by Laura Elliot
‘Better late than never, don’t you agree?’
‘But Rebecca’s gone. Why did she just bugger off like that?’
‘How many times must I repeat myself? I don’t know.’
‘You must know.’
‘She hates me. OK? Is that answer good enough for you? She hates me and she hates Kevin.’
‘Why? That’s all I want to know. Why does she hate us?’
‘Not us. She doesn’t hate you—’
‘Yes, she does. I saw it on her face as soon as she saw me.’
Her simplistic explanation insults his intelligence. Conor watches her moving around the marquee. It is taking shape, fluttering and rising like an enormous air balloon. His glamorous aunt appears on her balcony. She leans her arms on the rails, a cigarette between her fingers. He leaves Havenswalk and walks across the lawn towards her. Large sunglasses cover her eyes, a sunhat shades her face. He waves to attract her attention and she beckons at him to come up.
Her bedroom smells of perfume. It clings to her when she walks to the balcony carrying two tall glasses of lemon juice.
‘Where’s Uncle Steve?’ he asks.
‘He’s taken over Cathy’s office.’ She taps her fingernail against the glass and smiles. ‘I believe you’re visiting Ireland. You’ll have to stay with us also.’
‘Of course,’ he replies politely. ‘I’m hoping to work in Rebecca’s sanctuary as well.’
‘Julie’s boys often help her in the stables and the clinic.’
‘I wonder what she’s doing now?’
‘Knowing Becks, she’s probably chasing geckos through the woods.’
‘There are geckos here. And I was going to show her the glow-worm grotto. Have you seen it yet?’
‘Not yet. I believe it’s beautiful.’
‘Yes.’ Her dark sunglasses unnerve him. He wants her to take them off so that he can see her eyes. ‘Is Rebecca the reason Mom was forced to run away from home?’
‘No one forced Cathy to leave—’
‘Then why did she leave?’
‘I don’t know, Conor.’ Lauren shakes her head. ‘She left without giving us a reason.’
‘Because of me?’
‘She was expecting you, yes. But we would have looked after her—’
‘Why didn’t my father look after her?’
‘Kevin was young too.’
‘He mustn’t have wanted anything to do with me.’
‘That’s not true either. Cathy was gone before any of us had a chance to help her.’
‘I wish she hadn’t run away.’
‘I ran away too, only in a different way.’
‘Where did you run to?’
She touches her chest, her hand resting above the V of her dress. ‘In here, Conor.’
He gulps his drink, unsure of what she means. ‘I hate secrets.’ He blurts out the words before he has a chance to think about them.
‘But life would be excruciating if there were no secrets.’ Ice tinkles in her glass when she raises it to her lips.
‘It would be more honest.’
‘Honest, yes. But impossible to bear.’ Suddenly, she stands up and says, ‘Excuse me, Conor,’ before hurrying from the balcony.
He finishes his drink, unsure whether he should leave or stay. The marquee is fully assembled. His mother stands back, her hands on her hips, and surveys it.
He hears the cistern flushing in the bathroom, the door opening and closing. When his aunt comes back, her sunhat is missing and her sunglasses are pushed into her hair. She refills his glass.
‘I’m so pleased everything worked out for Cathy. It must have been a wonderful feeling when you met your father.’
‘Yes.’ He nods vigorously. ‘But I’m sorry he missed most of my life.’
‘You can always make up for lost time.’
‘How?’
She touches her cheek with her index finger and looks thoughtful. ‘Now that you ask, I don’t believe time is that obliging.’ She yawns and pulls her sunglasses over her eyes. Her nails are bright red talons. ‘I’m going to lie down for a little while,’ she says. ‘I’m still recovering from the camper and need my beauty sleep.’
‘No you don’t,’ he replies. ‘Sleep couldn’t make you any more beautiful than you already are.’ He offers the compliment with unselfconscious ease. Instead of being pleased, her smile looks pasted on. She taps her cigarette hard with her finger, even though there is no ash to flick and says, ‘My goodness, Conor, I never realised you were such a charmer.’
