The Prodigal Sister: An emotional drama of family secrets

by Laura Elliot

‘She moved to the North Island and married again. Two toddlers now. We’ve become friends.’

  ‘Is it difficult, recovering from a divorce and becoming friends?’

  ‘We earned our friendship the hard way,’ he admits. ‘It wasn’t easy at first. Now, if we meet occasionally at a friend’s wedding or party, I try to remember what it was like lying beside her at night. All that passion…Now she reminds me of my sister when we hug.’

  ‘I can’t imagine being friends with my husband if our marriage ended.’

  ‘What then? Being enemies sure uses up a lot of negative energy.’

  A flock of birds rise above the lake. Suffused in gold, they spin in a spiralling loop and glaze the sun’s reflection. So much gold everywhere: lost gold, forgotten gold, fool’s gold. She touches her wedding ring. Impossible nowadays to remove, except with hand cream.

  ‘Are you happier since you split up?’ Julie is amazed to hear herself asking such personal questions. Yet she is easy in his company and the afternoon has taken on a lazy, relaxed feel. For the first time since leaving home, she is not gripped by an urge to fill the vacuum.

  ‘Not happier. Content. It’s a worthwhile compromise.’

  ‘Rebecca would agree. She likes her own company, if you disregard the horses.’

  ‘How did her husband die?’

  ‘An accident. She doesn’t talk much about it. In fact, Rebecca seldom talks about anything personal.’

  ‘Sounds like she’s been hurt.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’

  He nods, squints his eyes when a taxi pulls up. Rebecca climbs out and pauses when she notices him. The rush of colour to her cheeks could be attributed to the sun. Julie hopes it has another source.

  ‘Hey, Tim?’ She taps his arm. ‘Why don’t I put your name into the cooking pot tonight?’

  ‘Thanks for the offer but I’ve other plans.’ Tim speaks softly, his gaze fastened on Rebecca. ‘What are my chances?’

  ‘A whinny should give you a good head start,’ Julie advises. ‘Failing that, talk about the frog.’

  ‘So, how was it last night?’ Julie asks as she clears away the breakfast remains. ‘Did Tim show you his takahē?’ She giggles.

  Rebecca grins and flaps a tea towel at her. ‘Think about the zoo as a career choice, Julie. I hear there’s a vacancy in the hyena quarters.’

  Lauren lowers herself from her bunk and growls through a mane of tousled hair. ‘What on earth is the sense of being on holiday if we have to rise before the dawn?’

  ‘It’s eight o’clock and we’ve a long journey ahead of us,’ says Rebecca.

  ‘Haven’t we always?’

  ‘We’ve been here for three days. It’s time to move on.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out about Tim’s takahe.’ Julie is unable to resist pushing the joke a little further, perhaps by flapping her arms and singing ‘The Birdy Song’. Maybe another time.

  Lauren pulls on a tracksuit and sits staring into a cup of coffee. ‘This is hard labour,’ she declares.

  ‘And it’s going to get even harder,’ says Rebecca. ‘You’d better visit the dump station before we leave.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The shite site,’ says Julie. Lauren’s laziness is seriously beginning to annoy her.

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Time to climb down from your ivory tower,’ warns Rebecca. ‘We’ve all taken our turn at the sewage front. Why should you be any different?’

  ‘You use the loo as much as the rest of us.’ Julie, having already performed the task twice, is not prepared to be merciful. ‘All you need to do is unlock the toilet compartment, remove the cassette and empty it into the dump station. It’s as easy as falling off a log.’

  Eventually, still protesting and holding the cassette as gingerly as a primed grenade, Lauren departs for the dump station.

  Her sisters give her a round of applause when she returns. ‘Happy now?’ she demands. ‘If so, I request permission to vomit.’

  She grabs her toiletry bag and heads towards the public shower facilities. Thirty minutes later, fully restored to her normal sleekness, she returns. Just as Rebecca is about to disconnect the utilities, she bolts towards the small claustrophobic bathroom they share. The retching sounds she makes are audible but when she emerges, whey-faced and holding the side of the table for support, she brushes aside her sisters’ concern.

  ‘I was not born to empty shite down a drain,’ she announces.

