by Laura Elliot
‘Do you know my father?’ Excitement splintered his chest. His past was so close he could almost touch it. Heron Cove was small, his mother said. It was shaped like a horseshoe and everyone knew everyone else. ‘His name is Kevin Mulvaney.’
Someone flung more driftwood onto the bonfire. The flames spluttered and shot upwards, flickered across Dowser’s shocked expression. He released Conor’s hand and bowed his head, pressed his fingers against his forehead. Lyle’s face seemed frozen, his mouth open. The silence that followed was unbearable. Conor tapped the bongos. Just a gentle rhythmic tap but it startled Dowser into looking at him again.
‘What did Cathy say about your father?’ He spoke so quietly, Conor had to strain forward to hear.
‘Nothing much. Just his name and stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘About him and her being too young to have a baby.’
Lyle pressed Conor’s hand and stopped him tapping. ‘Conor, don’t—’
‘It’s OK, Lyle,’ Dowser interrupted him. He peered at Conor as if he wanted to see him more clearly. ‘Dowser’s just a nickname—’
‘You find wells?’ Conor tried to swallow but his throat felt scratchy, sore. He had read about dowsers, people with a gift, twigs in their hands, snapping downwards. When he gasped, the sound tore from his chest but he was still unable to speak. Scenes like this happened in books and films. They were played out in his dreams. He wanted to pinch himself to see if he was still awake but he was afraid to move, to make any gesture that would disturb the reality of this unbelievable coincidence.
‘You’re my father.’ His voice had been slipping up and down the scale but when it broke on this occasion he knew it was permanent. ‘Aren’t you?’ he demanded.
Fear pushed through Conor’s eyes. Why did he have to blurt it out? He should have waited, left it to his mother to tell him, given his father time to adjust to the idea. Instead, if the dazed expression on Kevin Mulvaney’s face was any indication, Conor had ruined everything.
For an instant his father did not speak. Then he nodded, just once, a movement almost imagined in the shadowy flames. Then he heaved a deep, shuddery sigh before stretching out his hand. ‘I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Conor.’
When he stood up, he was smaller than Conor expected. Not that Kevin Mulvaney was small. He was just a little under six feet tall, Conor guessed, but in his imagination his father had always towered.
The following day his mother was working in her office when he entered Havenswalk.
‘Welcome home.’ She turned from her computer and held out her arms. ‘How did it go? I suppose Lyle ended up in the usual muddled middle?’
‘I’ve brought someone to meet you.’ The pressure in Conor’s chest was painful. ‘He’s waiting at reception.’
‘Who is he?’
‘You’ll know when you see him.’
Her office window gave her a view of the reception area. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ She pressed her hands against her chest and sighed, a wheezy noise that alarmed Conor until she coughed and cleared her throat.
‘He’s looking for you,’ Conor said. ‘I told him you were here.’
‘What else did you tell him?’ For an instant, he thought she was going to faint. Even her lips looked white.
‘The truth. He knows who I am.’
‘Oh, Conor…’ She placed her arms on the desk and pushed her face into them. ‘I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.’ Her voice was muffled but he could hear the dread in every word.
‘Why? I thought you’d be pleased he’s here.’ He wanted her to look at him, assure him he had done the right thing, instead of sounding as if he had stabbed her heart.
She straightened and shoved herself upright. ‘Wait here, Conor,’ she said. ‘Stay here until I call you.’
‘But—’
‘Do as I say,’ she repeated.
Through the office window he watched his parents greet each other. They shook hands and stood staring. His mother must have cried because his father took out a handkerchief and passed it to her. She shook her head, pushed it away, and said something that made his father turn to leave. Conor fought back the urge to rush from the office and push them together. His father stopped at the door, as if he had heard Conor’s involuntary cry. He turned and it seemed as if he looked directly into Conor’s eyes, impossible with a wall separating them but Conor knew, in that instant, that everything was going to be all right. His father walked back to his mother and pulled her into his arms. They stood like that. Two pieces of a jigsaw linked so perfectly it was impossible to find the raw edges that once separated them.