Her sisters know. Cathy has sensed the realisation dawning on them, seen it in the quizzing glances they bestow on her son. After the wedding rehearsal, she invites them to the sun room. They listen without interrupting when she tells them about the night everything glistened on a silver stage and how, when she found there was no way back, she could only run forward.
Hatred, Jeremy once claimed, was so akin to love that it became a fine line vibrating. Wrong…wrong. Cathy’s hatred towards him never vibrated in any direction. It was a tumour rooted deep in her heart. Thanks to Alma, fostering, nourishing, loving Alma with no degree in psychology, no trained insight into the complexities of conscience and penitence, Cathy’s anger was turned into self-awareness and she let him go. Instead of seeing him in Conor’s features, she cut the tumour from its stem and gave her son his own unique identity.
Mel phoned her with news of Jeremy’s sudden death. The following day, Cathy took to her bed. Psychosomatic symptoms. She knew enough about the subconscious to recognise when her body had to let go. She allowed her temperature to rage and her skin to ache, her lungs to fill with the mucus of grief.
‘You fucked someone and I’m the result.’ Conor stood above her bed and cast this sullen profanity at her. His school yard language had finally shocked her into his need to understand the other half of his existence. How could she tell him the truth? Rape…the word too harsh to place on his young shoulders. In that moment of weakness she lied to her son.
She never forgot the night in Kevin’s white room. His clumsy attempts to unbutton her dress, his hands trembling on her breasts. It was as near to the truth as she dared to go. In the years following that lie, she began to believe her fantasy, almost. And then it became reality. Everything turned to gold when he came back into her life. But its dazzle had blinded her, delusions and illusions distorting her judgement.
When she falls silent, Julie, dry-eyed for once, rocks her in her arms. Lauren links her fingers, presses her hands against her stomach.
‘Rebecca was in London looking after me that night. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I’m to blame for everything.’
‘What exactly is everything?’ Julie asks.
‘For killing them,’ Lauren replies. ‘And for all that followed.’
For an instant, her expression reminds Cathy of the young secretive girl, with her bleak poetry and slender damaged wrists.
‘When are you going to stop punishing yourself?’ Cathy asks the question gently. Lauren has bled a river trying to erase the memory of the rainy night that changed their lives. But guilt is a needy bitch, not easily assuaged, and Lauren must find her own peace.
Tired from horse trekking on Cape Farewell, they book a cabin and retire early. Rebecca awakens during the night. The cabin door is open. Tim turns when she steps into the star-studded darkness and raises his finger to his lips.
‘Listen,’ he whispers, and points towards a dense arch of shrubbery. ‘That’s a kiwi. The male.’
‘How do you know?’ Whispering also, she strains forward to hear its cry, a high-pitched wheeing call, each note distinctly separate.
‘The call is sharper, more defined.’ His breath is warm on her neck. ‘Shush, his mate is answering.’
The female cry is pitched at a deeper level, as if the effort of calling out demands a hoarse, more laboured response. Rebecca listens to their duet, their unseen manoeuvrings as they scavenge the undergrowth for food. When their cries fade int
o the night, she and Tim return to bed and to each other’s arms.
Chapter Sixty
Day Five
A lifetime of stories have been heard and shared. Tim drives slowly, taking the corkscrew bends with assurance. This is his landscape. Rebecca feels no desire to organise, fret, worry, challenge. As her mind relaxes, the anger that drove her from Havenswalk keeps slipping from her grasp. Questions intrude at unexpected moments. Tim does not ask them but she sees them in his quizzing gaze, hears them in his thoughtful silences.
Havenswalk is empty. The guests have gone to visit an art gallery in Nelson. His father is working and his mother is still adding ticks to her to-do wedding list. Conor places his hand under his pillow and draws out the letter he took from the wicker basket. He reads it again. ‘Dear Mum, Melancholia is truly amazing…’
He looks out the window towards the chalets spanning from Havenswalk like the spokes of a wheel. Quickly, before he can change his mind, he enters his parents’ bedroom. The basket has disappeared. He checks the wardrobes, pulls open the drawers on her dressing table, shuffles her underwearaside in embarrassment, then her scarves, tops and jumpers. Silently, empty-handed, he returns to his room.
