by Laura Elliot
‘Cathy…it’s Becks. It’s all right…everything’s going to be OK.’
For an instant Cathy seems incapable of seeing her. Then her eyelids flicker, her mouth moves. ‘He knows about Jeremy.’ Her voice is highly pitched, almost incoherent. ‘Oh Jesus…if anything’s happened to him…’
Rebecca tries to hold her but she struggles free and begins to weep. She looks upwards when a helicopter flies low over the lake and struggles for composure.
‘Kevin’s organised a helicopter. Lyle’s taken out the motorboat—’
‘Which direction did the motorboat take?’ Tim asks.
Her breath rasps as she points to the left. ‘I think Conor was going to Lyle’s house. There’s no other reason he should be on the lake. I warned him…’
Tim makes his way to the boathouse and launches a kayak, whips the paddles against the choppy waters. Rebecca opens an umbrella she grabbed from the hall in Havenswalk. She holds it over Cathy but a gust of wind whips it inside out. Cathy stares at the bent spokes poking through the fabric, then runs along the jetty towards the small boat Conor uses for fishing. It strains at its moorings, bucking the swell and nudging the wooden piles supporting the jetty.
‘Don’t be crazy.’ Rebecca shouts as Cathy wades into the water and attempts to climb aboard.
A helicopter passing overhead distracts Cathy’s attention. As it swoops then rises again, she looks upwards and Rebecca, seizing the opportunity, clambers into the boat.
‘Keep watch.’ She cups her hands to her mouth and forces the words towards her sister. ‘Your son needs you here when he returns.’
The boat shoots forward when Rebecca releases the throttle and turns starboard. Almost immediately the mountain and forests are obscured. All her attention is focused on penetrating the gloom. Darkness comes quickly here, no lingering twilight leaching light from the sky. It will settle early this evening, aided by the rain and overcast clouds. Icy water washes over her and the turbulence increases as she approaches a cluster of small humped-back islands.
At first, when the paddle floats into view, she hopes it is a piece of debris or a walking stick, discarded by a trekker. But she recognises its shape, the blades spanning out from the black pole, and knows that this abandoned paddle is the sole clue to his whereabouts. She has to remain calm. He probably had a spare paddle on board. She channels between the hulking islands, instinctively steering from starboard to port, terrified the propeller will catch on submerged rock. She peers into the broiling water and glimpses tree roots. The growth on the islands is sparse and stunted but the roots thrash underwater like the tentacles of a malicious octopus. She recoils from the sight and wipes the rain from her eyes. The lash of wind in the branches is a mournful dirge but, apart from the lone paddle, the lake refuses to offer up its secrets.
She circles the islands, holding the boat on a steady course. She is about to search further along the lake when she spots his kayak. Upside down and sleek as a gliding seal, it floats into view. She draws nearer and leans forward, hoping to find him clinging to the upturned hull. This hope is quickly dashed. She attempts to bring her boat in at a right angle and overturn the kayak but the lake hurls it from her reach.
The rain stops. A saffron hue streams from an opening in the clouds and settles over the water. The washed-out mountain peaks, stippled as a child’s painting, swim into view. Dark forests march like a khaki army across the slopes.
A heron flies past, its wings gliding on air thermals. The wings fold gracefully when the bird lands on the nearest island, white feathers fluttering as it steps over the spiky grass. It poses motionless by the water’s edge and balances effortlessly on one leg. Rebecca remembers the lone heron that once maintained the same stoic vigil on the shore of the Broadmeadow Estuary and the memory, pushing its way through her turbulent fears, slows her progress for an instant, swings her closer to the island. The white heron dips its beak, points it like an arrow into the dangling roots. Something is tangled in the black tentacles. Rebecca wants to name it–flotsam, jetsam, a bulky wedge of driftwood. Anything other than the sprawled body of a young man. When she screams his name, the sound is indistinguishable from the anguish she heard earlier in his mother’s voice. Her arms ache from the strain of rowing but she is immune to the pain. She turns starboard, her cries melding with the slackening wind. She forces herself to stay silent. Tears and hysterics will not help the situation.
