by Gee, Maurice
‘Olivia,’ she said, climbing to the porch, ‘come inside.’
‘I don’t want to.’
More men had come: one dusted with a little brush and one was on his knees as though hunting for moth eggs in the carpet.
‘I wanted to go in the ambulance but Dad wouldn’t let me.’
‘There’s nothing he can do there, even himself. He’ll ring us up as soon as he knows.’ She freed Olivia’s hands from the porch rail. ‘We’ll go to my house. I’ll make us something to drink.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll have to get ready for Damon soon.’
‘He won’t care.’
‘He’ll care more than you think, dear. Damon only plays tough.’ She plucked the ribbon to save it from being lost, and smoothed the girl’s hair on her back. ‘Take your tie off. Take your blazer off.’ Olivia obeyed. Gwen hung them on the porch rail. She slid the science book into the bag and leaned it on the fern pot. ‘Come and wait on the lawn’, taking Olivia down the steps. ‘They’ll call us if there’s any news.’
‘I didn’t know if she was hurting or not. I couldn’t tell,’ Olivia said. She held the springs fringing the bed of the trampoline, then climbed on it and lay on her back, staring at the sky.
Gwen told her about spinal shock, and how, for the moment, all feeling was cut off. She said to herself, I’m making it up. She told Olivia that very often people with neck injuries recovered completely and soon learned to walk again, the spinal cord was simply bruised and was taking a rest.
Olivia said, ‘I heard it. A crack like a stick when she hit the door.’ Her hands lay spread on the trampoline as though she was holding them for someone to trace.
‘What was he like, the man? What was he doing?’
‘Taking stuff, I suppose. He kicked her. She came down the stairs and hit the door.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘A student. That’s all.’
‘The police will make an identikit picture. They’ll catch him.’
‘I don’t care about that.’ She rolled on to her side, away from Gwen, and curled up. She was like that diagram, Gwen thought, the ball on the rubber sheet, used in physics books to show how gravity curved light. I mustn’t let her go away, how can I keep her here?
‘What brought you home so early, anyway?’
‘I felt sick at school.’
‘Did they ring Ulla?’
‘I didn’t tell them. I walked down to Boundary Road and rang from Tricia’s place. If I hadn’t … ’
That was better. A little bit of guilt, easy enough, and back she came. She uncurled into her earlier position.
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Gwen said, and that was easy too. She heard a seagull screaming from high in the air. ‘We’d go crazy if we went back and tried to change every little thing that caused something else.’
‘Who said I wanted to?’
‘No.’
‘Dad should have let me go. I’m better than him.’
‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Except the doctors … ’
‘Everyone knows how they feel. But he’s got to pretend he’s upset now.’
Such terrible ease, without knowledge of time, and multiplicity, and the vertiginous turning over of things, and the subtleties and accommodations. Gwen wanted to shield herself; and wanted to shield herself from Athol too, for although he was subject to far more than he knew, all of it would be denied. He kept a kind of innocence; achieved a terrible simplicity. Yet now, she agreed, he would pretend, for it made a part of his straight road.
‘Come over to my house. I’ll make a cup of tea.’ And who was pretending now? Pretend grandmother.
Olivia said, ‘She’ll never get to Sweden, that’s for sure.’
‘Who knows? We mustn’t … ’ Sentence her? Yet Ulla was a fact, lying there barely alive and cut off from herself. She was incontrovertible and she became her future. Unless … but what unless was there, unless an alteration down all the branchings of our consciousness and we emerge somewhere else, Ulla and I? Though not in Sweden.
The gate, crashing open, could only be Damon. All the marvellous energy that turned to assault. All the quickness that in the end only made him sudden.
‘Damon,’ she called, and he came around the side of the porch, thumping the weatherboards with his bag.
‘What are all these cops doing here?’ He saw Olivia. ‘Who said you could get on my trampoline?’