  ‘Who was?’ demands Julie. ‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. It’s processed shite, sanitised.’

  ‘I’ve been shovelling so much shite all my life I can handle the dump station with my eyes closed,’ Rebecca agrees. ‘You should see what the horses leave behind—’

  ‘The nappies I had to change…’ Julie shudders at the memory.

  ‘Can we skip the details, please?’ Lauren’s voice warns them to quieten down. ‘Listen to me for once. We’ve done our stint in the camper and I, for one, am sick and tired of living in cramped conditions.’

  ‘I feel the same way every time I knock my shins on your suitcases,’ Julie snaps.

  ‘Leave it out, Julie. We’ve done my suitcases to death. Why not leave the camper here, order a taxi and book into the nearest hotel?’

  ‘What a brilliant idea,’ drawls Rebecca. ‘We just abandon our motor home and walk away. Maybe we should set fire to it first, prevent it being traced back to us.’

  ‘No need for sarcasm or dramatics,’ Lauren replies. ‘We can contact the hire company, tell them to send someone to pick it up.’

  ‘But we paid for it,’ Julie protests. ‘I can’t afford to stay in hotels.’

  ‘Steve will pay. This is just short change to him. Why not travel in comfort when we have the opportunity? You could at least consider the idea.’

  ‘Let’s vote on it then,’ says Rebecca. ‘All those in favour of Lauren’s proposal, put up their right hand.’

  Julie folds her arms and nods. ‘Two against one. I guess that’s the end of the matter.’

  ‘For the moment,’ mutters Lauren, and on that sour note they depart Queenstown.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Milford Sound

  Everywhere they look, it seems as if a divine hand has hacked deep into the mountains, releasing waterfalls that crash boldly over rocks or glint slyly between chasms. They are lucky, their captain announces, as they sail from Milford Harbour. The prevailing winds from the Tasman Sea usually blow moistly over Milford Sound and visitors can only experience its grandeur through a haze of mist or rain. This morning, apart from a few bobtail clouds, it seems as if the fjord and the sky have conspired to turn the morning blue.

  On deck with her sisters, Lauren leans into the breeze. Boats and cruisers, dwarfed by the sheer scale of the Mitre Peak, bob like a flotilla of bath toys. The sea planes, gliding around the barren pinnacle, look as defenceless as a scattering of storm-tossed birds. Beech, rata and red fern soar above them in a dense green collage. The captain explains the ecosystem of this fragile rain forest. The trees are rooted, he explains, on nothing more substantial than a dense foundation of moss. This, in turn, clings tenaciously to a cliff face. The constant rainfall creates a shifting instability within this sodden structure. Occasionally, when the rain is particularly heavy, the moss loosens its grip and the emerald forests slide into the fjord.

  Lauren imagines the seeping undergrowth collapsing. The suckling roots, suddenly rootless, and the trees with their high proud branches tumbling, pell-mell and helter-skelter into the icy reaches. How does it sound, this collapsing forest? Creaking, cracking, moaning, high buckling screams?

  Rebecca shouts and points towards the cliff path where she has glimpsed a chamois fleeting past. Tim Dawson leans forward over the rail and adjusts his camera. He manages a number of shots before the elusive creature disappears. Lauren swallows, fights to control a sudden wave of seasickness. Damn Julie and the pancakes she insisted on making for breakfast. Her diet
since she came away is shot to hell. Black coffee and a cigarette. A salad for lunch, steamed fish and vegetables in the evening. Impossible to maintain in the face of Julie’s cooking. No more, she vows as the cruiser passes through the thunderous roar of the Fairy Falls.

  Passengers brave enough to venture under the cascading waterfall hold out containers to catch the spray.

  ‘Come on, let’s do it.’ Julie holds out a cup and leans forward, demands to be photographed. Within seconds she is drenched, her hair flattened like a skullcap, her nipples puckering under her soaked T-shirt. Oblivious to her appearance, she grins into the camera and holds the half-filled cup triumphantly over her head. Lauren has lost count of the number of photographs Julie has sent to her family. What Paul will make of this latest image remains to be seen but Lauren knows exactly what Steve would think if she sent him a photograph of herself in such a state. Julie, suddenly aware that her top is as transparent as a seventh veil, and that a group of bikers are staring at her with undisguised enthusiasm, clasps her hands across her chest and runs off in search of her jacket.

