagen looked mildly uncomfortable, but not especially. He was enjoying the ambiguity, Adam could tell. Shit, bloody Louise. She reeled them in — both men and women, whatever suited her current campaign.
‘Nakita’s away for the weekend. Life coaching refresher course. When Louise said you guys were away for the weekend, I thought what a great chance to do business.’
Indeed. He’d arrived home full of the joys of fatherhood, expecting Louise’s gratitude at the very least, but not this.
‘Hagen knows the Queen of Air Points.’
Oh, he does, does he? Mr Monogamous knew everyone, just like Louise. Air kisses, air points, you name it, Hagen could do it.
‘We had a great time, didn’t we girls?’ said Adam. If Louise wasn’t going to ask, then he would tell her.
‘AWESOME.’
A chorus. They gathered around him, Frankie, Vanessa and Caitlin, as if choosing sides. They didn’t want Hagen here either. And then Caitlin’s mum arrived and she loved men, and she hadn’t met Hagen. A real party. Adam was feeling sour and yes, much as he hated to admit it, grumpy. It was habit-forming, just like Hagen’s flirting. He watched. Hagen was distracted by Caitlin’s mum, who was fascinated by Hagen’s accent.
‘Where are you from? Let me guess … Sveden?’
Oh, Caitlin’s mum was a card. She did skittish and sing-song Svedish and Hagen loved it.
‘I’m Hagen from Copenhagen … actually, Århus … but anyvay, Denmark.’
‘A Viking,’ said Louise with just a hint of mischief.
Bloody Viking’s right.
‘A misunderstood immigrant,’ said Adam.
Hagen winced.
Oh, but that made him even more endearing to Caitlin’s mum, and Adam regretted saying it immediately. It was petty. He’d always made it a rule not to reveal drunken confidences. No matter that the drunk had turned up on his doorstep while he was out of town. No matter that the drunk had looked after him last weekend when he was a drunk diver … ah, that was a good one, a drunk diver. He liked that.
‘An accent is so sexy.’
Caitlin’s mum never knew when to call it quits.
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