Six months after his parents were reunited, his father moved to New Zealand. He worked with an engineering firm in Nelson now. His arrival seemed to open a window in his mother’s head and blow fresh air through it. She told Conor about Heron Cove and the Broadmeadow Estuary where she used to fish with Kevin for crabs. They played in the marshes, riding their bikes over the bumps: wheelies, bunny hops, ledge drops. Kevin had photographs of Malahide village with the high church spire and the trains running across the viaduct, the estuary seething under the arches before sweeping onwards to the sea. And other photographs of Goths, his mother unrecognisable with her mask-white face and crimped black hair, metal studs in her ears, long black clothes that made her look like Dracula’s bride, sexy and bold. His father frowned into the camera like it was his enemy. His hair was black, sleek like Dracula, and he had his arms folded, except when he was hugging Conor’s mother.
Conor enters his bedroom and opens the window. His mother is standing by the lake, gazing across the water. She is too far away for him to see her face but he knows she is staring beyond the lake, her thoughts gathered so tightly into herself that nothing else exists except the place she visits in her mind. Kevin is the only person who can snap through her tension and make her smile. At night Conor hears them laughing. The sound comes through the wall…and other sounds also. Muffled moans that stop abruptly, as if a hand has been placed over lips to stifle something intimate and private. Conor is on the outside, looking in on a love affair that belongs only to Kevin and his mother.
His father keeps trying to make up for the lost years. They go to rugby matches together and kayak on Nelson Swamp. But no matter how hard Conor tries, he finds it difficult to call him ‘Father’ or ‘Dad’. The words sound false, like out-of-tune notes. He likes Kevin an awful lot but it is much the same feeling as he has for Lyle and Alma.
His friend Oliver hates his father, or so he says. They fight all the time and his father often beats him with his belt. Conor has seen the bruises, yet, once, when another pupil called Oliver’s father ‘a drunken hori’, which was an insult no self-respecting Maori could tolerate, Oliver hit him so hard it took three teachers to pull him off. Conor would be angry if someone insulted Kevin but he could not imagine fighting so fiercely, the tears pumping from his eyes. Maybe that kind of love is formed at birth and all that comes afterwards, no matter how bad, can never wipe it out.
Chapter Fifty
Akona’s Place
Steam rises from the earthen oven studded with hot stones. Julie hunkers beside Akona, fascinated by the preparations involved in a traditional hangi. They will dine on the veranda. The table is set with a white linen cloth and cut-glass crystal. Lauren recognises the pattern. Olive Moran was a keen collector of Galway Crystal. When her marriage broke up, she smashed each piece against the wall of her drawing room then walked away, leaving Steve to clear up the shattered fragments. As a symbolic gesture, it was worthy of respect.
Akona prepares a jambalaya with rice, tiny potatoes and seafood. The aroma whets their appetites as they sip a pre-dinner drink. Peace has broken out in the camper. Akona’s presence has been a benign influence and they have spent the day relaxing beside the lake.
Akona puts on a CD of Clannad. The haunting voice of Marie Brennan singing ‘Trail of Tears’ washes over them. The Irish and the Maori have close links through marria
ge, she tells them. Her own family tree has an ancestor from the City of the Tribes. Sean Mooney was an immigrant gold miner who married her great-great-grandmother. Akona is in regular email contact with his descendants in Galway, hence the glassware and her collection of Irish music.
After the hangi ends, they move indoors. She switches on a CD of Maori music, a harmonious blend of female voices with war-like whooping males adding urgency and excitement to the gentler swaying melodies. Akona’s life seems so isolated–no houses nearby, only a rusting pick-up truck to keep her in touch with civilisation. She fishes and works her vegetable patch, keeps some sheep. She also writes poetry: the ultimate hippy dream.
‘Lauren used to write poetry,’ says Julie.
‘It never amounted to anything much.’ Lauren is embarrassed by the enthusiasm in Julie’s voice. ‘Too self-indulgent, I was told.’
‘By whom?’ asks Akona.
‘Her husband,’ says Rebecca.
‘It wasn’t just…Steve was right. I had to move on. He published that first collection. Do you really think anyone else would have bothered with it?’
