by Laura Elliot
‘Cathy!’ The first woman to emerge shrieks and flutters her arms. Tears gush down her cheeks. No prizes for guessing her identity. The second woman is slimmer and moves slowly, like a beautiful dark cat uncoiling. His mother whimpers and then she is clinging to his two aunts like they are drowning. All hugging in a circle except for the woman with the square shoulders and long black hair tied high in a ponytail. She makes no effort to leave the driver’s seat. Her eyes are dry and unblinking when she looks in his direction. Then she turns her head away as if she cannot bear the sight of him.
Chapter FIfty-six
Cathy named the chalets after native birds. Strange names when she first came here but now they are as familiar to her as swifts and wrens once were: bellbird, kea, tui, kokako, torea, whitehead, fantail, kiwi, weka, silvereye, kaka, kakapo, takahē.
‘Takahē!’ shrieks Julie when they stop outside the chalet allocated to Rebecca. ‘That’ll make a cosy nest when Tim arrives.’
Everything about Julie has matured except her giggle, but she is the only one laughing. Lauren and Steve have already entered their chalet and Rebecca, without responding, opens the door and closes it behind her. Cathy walks on with Julie towards the Silvereye. Julie talks about the trip…something about elephants and bikers and singing on a stage with Seb Morris, and how her shins will never be the same again…and Cathy, nodding, smiling, opens the door of the chalet and escorts Julie inside.
What has she done? What madness possessed her to contact her sisters and believe that the past was a tamed beast? Rebecca knew the truth on the instant she set her eyes on Conor. She stepped from the car gripping the door for support. Her expression almost brought Cathy to her knees. But Rebecca had gathered her strength, as she had done so often in the past, and shook Conor’s hand, spoke his name. She embraced Cathy and whispered, ‘You asked for closure, Cathy. Is closure for such betrayal that easily achieved?’
Julie is still talking. She wants Conor to come to Ireland as soon as possible and meet his cousins. She stares around the chalet and declares it ‘palatial’ after the camper van. Her admiration for all Cathy has achieved is genuine.
‘The atmosphere is so tranquil,’ she says. ‘So peaceful and natural.’
Cathy is proud of what she and Alma have achieved. They work hard to create an atmosphere where their guests can relax and find an inner serenity. Rebecca’s arrival has knocked it aside as easily as a house of cards.
The bathroom fills with steam. Hot water courses down Rebecca’s back. She longs to wrap herself in mist and never again emerge into the harsh light of truth. His features are no longer abstract. They are as familiar to her as her own. She stretches her hand towards a towel and takes a step forward, then another. Carefully she dries herself. Her skin feels abrasive, as if some protective coating has been removed. The years since Jeremy died, the reality years when she built a new life for herself, extended the sanctuary, InterRailed through Europe, battled with politicians for funding, attended anti-blood sports and animal-testing protests–everything she has achieved and cherished–no no longer has meaning when set against the heartache she feels at this moment.
She sits at the dressing table and opens a jar of non-animal-tested body lotion, rubs it into her skin. Everything in Havenswalk is natural: handmade soaps, eco-friendly shampoos, natural woods and materials, lampshades with the texture of cobwebs, everything contrived to create a harmonious atmosphere. The biggest contrivance of all is Kevin Mulvaney. His handshake was warm when he welcomed her, his eyes defying her to challenge his right to claim paternity on another man’s son.
The T-shirt she pulls from her rucksack is limp and smells of airless spaces. Suddenly tired of shorts and casual tops, she flings it on the floor and rummages for a skirt. She locates an iron and presses out the creases. The dress she bought in Nelson hangs from a hanger, mocking her shopping splurge.
Cathy has organised a welcome meal in her restaurant. By the time Rebecca enters, the guests are already seated around the table. The only vacant seat is between Kevin Mulvaney and Conor.
‘Julie says you’re a vegetarian.’ Her nephew stands and slides the chair underneath her. ‘Do you eat fish? I caught one specially for you this afternoon.’
‘Yes, Conor. I eat fish.’ She keeps her tone light, opens the white linen napkin and spreads it over her knees.