  On the rock islands, seals bask in sunshine or slide sleekly into the fjord. Reef formations blend with the trees and reflect in the mirrored floe of ice. The panic attack comes with such unexpected ferocity that Lauren grips the cruiser rail until her knuckles whiten. She sees the indentations on the side of the Mitre Peak. The contorted features emerging–mouth, nose, dazzling eyes bearing down on her. She leans over the rail and vomits into the churning water before stumbling below deck to the bathroom.

  She splashes cold water over her face. Carefully, she applies make-up, lipliner, lipstick. Her expression wavers in the mirror. Her face is an abstract alignment of features, lacking depth and character. As Steve fears, the cracks are beginning to show.

  On the journey back to Te Anau the road twists and plunges. Pockets of snow glint in the gorges and in the serried mountain slopes. Locked into her own thoughts, Lauren closes her eyes. Sensory overload, she thinks. What is the sense of admiring a thundering waterfall when they will pass another equally stunning one shortly afterwards? The high peaks intimidate and reduce her to an insignificant dot moving across a foreboding landscape. Julie checks the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Ringwraiths!’ she announces. During their tour of The Lord of the Rings film locations, she so impressed the guide with her knowledge of Middle Earth that he asked if she had majored in the works of Tolkien.

  ‘No,’ Julie replied, ‘I just bred three hobbits.’

  Lauren glances down at the bikers. From the insignia on the back of their leather jackets, she recognises them from the cruise. With the sun flashing off their reflective shades and splintering the handlebars of their bikes, it is easy to imagine an army of Black Riders charging into battle. They divide and ride escort-style on either side of the camper, raise their gauntlets in salute before effortlessly reforming and gliding around a bend on the road. Julie, slowing as she approaches the corner, realises that it leads into a series of corkscrew turns. Suddenly she is face to face with an oncoming camper van.

  Distracted by the bikers, the elderly driver has swerved too far towards her side of the road. She sees his startled face, his eyes widening when he realises what has happened. He wrenches the steering wheel and the woman sitting beside him raises her hands to her eyes. Julie pulls her own steering wheel as the two campers dance an indecisive waltz. Gravel spits beneath the wheels. She veers towards a screen of trees. Branches whip the windows like demented wipers until she manages to bring the camper to a halt. They are engulfed in a dappling green canopy of leaves that rustle above a grassy embankment. The embankment slopes steeply downwards to a river. Rapids spin around rocks, a white-capped frenzy swirling branches on its crest. Lauren staggers from the camper, clutches her stomach. Her screams streak upwards like a bird soaring from the thicket of her chest and wing uncontrollably through the branches.

  ‘We’re OK…we’re safe. Calm down…we’re safe.’ Julie’s efforts to pacify her only increase her terror. She continues to scream until Rebecca grasps her firmly by her shoulders and slaps her cheek. Stunned into silence, she collapses into Rebecca’s arms, a child again, seeking protection from nightmares.

  A juggernaut is defined as a relentlessly destroying force. After the funeral, Lauren looked up the word in her dictionary. Words were important. On the night of the accident, it had not rained for a fortnight. When the rain eventually fell, it was a light drizzle that oiled the surface of the road. For the driver of the juggernaut, sleep-deprived from a long-haul journey, it was too late to stop the relentless skid that carried him sideways into the oncoming car where Rachel and Gerry Lambert were travelling with their twelve-year-old daughter. Lauren, drowsy and warm, still hearing the tinkling music and the applause of the audience, had too much stardust in her eyes to witness what was about to happen. But her mother, sitting beside her in the back seat, had seen everything in that split second as the juggernaut skidded from its path and veered towards them. Did Rachel Lambert have time to balance the pros and cons of survival before she opened the car door and thrust her child forward into the luminous night? Or had she spontaneously obeyed the same primal urge that gave birth to her daughter, all her daughters, before the roots of her life were ripped loose and there was no other sound except the screech of the night collapsing?