After lunch they return to Havenswalk. Lauren lies down. The tiredness she feels is sudden and overwhelming. Steve has emails to send. He draws the blinds before he leaves the room. When she awakens, she feels refreshed, even though she has slept for only twenty minutes. A power nap. She stretches, reluctant to leave the bed, and picks up the copy of the Southern Eye she bought in Nelson. She scans the headlines: a murder trial in Christchurch, an investigation into political corruption, the gang rape of a young woman in Wellington. Global news, it never changes. A small item at the bottom of the page attracts her attention. Her hands quiver as she stares at the announcement. In four days’ time Niran Gordon will be the guest lecturer at the Christchurch Music Centre. Students from Christ’s College, where he once studied, will perform his latest composition.
Lauren folds the paper and lays it on the bedside locker. When Steve returns, she pretends to be asleep. He stands above her for an instant before lifting the paper and walking out to the balcony. When she rises, he is absorbed in the latest news.
Ferns waver in the sweep of Conor’s torch. Ancient tree trunks leer. When Mel skids on pine needles, she grabs his arm and holds on until the trail to the glow-worm grotto levels off. Her touch sets his blood racing. He found her alone in the sun room, curled into the sofa reading a book.
Her clothes are fantastic, a low-cut black net top with something silky underneath and skin-tight black pants with chains. A tattoo is visible on her right breast. It could be a snake or the branch of a tree, or a long finger, beckoning. She agreed to come with him to the glow-worm grotto. The last time he took her to the grotto, all that concerned him was getting back to his PlayStation as quickly as possible. Not tonight. The air is velvet, quivering with the nearness of her and now, as they penetrate deeper into the trees, he switches off his torch. He loves this moment, the absolute blackness pressing against them before the power of the grotto unfolds.
Faintly at first, then growing clearer, tiny glow-worms become visible. Thousands upon thousands, hanging from twigs, stems, branches, leaves, flowers. Between the branches, he sees stars blazing across the sky. They are too far away, too aloof to interest him. Here in this tiny green haven, he is standing in his own private constellation. Mel’s arm is a pale streak in the pool of night, her perfume as musky as crushed orchids, as mysterious as the pulsating light surrounding them.
‘It’s wonderful, Conor,’ she whispers, afraid, perhaps, that a shudder of sound will cause the glow-worms to disappear. ‘It’s like a scattering of fairy dust.’ They sit on a bench and watch the lights flicker and glow.
‘Julie tells me you’re coming to Ireland.’ Her throaty voice reminds him of treacle. ‘You’ll have to stay with me for a while. We all want a piece of you.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘I’d like that, also.’ Her ear, silver-studded and looped, grazes his cheek when she puts her arm round his shoulder. ‘This is even more splendid than I remembered. Thank you for showing it to me again. You’re such a sweet, thoughtful boy.’
He turns his face towards her and kisses her before the meaning of her words reaches him. For an instant, a heady, glorious instant, he feels the moist contact of her lips before they settle, resistant against his mouth. Her shock is obvious in the way she sits perfectly still before drawing her arm away from him.
‘Wow!’ The amusement in her voice is worse than outrage. ‘I knew you were maturing into a young man but I didn’t realise it was happening so fast.’ She speaks loudly but the glow-worms remain undisturbed.
He cringes, stammers an apology.
‘Don’t be embarrassed, Conor,’ she says. ‘To be honest, it’s flattering that you don’t view me as an old harridan.’
‘I don’t…I couldn’t! I didn’t mean—’
‘You don’t have to apologise or explain. But can you imagine what your mother would say if she found out?’
‘Are you going to tell her?’ At last he is able to utter a coherent sentence.