Jesus…Jesus…Jesus, help me. The familiar refrains of childhood pleas come easily to her as she eases the boat through the churning water. The density of the roots assures her that she will not crash against a submerged reef. A branch, jutting like an elbow from the island, had provided him with a handhold before his legs became entangled. He must have been too exhausted or terrified to drag himself free. She steers closer, using one of the overhanging trees as a handhold, and moors the boat. She clambers up an incline, slipping on decaying leaf and moss. The top half of his body is sprawled between two stunted trees. Their scrawny trunks lean precariously over the water and his fingers still clutch the dangling vines that loop from the branch. The heron waits, impervious to her efforts. She crawls towards her nephew’s body. The roots are knotted around the calf of one leg. She leans into the water and forces them loose. His face, tilted to one side, is smeared with a foul-smelling fungus, his skin scratched and bruised. Blood drains from a cut under his eye and seeps darkly from the corner of his mouth. His arm hangs at an awkward angle, broken, she suspects, when he fought to drag himself ashore.
She checks for his pulse, pressing her fingers against his neck, his wrist, leans closer in the hope of feeling his breath on her face. The blood around his mouth, she realises, flows from a deep gash above his lip. When his pulse stirs, such a faint flutter, she is unsure if it is his heartbeat or her own desperation. Her mobile phone was lost in the water, not that it would be any use under these circumstances. Gently, she turns him over and presses her hands firmly against his chest. She begins mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. His waxy face shows no sign of life. The island provides only a primitive shelter and the icy chill seeping from the rocky surface adds to her distress.
She moves from his mouth to his chest and back to his mouth. She shouts at him to stay with her and forces her warm breath into him. Akona called it the Ha, the breath of life, but this is a one-sided transaction, where time is limited and second chances rarely allowed. Everything has a reason, an explanation, a solution, she tells him. Water dribbles from his lips. His breathing is shallow. Hypothermia has set in. She covers him with ferns, talking all the time about her sanctuary and the things they will do together when he comes to stay. His eyelids open once and close again. Shortly afterwards, she hears the whirring of the helicopter as it glides low over the lake. Kevin leans from the open doorway. She snaps a thick-stemmed fern and waves it like a flag, a Maori signpost. The heron rises. The slender neck curves and the wings soar above the lake as it flies into the saffron evening.
Chapter SIxty-two
Day Seven
It is after midnight when Rebecca leaves the hospital. Her injuries are mainly bruises and cuts, no broken bones. Conor is in an oxygen tent. Drips feed fluid into his arms. Soon he will undergo a CAT scan to see if there are any signs of brain damage or changes in his cerebral blood flow. His arm is badly broken but it will mend in time. The other wounds, the internal ones, will not heal so easily. Cathy will remain overnight in the hospital with him.
Rebecca is thankful for Tim’s silence as he drives her back to Havenswalk. She was supposed to remain in hospital for observation but she discharged herself, knowing time would heal her body. They enter the Takahē chalet. It is the same as when she left it yet she senses a difference, which, she realises, is within herself. What had irritated her, the deliberate touches, the blending of textures, colours and materials, now form a harmonious whole. The chalets surrounding them are in darkness. The rescue was over when the others arrived back from Blenheim. They drove straight to the hospit
al where they stayed until Cathy persuaded them to return to Havenswalk.
Exhausted from the search, Tim is soon asleep but Rebecca’s thoughts race as she lies restlessly beside him. The room is too warm and her body aches all over. She steps gingerly onto the balcony and watches car headlights wavering between the trees. The car brakes outside Havenswalk. A figure approaches the entrance. As the automatic outside light switches on, she recognises Kevin’s rangy figure. He is visible for a moment as he opens the door then staggers backwards as Sandy lurches at him. He leaves the dog outside and slams the door. Sandy’s bark is outraged and Rebecca, taking pity on the dog, slips on her jeans and jacket. By the time she reaches the house, Sandy has disappeared.