‘You took the easy option and never tried to find out,’ says Rebecca. ‘You got good reviews. I still have them.’
‘You do?’
Her surprise must have shown because Rebecca says, ‘Of course. I was very proud of you.’
One of the reviewers described her work as a tentative and emerging voice. It seemed an inadequate way to describe the struggle between destruction and creativity played out in the stillness of her room. Stray words flicker…In the moon skidding hours…something about silverfish…Somersaulting silverfish…she tries to remember the lines but she forgot them a long time ago.
‘Let’s have more music.’ Akona reaches towards the CD rack and removes a disc. ‘This is a composition by one of our composers. No, not Maori,’ she shakes her head in answer to Rebecca’s question. ‘He’s pākehā. Our Maori name for foreigners, those outside our tribes. He spends his summers here. A reclusive man when he is composing.’
‘Niran Gordon.’ Julie takes the cover from Akona and speaks his name softly before handing the disc to Lauren. ‘Yes, we’ve heard of him.’
‘This piece commemorates the victims of that terrible tsunami.’ Akona slides the disc into the CD player.
Before the music begins, Lauren rises to her feet. Neither of her sisters glances in her direction. She mutters an apology to Akona. She is expecting a phone call from her husband. Outside, in the darkness, she follows the low swash of the lake. The island is gouged with the glacial sheen of lakes and rivers, and she has no idea what this lake is called.
From the house, she hears his music, listens to the flautists, their lush notes fluttering into birdsong, the lively urgency of a new day. Each note plays like mercury over her skin until she loses herself in the medley of sound that carries in its background the repetitive beat of a snare drum, ebbing and flowing through the babbling chorus of voices. A tidal flow ripples over the sand, the sensation so visceral that Lauren can see the golden beaches, the sea birds wheeling through the spray, children scampering in the shallows. The drumbeat persists but it is different now, growing more powerful yet still soft, almost hypnotic until it is overlaid by the dull distant rumble of a tuba. Slowly, inexorably, it gains momentum. The sudden trill of a violin screams a warning that no one, not one of those joyous voices on shore, can hear.
Always, when Lauren viewed images of the tsunami on television, she was presented with a sanitised version of unspeakable horror. Now she listens to the violin quiver a note so high it will shatter glass, wood, the brittle beach umbrellas, the solid verandas where people are breakfasting, unaware that they will never again feel the sun on their faces. Thousands of stories ending and thousands more beginning in the instant the wave looms and the scream becomes audible. She awaits the aching reverberations that will follow when the wave crests the shore and hears them in the requiem wail of strings, the crash of gongs, cymbals, note after note rearing and collapsing, electronic sounds she is unable to decipher, the thunderous bellow of an organ, and drums, ferocious in their palpitating measure before the music slows to a final heart-stopping silence.
When Steve rings, her body jerks so sharply she almost drops the phone. Dully, she listens as he describes the weather in Dublin, showery and overcast with a promise of sun in the afternoon. She tells him about the barbecue, a witty condensed version she believes he will enjoy. His tone warns her she has misjudged his mood.
‘Where are you now?’ he asks.
‘Somewhere on the edge of the world.’
‘Bush country?’
‘I’m fine, Steve. I’ve just participated in a hangi.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘A Maori feast.’
‘You’re with Maoris?’
‘One Maori. Akona. She’s been very hospitable to us.’
‘You’ll be doing the fucking haka next. This holiday is not only turning into a farce, it’s becoming dangerous.’
‘I’m not going to break that easily, Steve.’
‘Dresden breaks, princess. And you were not born to live like a knacker.’
She grips the wooden slats to steady herself. When did Dresden become a euphemism for unpredictable, irrational behaviour, slipping, somehow, into his vocabulary, weighing it with coded nuances?
‘I’m not living…it’s quite a comfortable camper.’
‘I want to speak to Rebecca right now.’
‘She’s busy, Steve.’
‘Right now.’
‘I told you, she’s busy. I’ve no intention of disturbing her.’
‘You even sound different. I should never have allowed you to go off on your own.’