‘Damon – ’
‘She’s still wearing her shoes. Hey, that’s my sweatshirt you’ve got your feet on.’
‘Damon, listen please.’ She told him and his stillness surprised her. Only the bag moved, twisting and untwisting its cord.
‘How bad is she?’
‘We won’t know until your father calls.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘You will. We’ll all go in, but right now they’ll be – doing things.’
‘What things?’
‘There’s x-rays, and traction I think it is. And getting all sorts of things settled down. Damon, there’s every chance she’ll be all right.’
The boy put his bag on the ground. He sat down and took off his shoes and socks. ‘Get off, Liv.’ He moved in a way soft for him. His voice was polite. Olivia climbed down and lay on the grass.
The springs squeaked and sang and the canvas made a hollow boom. Gwen watched Damon somersault in the air. The turns were slow and easy and inevitable, but she had never seen before how tightly the body must be held.
Chapter Three
There’s my view, he thought, there’s all the sea and sky a man can ask for, and islands out there in the gulf, and I can go round the back and see the parts people never see, in my launch. She was down there at Westhaven, tied to a pole – forty feet of her and lines like a girl. And up here on the cliff was his house – Greek, or maybe Roman, with what Gwen would call an atrium. Out the back, which was of course the front to face the view, was a swimming pool and a barbecue pit and a tennis court as green as grass. White carpets spread into the house, with chairs as fat as wool bales angled on them and multi-coloured throwmats like bed quilts. The fireplace was big enough to hold a wattle log. The chandeliers, red and blue, fell like coloured rain, and the cabinet, of kauri he had scavenged for himself, opened on to every drink a man could ever wish for. He wouldn’t go past Johnny Walker Black, not for all the malt snobs in the world, but if a malt snob came it was in there, take your pick. Choose a cigar. There, in the humidor. Havana?
Pictures and porcelain led upstairs to bed. Up the split levels, past the dens and bathrooms and live gardens, potted trees, to face the corrugated water and the islands again – the water in the sunlight or the moonlight, diamonds and gold. And there in the big bed – big big bed – Darlene his naked lady lay. Naked sleeper, Darlene, who woke and slid at him and repaid him and repaid … All this for the sawmill boy; the kapok mattress, outside dunny, broken sofa, broken lino boy; Henderson boy. Iron stove, wooden tub, barefoot through the hoar frost, holes in his teeth, torn pants, no underpants, rags for a hankie – that sort of boy. Standard one, standard six, leather strap, England and the king, Depression boy, swimming at Falls Park, dog paddle and overarm, and diving from willow trees that swayed in the wind and climbing the skinny kanuka, agile as a monkey and monkey-screaming at the girls in their changing shed. Hooligan boy. Apprentice boy. Canvas apron, hammer in his belt. Howard Peet. Howie Powie! The toughest thing that ever came out of Henderson school.
Now, tonight, he was sixty-six and two-thirds, he was two-thirds there, and he still felt like a boy. When he said that, and he often did after a few – ‘I feel like a boy tonight’ – people supposed he meant in energy and appetites; but no, he meant that he was waiting for the best part of his life to start. That did not mean he was dissatisfied with what he had had. Not for a moment. He was more than satisfied. Sometimes he was astonished at how well he had done. But yesterday was only for today, and now, when you finished it, was only f
or tomorrow. He didn’t stop here, he started there. His skin, his fingertips, his spine, the shiver and the tingle told him that. When Howie looked back he had no sense of travelling great distances, even though times were far away. The creek, his mother’s kitchen, the islands and the launch, the bloomered girls in the roofless shed, and Gwen, Darlene – there was no break; it was not even linked like a chain. ‘This is me, by God, and it goes on tomorrow.’ That was why he said, ‘I feel like a boy.’