‘Choice!’ He sits down again, leans eagerly towards her. ‘Mom says your boyfriend’s coming to her wedding. I met him last year when he gave a lecture in my school. He knows his stuff.’
‘He’s a friend, Conor. Nothing more.’
‘Whatever. You’ve got a cool website. I like the advice page on how to look after horses in urban environments.’ He flings back his head and laughs. ‘I saw The Commitments. Do horses really go up in lifts?’
‘Poetic licence,’ she replies.
‘Thought it might be. Is it only horses at your sanctuary or do you take in other animals?’
‘We look after injured donkeys as well.’
‘Who would hurt a donkey?’
‘You’d be surprised at what people do to hurt others.’
‘But what if that hurt is unintentional?’ Kevin Mulvaney speaks quietly. ‘Can such hurt be forgiven?’
‘Of course,’ Rebecca replies. ‘But when the cut is deep enough, it is usually done with malice.’
Cathy’s laughter floats towards her. She has developed poise, Rebecca will grant her that. Her face is calm. No stray or nervous glance to disturb the charade.
Occasionally, Rebecca wonders if she is wrong. Her heart leaps at this possibility. But when Conor fixes his eyes on her, a gaze so intimate that it banishes those around them, Rebecca grips her cutlery in a white-knuckle clasp.
Her thumb throbs, a pain that only manifests itself when she is tired. A bite from a horse. Cruelty breeds cruelty. She never blamed the horse for the ferocious bite it administered. The cuts on its neck were ample evidence of its own suffering. She longs to be alone in her sanctuary. At peace in the silence of a Wicklow night, her head pressed against a horse’s belly, Teabag at her ankles, gently purring as she nurses the horse back to health.
To have power in a powerless situation is difficult but she still has self-control. Cathy wants closure, to be shriven and cast free from guilt before she walks to the altar. She must wait until Rebecca decides the time is right for confrontation.
Lauren mutters an apology and leaves the table. The bathroom is along the corridor. She reaches it just in time. Afterwards, she grips the edge of the toilet bowl and rises. In a basket beside the mirror, she removes a small tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush. Her face looks sharper, as if the blood has drained away and still not returned. She rubs hand cream into her hands, pinches her cheeks to restore colour.
Steve is talking to Julie when she returns to the table.
‘You look pale, princess.’ His concern almost brings on another wave of nausea.
‘The night is so warm.’ Lauren sits down between them. ‘I needed some air.’
He lifts her hand, kisses it. ‘I’m relieved the journey is over.’
‘Despite your misgivings, we survived,’ she says.
‘It was arduous, none the less.’ He slides his hand across her fingers, rests them on her nails. ‘Eat something. I don’t want my beautiful wife withering away in front of me.’
Tomorrow morning he will drive her into Nelson. She is due for a maintenance overhaul or, as Steve prefers to call it, some well-deserved pampering.
When dinner is over, they return to their allotted chalet. The downstairs area is comfortable, with armchairs, a bookcase and coffee table, a galley for making snacks. A painting of a bird hangs on the wall, a scarlet dash of colour under its wingspan. ‘Kea’ is written underneath. The same bird features on a carving attached to the front door. The bedroom is reached by a spiral staircase. Louvre doors open out onto a balcony. Lauren steps outside and leans over the rail. She lights a cigarette, then stubs it out. The sparks scatt
er and die. One by one the lights in the chalets are switched off. Havenswalk is also in darkness.
Steve steps onto the balcony and rests his arm on her shoulder. ‘It’s time for bed, princess,’ he murmurs into her hair.
He holds the door open for her. She follows him inside. She opens a tube of night cream, smooths it over her face, her throat. Smile, Lauren, keep smiling, she whispers to her reflection. Dance on your toes if he so requests. The rose he offers you has no thorns.
Chapter Fifty-seven
Day Two
A text, arriving from Tim Dawson, startles Rebecca. She sits up in bed and reaches for her phone on the bedside locker. Tim will be with her by tomorrow evening. He wants to know how the reunion went.