‘Of course not. I haven’t forgotten what it was like to be a teenager with all that fire to burn. But not on me, Conor. You’re growing up fast and I don’t want this to be an issue between us every time we meet. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ The most awful part of the lecture is that she sounds exactly like his mother. He wants to escape but he has to lead her back through the tunnel and escort her to her chalet with the falcon carving on the outside.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Conor?’ The understanding in her voice adds to his humiliation. Before the night deteriorates any further, he nods and turns towards Havenswalk.
His name is softly called. He turns and sees his glamorous aunt. She looks ghostly with the moonlight shining on her face.
‘It’s such a beautiful night,’ she says. ‘I’m going to see the glow-worms.’
‘It’s that way.’ He points towards the arching branches and hurries on. This will be his last visit to the glow-worm grotto, at least until he is old and decrepit enough to forget about tonight. He climbs into bed and pulls his pillow over his face. Melancholia…Melancholia…he shudders under the power of her wickedly glistening tongue, and her teeth, pearly white against her blood-red lipstick, play sweetly over his throat.
Lauren has been walking for over twenty minutes before she realises she missed the turning to the grotto. The forest surrounding Havenswalk is a labyrinth of twisting trails and she hesitates, tries to get her bearings. The trees begin to thin. Suddenly, she reaches a low fence of barbed wire. She steps across it and stands on a narrow side road. Once again, she is lost. Bangkok was a neon void and Jackson Bay a jungle. Her mobile phone, state of the art and lying at the bottom of Akona’s lake, would be an obvious answer to her dilemma. She mocks herself as she continues walking.
Steve is unaware that she is missing. He drank too much at dinner and, hopefully, will not awaken until morning. She continues walking. Each bend she approaches fills her with hope that the gates of Havenswalk will loom out of the darkness. The trees remain dense and unbroken on either side of the road. Eventually, she reaches a small one-storey shack with a sloping roof and dark windows. The garden has a cared-for appearance and the night is heavy with the scent of flowers.
She knocks but receives no response. Facing back into the trees is not an option and, for the first time since she lost her way, she feels frightened.
She shines her torch on a signpost pointing left. The writing is almost obliterated, a Maori name, unpronounceable, but with the word ‘Lake’ written below it. Without hesitating any longer, she turns to the left and enters a narrow lane. Shortly afterwards, she hears the muffled wash of the lake over pebbles. Cautiously, she makes her way over the uneven terrain until she reaches a high embankment. Below her, the lake, lit only by the moon, spreads like a
dark stain along the shore. Lauren clambers down the embankment. The shore is littered with driftwood, bleached and dry as skeletal bones.
Footsteps crunch on the pebbles. An elongated shadow falls forward into a shaft of moonlight. Lauren is unable to see the person but the footsteps are confident. She remains out of sight, shielded by an outcrop of rocks. The footsteps stop. In the silence that follows, she debates switching on her torch to alert the person to her presence. Before she can move, a disembodied voice rings out. A male voice, the words indistinct yet there is something familiar in the rising and falling cadences. Too embarrassed to interrupt when he is oblivious to her presence, she stays silent. She plays her fingers across the bleached bark and squashes a tiny insect that has unwisely scurried across her hand. She wipes her thumb nail clean on the dead wood. Buddha would not approve. To each its own circle of time.
Shoes are kicked off. She hears them fall against the pebbles, a muddled thud followed by the faint swish of clothes being removed, a grunt of satisfaction as if his body has been freed from all constraints. Still unable to see anyone, she thinks, this must be how a blind person lives, the sense of sound acutely reflecting a world of darkness. Every minute that passes makes it more difficult to declare herself.
He emerges from behind the rocks, a pale diffuse shape heading towards a makeshift jetty.
‘Ahhh!’ His involuntary cry is lost in the splash of water. He disappears from sight. Still she makes no effort to move. A short while later he emerges from the lake and sits, as she has done, against the trunk of a long-dead tree. He clicks a cigarette lighter. His hands cup the flame. Not that there is any breeze to extinguish it. The smell of smoke wafts towards her.
‘Is there another star gazer out there?’ he calls out.
She switches on her torch and steps forward into his line of vision. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’