He ambled on the patio. He put his foot on the rail and leaned his forearm on his knee – no hands behind the back for him, no cigar upthrust. He was no King Howie. On nights like this he rolled his own. He flicked his butt across the lawn and tried to hit the birdbath naked lady on the bum, and took another paper and stuck it on his lip while he shaped tobacco in his palm. He made the rules on his bit of land and no one told him not to drop his ash on the carpet or not to take a leak off the cliff if he was inclined. Out in the world he knew what to do, and what to wear, and what to say – food, drink, manners, the right word; it was easy. He had known since he’d put his first half-crown in the bank, since he stood up on the bus in his schoolboy shorts to offer his seat to a lady. Call it rules, he thought, but it’s mostly common sense; and all the rest, the poncy stuff, that was just a joke he could enjoy behind a straight face and a steady eye. But here, this is my place, he said, and I tell people what to do and if they don’t like it they needn’t come.
He walked across the lawn and followed the shell path to the end of the tennis court where if your lob was too heavy it floated over the cliff and dropped two hundred feet on to the rocks and took a crooked bounce into the sea. A kid fishing down there retrieved a ball once and tucked it in the front of his togs and climbed the cliff, came up grinning over the lip, and Howie was so pleased with him he gave him ten dollars. It was the sort of thing he would have done himself, in Henderson, or the sort of thing Damon might do. He smoked his cigarette and flicked the butt away and watched it like a falling star until it went out, then watched the lights on the harbour bridge, way up past the wharves, making a lovely female curve. The North Shore glowed and flickered. Ponsonby and downtown Auckland prickled and swam with lights. Out west, a long way out, the Waitakere Ranges made a crooked line on the sky. The Henderson valley lay somewhere below, wet and green. That was where he’d started from and this was where he’d got to. Howie was pleased, not with his life but with himself.
He turned back to the house and saw Gordon watching him from the living room. It spoiled his mood. The living room was like a goldfish bowl – and Gordon was a grey fish there, hugging the bottom. Gordon had no lift in him, no fight; he would never rise. And Howie thought, I can’t be bothered with you, son. Gordon was too round and soft, and spongy with all the things he could not decide; a sick man, somehow, with his disappointments. Howie had no advice for him, not any longer. He had given him advice and told him, do this, don’t do that, and Gordon had taken it or not; but when he had taken it, had somehow made it wrong. Gordon was a loser. Gordon won small; and when he tried to go big he lost everything. He wanted it too much and that was what turned it bad for him. He didn’t care about doing it; he just wanted to be there with his hands full of cash at the end. That was not the way it worked or what it was about. Gordon did not know, and Athol did not know. You’ve got to move, you’ve got to play, by God you’ve got to flash, there’s got to be light.
Gordon pulled the door back and leaned out, trying to see. ‘Dad.’
Howie did not answer. He went past the birdbath, caressed the naiad’s flank, stepped up to the pool and watched Darlene’s bedroom light undulate on the glossy surface. He slipped off his espadrilles, rolled up his trousers and sat with his feet in the pool. The water came half way up his shins, cold as ice. He felt it burning between his toes and tightening his Achilles tendons. A shiver took his scrotum and ran up his spine. Great. Alive. He leaned down and dipped in his hands as far as the wrists, and felt the skin tighten and stand the hairs up on his finger backs. He was on the point of balance; if he went another inch he would slip in. Too cold for that, with his clothes or not. The pool was only scrubbed and filled with water yesterday. He liked the smell of chlorine – impolite, like a lot of things you couldn’t get by without in life. He washed between his toes. Dried his feet with his handkerchief. Barefooted, he walked on the lawn and felt the mown grass prick his soles. I used to walk on road metal once, in my bare feet; and he remembered stone-bruises and stubbed toes, and skating on ice puddles with feet that had no feeling left in them.
‘It’s getting late, Dad,’ Gordon called.
‘Sure. Okay.’
‘I’ve got to be in court in the morning.’