‘A barrel of laughs,’ she is tempted to reply. ‘Especially when I met my sister’s son, who also happens to be the son of my dead husband. Go figure.’ Instead she sent back a brief reply: ‘All well. Preps for wed in full swing. Text u later.’ Abbreviations and taut phonetics have been the regular means of communication between them since their last meeting in Te Anau.
Heat rushes into the bedroom when she opens the louvre doors and steps onto the balcony. She had dozed throughout the night, waking often, instantly aware of her surroundings and what she must face when daylight comes. Now she sees it: her nephew walking towards the lake. A loose T-shirt and baggy calf-length shorts add to his awkward lankiness. He even walks like his father, she thinks. The sight of him scalds her eyes. A red setter bounds along beside him. Fastening the straps on his life jacket, the boy launches a kayak and glides across the lake. The dog settles patiently on the jetty to await his return.
Rebecca phones for a taxi. She flings her swimsuit and a towel into her backpack.
Julie knocks and enters. ‘I ate like a horse last night and I’m starving again. Are you ready for breakfast?’
‘I’m going into Nelson. I’ll have breakfast there.’
‘But Cathy has set tables on the veranda.’
‘I need some space, Julie. I’ll be back later.’
‘Try and make an effort, Becks.’
‘Stop calling me Becks. How many times must I repeat myself?’
‘I guess we’re all falling back into old habits,’ snaps Julie. ‘God! I’d forgotten what a nark you can be.’
‘I’m just tired.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re still furious with Cathy.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘At least you have the pleasure of knowing you were right all along about Kevin.’
Rebecca nods. Julie’s comment has been made without guile. It is easy to fool people. She has been doing it for years.
‘I’ve ordered a taxi. It’ll be here soon. I’ll text you later.’
‘Cathy’s organised a barbecue for this evening. I hope you’ll be back for it.’
‘I’ll be there. Now, go. I need to get ready.’
She closes the door on Julie’s disapproving gaze. The taxi arrives shortly afterwards.
The Pacific Ocean offers a calmer shore than the western seaboard. Rebecca dives into an approaching wave and swims until she is breathless, breaststroke, crawl, butterfly. On shore, she spreads a beach mat and applies factor 30 over her body. A neighbouring sunbather offers his assistance. Unwilling to suffer another dose of sunburn, she allows him to smear lotion across her back. Any hope he has of developing more intimate bodily contact is dashed when she thanks him and moves further down the beach. She runs along the hard-packed sand, jogs until her heart pumps and she is soaked with perspiration. She returns to the ocean, storms the waves again. Nothing helps to ease her anguish. She packs her beach bag and heads to Nelson for lunch.
Hardly aware of where she is going, she stops outside the high grey-stone belfry dominating Christ Church Cathedral. In Bangkok, she entered the temples as a tourist, intrigued by their ancient history, detached from the glittering Buddha statues that rested or reclined in their golden cloisters. Her interest was academic, the surroundings too exotic to move her to anything other than admiration for the long-dead artists who had created such intricate architecture. As an atheist, she clings neither to uncertainties nor ambiguity. Her faith is a donkey with a cross on its back, a bird wing-spanning the sky. But here, outside a different temple, where the childhood rituals of prayer were once familiar to her, she hesitates, reluctant to enter.
Overcoming her resistance, she climbs the granite steps and makes her way to a small chapel on the side of the main altar. She has forgotten the calming atmosphere of prayerful reflection. Under the glow of stained-glass windows, she bows her head and remembers those whom she has loved and lost. Is blood still thicker than water, she wonders. Or has its potency been so diluted that only the pain of kinship remains? She reaches into the pocket of her skirt and touches the locket she once gave Cathy as a present. She jerks her hand away, as if its touch scorches her skin.
The locket was in Jeremy’s car. Six months had passed since her return from London and Rebecca was searching for a gold, slim-line Cross pen that her father had presented to her on the morning she started university. Its loss had snapped another link in the chain separating her from her parents and she was anxious to find it. After searching the house she tried the car, hoping it had rolled from her bag and was lying under the passenger seat. When she slipped her hand into the groove between the back of the passenger chair and its seat, her fingers touched something cold and solid and curved.