‘Allowed? You allowed me to go—’
‘You know as well as I do how unstable your behaviour can be when you don’t take care of yourself. Are those leathernecks still with you?’
‘No, they left for the glaciers this morning. It’s just Akona and us. She’s part Irish.’
‘Pull the other one.’ His disbelief jars against her ear. ‘Next thing we know, you’ll be inviting her home to céilí.’
Lauren leans back and flings her phone into the lake. She pulls her pashmina around her shoulders, gathers her knees to her chin, hums softly between her teeth.
She sees a figure poised under the porch light. Rebecca, she guesses, ready to probe. She remains silent and her sister, after hesitating, makes her way to the camper. Lauren twists grass around her fingers. The rasping texture strings her palm, draws a faint line of blood along her index finger. She tugs harder before releasing the blades of grass and stares intently at her hands.
Lauren awakens, filled with an energy verging on elation. She no longer feels cramped in the camper or dreads the long drives from one location to the next.
‘No bleeps,’ says Julie. ‘Has Steve lost the power of his fingers?’
‘I mislaid my phone last night.’
‘Will I ring it for you?’
‘You can try. But I doubt you’ll hear it.’
Julie tries, shakes her head. ‘No signal. Nothing.’
‘I guess I’ll just have to manage without it. You should try to do the same, Julie. It’s a liberating feeling.’
‘Maybe some day…like when I’m coffined.’ Julie laughs and whisks the breakfast dishes into a basin. ‘Do you want us to organise a search party for your phone?’
‘No, thanks. Some things deserve to stay lost.’
Akona knocks on the camper door. ‘Ka kite ano…until I see you again.’ She leans forward and touches Lauren’s nose in a hongi then hands her a signed book of her poetry.
‘From one poet to another. When your next book is published, you will send it to me, eh?’
Lauren wants to say, ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ but she smiles and thanks Akona, holds the book to her chest.
Swaddled in anoraks, fleeces and jogging pants, they descend from the helicopter and crunch acr
oss the frozen snow. They hack splinters with their crampons, their breath heaving in a vaporous sun salute. Sculptured billows of ice rest like a somnolent path of lava between the brows of Fox Glacier. Lauren allows her sisters to move ahead. She stops to photograph an ice cave, domed and magnificent. Nature’s chisel is evident everywhere she looks but Fox Glacier, for all its sturdy grandeur, is a moving force that is slowly melting.
The glittering sculptures remind her of a business function she attended with Steve shortly before she left for New Zealand. The lunch buffet was lavish and an ice-sculptured swan created a centrepiece on the table. Lauren had admired the ice-blue shimmer and exquisite feather detail, the fragile elegant neck. By the time the guests departed, the swan had started to melt. As the glistening translucence thawed back to its natural order, Lauren had experienced the same ephemeral weightlessness, the sensation that she too would soon seep, erode, disappear…like the glacier she stands on now, the slow, erosive trickle from its cut-glass veins swelling the slate-grey river at its base.
Distracted by her thoughts, she skids and falls. Another nail cracks. She is ashamed of her own nails, which she started to bite after the accident. Rebecca used to dip her fingers in lemon juice to discourage the habit but Lauren was never able to fight the compulsive urge. Nowadays, regular manicures and the hard sheen of acrylic hides their brittleness yet they have continued to break throughout this arduous journey.
She bites against the acrylic and spits it out. Brittle blood-red slivers scar the ice. She bites harder. Sweat gathers on her forehead, on the back of her neck. She fights down a wave of nausea, remembering stories about animals caught in traps, chewing off their limbs to be free. Suddenly, the energy that had gripped her earlier is depleted. But her own nails have emerged, soft as jelly, pale, insignificant, stubby.
Chapter Fifty-one
Kaikoura
A lethargy descends over the camper when they leave the West Coast and drive across Arthur’s Pass. They have no desire to linger in the mountainous passes, and move at a faster pace, aware that their journey is nearing completion. Julie’s enthusiasm for cooking under gruelling conditions fades. So does any inclination to keep the camper tidy. Paul’s last phone call revealed a stark truth.