A light shines in an upstairs room. She opens the front door and calls Kevin’s name. The silence is oppressive rather than tranquil, as if Havenswalk, which usually resounds with voices and soft background music, has also succumbed to the turmoil of the day. He leans over the banisters, his expression turning from hope to dismay when he recognises her.
‘You sound like Cathy,’ he says and disappears from view. She hears his footsteps on the wooden floorboards and follows him to the bedroom. A battered suitcase, which looks as if it has accompanied him to many destinations, lies open on the bed. He flings clothes into it, pulls underwear from drawers, drags shoes and a pair of mountain boots from under the bed. He stops packing when he sees her hesitating at the door and beckons her into the room.
‘What’s going on, Kevin?’ She watches the pyramid of clothes in the centre of the case growing higher.
‘Cathy’s cancelled the wedding. I’ll find somewhere to stay in Nelson until I decide what to do.’
‘But only for a few days, surely?’ She is unable to hide her astonishment. ‘It’s understandable given the circumstances, and when—’
‘It’s over, Rebecca.’ His harsh expression defies her to argue with him.
She sits on the bed and carefully places the arms of a jumper cross-wise, folds it into a neat square. ‘She’s distraught at the moment. When Conor is better—’
‘Conor is all that matters now.’ Again he interrupts, as if he cannot bear to listen to a logical argument. He stops packing and sits beside her. ‘You told her that our deception would flail her to the bone. It almost did.’
‘Words…that’s all they were, Kevin. I was angry—’
‘And I was as complicit in the deceit as she was.’
‘Why on earth did you go along with it?’ She had wanted to ask him that question since the night she arrived but her anger would have made his answer irrelevant. Now, she asks it from a genuine need to understand the complexities of their relationship.
He stares at her hands as she smooths the creases on his jumper and tells her how he struggled to come to terms with Conor’s belief. His eagerness was palpable, and Kevin, remembering the loss of his own father when he was a boy, became a party to Cathy’s deceit. Death pulled them together when they were children. It was the link that drew them together again.
‘I’ve always loved her…always,’ he says. ‘When you accused me of being the father of her child, I wished I was. I met Conor by sheer fluke. But, suddenly, I had a second chance. What seemed miraculous became miraculous. Do you believe in miracles?’
She shakes her head, ‘I’ve never seen any—’
‘That’s because they don’t exist.’
‘Until today on the lake.’
‘Until today,’ he repeats. ‘You could easily have missed him. Cathy is not going to tempt fate a second time.’
He takes the jumper and presses it into the suitcase, flattens the pyramid and snaps the locks closed. ‘On the night she left, I hung up on her. I was sick with jealousy. If I hadn’t…who knows…she might not have run away.’
‘Yes, she would.’ Rebecca nods and rises from the bed. ‘What other option did I give her? But there are always other options. Always. Please, don’t give up now.’
‘I’ve tried to change her mind.’ He lifts his suitcase, waits for her to leave the room. ‘It’s what she wants, Rebecca. We lied to Conor. Wilfully, deliberately lied to him. The reasons don’t matter—’
‘They mattered to Cathy.’ She grabs his arms, forces him to listen to her. ‘To protect me from the truth, she was prepared to abandon her sisters, her friends, everything familiar and dear to her. But the truth, no matter how heavy, is a burden that can always be borne. Tim has made me realise that truth. Conor should be the one who decides. It’s in his remit to forgive you. Allow him that right.’
Kevin shakes his head. His case is closed, his mind decided. He roughly embraces her and strides from the room. She listens to him driving away, Sandy’s bark following him down the avenue. She thinks of Heron Cove, two children, their knees hooked into the sturdy boughs of the chestnut tree, Cathy and Kevin, swinging upside down, everything upside down, the two of them filled with the giddy knowledge that their world would be normal again once they returned to earth.