The chain was broken on Cathy’s locket. Rebecca had stared at the silver heart for a long time before opening it. The coil of black hair was still springy to her touch, the photographs of her parents as clear as the day she cut them out and inserted them into the heart-shape.
Jeremy shrugged when she showed the locket to him. How many times had he driven Cathy to different places, collected her afterwards. Too numerous to remember. Forgotten journeys and incidents were recalled. Rebecca dredged them to the light and inspected them for flaws. To jeopardise her happiness when she had lost so much was unbearable. She chose to believe her husband. Anything else was too grotesque to contemplate. She allowed him to bury her suspicion under his persuasive words. To silence her doubts under his persuasive mouth.
Years later, when his face was slapped at a Christmas party, the gesture as intimate as the kiss Anna Kowalski would later bestow on his dead mouth, Rebecca remembered the locket and the dread that had clawed through her when she pulled it free from its hidden groove. Yet, even then, she had contained her fear, kept it firmly boxed until the night of Halloween when she lifted the phone and her sister’s voice released it.
Chinese lanterns sway above the terrace, tealights gutter on the tables, barbecue grills blaze. The friends Cathy and Alma have made since they came to New Zealand mingle with their Irish friends and family. The buzz of conversation and trill of laughter follows Cathy as she moves among them. She tries not to look towards the Takahē chalet. Rebecca returned earlier but, so far, has not joined the guests.
Steve talks to Alma’s brother about cars, offers to let Robbie drive the Jag. His presence at Havenswalk is impossible to ignore. Cathy hears his voice no matter where she stands. It is not loud but has a definite pitch that carries it above the normal level of conversation. Lauren seems insubstantial beside him. Cathy suspects she is aiming for invisibility. Earlier, she arrived back to Havenswalk fully restored, buffed, massaged and manicured. She was always acknowledged as the family beauty but her beauty has become as glossy as a perfectly executed oil painting–and she is lost behind the brittle layers.
Night has settled when Rebecca emerges from her chalet. Conor, on drinks duty, moves towards her. Rebecca accepts a glass of wine and walks away from him. Something glints at her throat, heart-shaped and once familiar. Cathy stands motionless. Voices fade, faces blur. And the stars look as if they could splinter from the brightness within them.
Conor weaves through the terrace with a tray of drinks. He had his hair cut today. It adds a harder, more matu
re look to his features and diminishes the resemblance until he smiles. He pauses to talk to Melanie Barnes. The Goth from hell turned legal eagle, Rebecca thinks, and wearing a dress designed to cause cardiac arrest on the bench. Occasionally, Rebecca sees her on television, her black gown flapping like the wings of a magisterial raven as she emerges from the Four Courts with an imposing bundle of files under her arm.
Julie waves and heads in her direction but Rebecca is not willing to endure another blast of Julie’s disapproval. She walks past a small, portly man with a thatch of white hair, who is busily turning a rack of ribs on a barbecue grill.
‘Try one,’ he says. ‘Prime New Zealand ribs.’
‘No, thanks.’ She forces herself to smile at him. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘There’s some veggie stuff over there.’ Ignoring her protests, he insists on loading a plate with vegetable kebabs. He is talkative, a retired long-distance truck driver from Dublin called Robbie.
‘It’s a real eye-opener being here.’ Robbie waves a spare rib in the general direction of the South Island. ‘Alma had been on at me for years to visit her. I’m only sorry I didn’t come when Doris was alive. She’d have loved it here, so she would.’ He falls silent, his face scrunched with memory, then smiles broadly. ‘Those roads, aren’t they something else? What I wouldn’t give to try Ramblin’ Rosie on the hairpin bends. She’d take them sweetly, so she would.’
Alma Gowan is Cathy’s business partner. Doris is Robbie’s deceased wife. Who Ramblin’ Rosie might be Rebecca has no idea until she realises he is talking about a truck. He nods towards Cathy, who is standing in front of a barbecue pit, talking to Alma.
‘Who’d have believed it?’ he says. ‘The pair of them have turned this place into a right little gold mine.’