  At his trial, Lauren examined the driver’s features, striving to transpose them over the gargoyle face of her nightmares. But he was indistinguishable from any man she would pass on the street: middle-aged and of medium height, a blocky figure, his stomach beginning to protrude, bushy eyebrows. He complained about nightmares, post-traumatic stress. He escaped with a fractured arm, broken ribs and a five-year driving ban.

  ‘You sound exhausted.’ Steve rings as she is about to climb into her bunk. Lauren takes the phone outside and sits down on a picnic bench. The holiday park is in darkness, the travellers intent on an early start.

  ‘I’m not tired.’ She keeps her voice light. ‘I’m coping perfectly well. But it’s been a long day and I’m about to sleep on a luggage rack.’

  ‘Chuck it in, princess. The last thing I want is my beautiful wife coming back to me looking like an old bag woman.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that, Steve.’

  She thinks about their last morning together, how she danced like a marionette before him. How he stroked her hair, stroking and stroking until the desire to scream ran like a blade through her.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Te Anau

  Her sisters refuse to allow Rebecca to go on another date wearing a T-shirt with a badger’s face and a slogan about the cruelty of badger-baiting printed on it. Julie turns to Lauren, who is stretched out on the cushioned bench. ‘Have a root in your case, Lauren. You’re sure to have something glamorous she can borrow.’

  ‘You don’t wear something glamorous to a smelly bird hide,’ Lauren retorts, but she rouses herself and rummages in her cases. She bullies Rebecca into an Armani top and jacket, and a tight-fitting pair of Gucci jeans.

  Rebecca buttons the jacket and surveys her midriff in the small mirror Lauren holds before her. The jacket feels as if it has been waiting all its life to caress her skin. ‘I could probably buy a new stable for what this little lot cost you,’ she says.

  ‘Two,’ Lauren replies, and returns to the bench.

  ‘I’d be very wary of a man who wants to show me his takahē,’ Julie warns when Tim draws up in his Jeep. ‘Just make sure it doesn’t bite.’

  Rebecca moans and runs from the camper. When she looks back, her sisters are standing in the doorway, flapping their arms and singing ‘The Birdy Song’.

  The breeding centre is closed to the public and Rebecca is delighted at the opportunity to visit it. The takahe, a bird not unlike a turkey except for its hooked red beak and the blue-green sheen of feathers, was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in the late 1940s. Tim proves to be an informative guide. As he prep
ares for the photo shoot, he explains that although the female is capable of laying three eggs in the wild, stoats and other predators prevent her from hatching them. Usually only one survives, and to encourage the survival of all her eggs, the breeding centre has devised a method of rearing the young takahë before releasing them into their natural environment. Rebecca watches the baby birds being fed by hand-puppets resembling the mother bird.

  ‘Surrogate parenting,’ she says, after they leave the centre. ‘A puppet would probably have made a better fist of it than I did.’

  ‘That comment deserves some attention.’ Tim switches on the ignition. ‘I know the perfect restaurant where it can be analysed.’

  She is reticent about discussing her family and Tim refrains from asking direct questions. She regales him instead with stories about animal rights demonstrations and protests, and he has his own stories to tell. They are the last diners to leave the restaurant. Te Anau is the gateway to the fjords and travellers retire early. They stroll along the shore road and sit on a wall overlooking the lake. A ferry moves slowly towards land, its lights drawing circles on the dark water.

  ‘Julie told me your husband died. What happened to him?’ Tim asks the question quietly and Rebecca hugs her chest, shivers despite the balmy air. He is reaching for an intimacy he has not, until now, tried to establish.

  ‘Is that an intrusive question?’ he asks when she does not reply.

  ‘It’s difficult, Tim. I don’t find it easy to talk about Jeremy.’

  ‘Then don’t. I’m sorry I asked—’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell. He died five years ago. I’ve moved on with my life since then.’

  Passengers, disembarking from the ferry, create a brief babble of noise as they mount the steps and disperse in different directions. The captain switches off the engine and secures his vessel. He too mounts the steps and bids them good night. His boat is in darkness, the shore road quiet. With the departure of the ferry passengers, they seem to be the only people abroad.