Rebecca stops outside a door with Conor’s name written above a ‘Do Not Intrude’ notice. Cathy’s letters are scattered over his bed. She gathers them into a neat pile and sits by the window. The past flickers and comes into focus again, each momentous event viewed through the prism of Cathy’s gaze. All the misunderstandings and missed opportunities, the ignored danger signals, their heedless race towards maturity. Rebecca folds the final letter and places them back in the wicker basket. She hopes there is a place where angels read letters at night and bring comfort to a lost child who was not allowed to cry.
A white heron, Lyle said, is a rare bird, seldom seen, and then usually on estuaries. Once upon a time the Maori used their feathers as adornments. If Lauren can swim with dolphins and angels fly at midnight, than a white heron can save her nephew’s life. Rebecca returns to the chalet and waits for morning.
Conor’s condition stabilises overnight. He is off oxygen, his CAT scan clear and he has been transferred from intensive care to a small single bed ward. Rebecca places fruit and chocolate on his bedside locker and sits beside him. He is propped upright, pillows heaped at his back, his arm set in a cast. Already, he looks healthier, rested.
‘That was some journey you took, young man,’ she says. ‘Don’t you ever listen to the weather forecast?’
‘I can handle a kayak…usually.’
‘But not in the middle of a storm. And I’m not talking about the weather.’
He breaks off a square of chocolate and chews it. ‘She lied to me about my father.’
‘Yes, she certainly did.’
He gulps the chocolate down, then immediately gags. Rebecca reaches for the bowl and holds it under his chin.
‘Bad choice.’ When he recovers, she takes the chocolate from him. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘Kevin’s not my father.’
‘You’ve no idea how much he wishes he was.’
‘She lied—’
‘Can you accept that she did so for your sake?’
‘She had no right to keep the truth from me.’
‘Was she right to keep it from me?’
He lies back against the pillows. His freckles are stark against his chalky complexion. ‘That’s different. She ran away so that you could be happy. She didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Nor you. Alma believes people sometimes make the wrong decisions for the right reasons. When the lie your mother told you became reality, it brought happiness into your lives. Would you have wanted her to walk away from that happiness?’
His chest rises and falls, each breath labouring against his desire not to cry. He jerks his arm, winces with shock. ‘Tell me about him…that fucking lying bastard you married.’
‘You can’t hurt the dead with words, Conor.’
‘But you can hate them…and I hate his guts.’ He has inherited his mother’s defiant tone.
‘Yet you want to know about him.’
‘Yes.’ He blinks furiously as Rebecca talks about a man he will never know
. She had air-brushed Jeremy from her life until even his memory seemed insubstantial. But not any more. She hears again his persuasive answers and excuses, his easy words and the whispering murmurs that captured her heart and betrayed Cathy’s innocence. She holds Conor’s uninjured hand, their thumbs linking. The wound, where the bite of a frightened horse left a pale scar, is almost invisible against her bruised skin. Yes, she replies, when Conor demands to know if he resembles his father. She has recognised many similarities but she sees them as Conor’s strengths, not his weaknesses. He drifts asleep, listening to her voice.
Outside in the corridor, Cathy holds a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee between her hands, unaware that the liquid is tilting dangerously close to the edge.
‘Is Conor alone?’ She half rises, her gaze flicking over Rebecca’s shoulder towards the ward door. ‘I must go back to him.’
‘He’s sleeping now. Let him rest. You and I need to talk.’
Cathy sinks down again, her shoulders hunched. ‘Thank you seems so inadequate. I don’t have the words, Rebecca.’
‘They’re not necessary.’
‘I’ve never been able to explain anything to you—’
‘I never gave you the space to do so…not then, not the other night.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Cathy appears to be speaking more to herself than to Rebecca. ‘It was a selfish decision to invite you here. But I thought…I thought…I don’t know what I thought. That was always the problem, wasn’t it? Not thinking.’
‘Kevin loves you. Please, don’t turn your back on him.’
‘But my son hates me.’
‘Jeremy used to say that hate and love—’
‘I know what he used to say.’
‘A fine wire vibrating. Conor’s anger will go. Everything passes, Cathy.’ Rebecca touches her arm. ‘Mam told me to look after you but I didn’t…not that night and all those other nights. But Alma did. She did everything I failed to do—’