Darlene’s light went out, which meant that she had finished another ten pages of Crimson or Damson or whatever it was, and would go to sleep and snore sweetly like a virgin until she woke. Now the only light was round Gordon in the glass wall, frightened to come into the dark. He held an empty glass in his hand – frightened even to pour himself a drink. Howie pushed past him and walked across the carpet, collapsing the pile with his feet, which buoyed him up. He lobbed his espadrilles into a chair.
‘Drink, son?’
‘No, I’ve got to drive. Dad – ’
‘Yeah, I know. They’re making you look like a nana.’
‘I wouldn’t mind, but it’s simply not true. Dad, I didn’t do all those things.’
‘You did them but you didn’t know.’
‘Yes – ’
‘That’s just as bad.’ He sat down. ‘You’ve got to know.’ He could say, I told you not to go in with Hopkins. He liked the old term ‘wide boy’ for that one. Hopkins was as wide as they came and crunched up little players, Gordy and his kind, as easily as salted cashew nuts. But now Hopkins was getting crunched himself, along with Gordon and the rest of them; and good bloody riddance too, for playing outside the rules which said you didn’t stuff full every damn sock you could find, every pie bag. All the same he would help Gordon if he could, the way he had helped him all his life. Long division at the kitchen table? Sure, if he could. The boy, the poor dumb softy, was his son.
‘Anyway, when you went in they had six million going round already. With put and call options from here to kingdom come. You know enough to stay away from round robinning.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘What was it then? You tell me.’ Tell me again. It was like patting him on the back after his bottle to bring up his wind. Howie needed Gwen for that sort of thing. And he thought at once, Gwennie, and was automatically sentimental. Clever wee bitch, giving them Lupercal for a name; he wished he had someone as clever as that with him now, even if she did button her jamas up to the neck. His eyes stung and he brushed them, and gulped his drink and crossed to the cabinet for more, while Gordon lilted up and down the scale of his grievances.
‘You didn’t have a right to know you had an obligation,’ Howie said. ‘It’s no defence to say they kept you in the dark. They keep office girls in the dark. You’re supposed to find things out, that’s your bloody job.’
‘I know, but listen … ’
Gordy would get off lighter than the rest, but still they would put him away for a year or two, for jumping in without looking round. For keeping his blinkers on as long as the money rolled in. For his damned stupidity and greed, which made him just as crooked as Hopkins and Dingle and Rope. The difference was only in scale. Gordon didn’t go around every corner blind.
They had taken him, Hopkins and Dingle, because they’d hoped to get Howie too. Gordy was a favour; or maybe he was bait. But nothing would have drawn Howie in with that pack of sharks. Yeah, sharks, in a feeding frenzy soon enough, and Gordon in there with them, snapping up stray bits. Howie felt ashamed. I warned him, I told him. And Gwen warned him too – ‘Be your own man, son,’ in her bloody moralistic way. But too late, the water had turned red …
‘Don’t say you didn’t know. Don’t say it in court. Because they’
re not going to believe you. Say you’re sorry if you like. Say you made a mistake. But never ever that you didn’t know.’
Gordon swallowed. He worked his throat. ‘What I didn’t know is it had got so big. I wasn’t in on the Boniface stuff, and going round through Hong Kong, God knows where. That was Hopkins and Dingle, only them. The lawyers had these bloody Chinese walls. All I did was – I don’t know – ’
‘Hang up the hats.’
‘All right.’
‘Sharpen the pencils.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘The office boy. So how come you end up with two million bucks that isn’t yours?’
‘That was legitimate. Okay, it was pushing it, maybe it bent things a bit too far. But it was still inside the law, I thought.’
‘And the Serious Fraud Office didn’t think.’
‘It’s Hopkins and Dingle they’re after.’
‘And they’ll get you on the way. You and Carmichael and Broadhead and Rope. A nice little clutch of office boys. You can’t expect them to turn it down.’
‘So what do I do, Dad? What do I do?’
‘You listen to your lawyer. You don’t come to me.’
‘My lawyer can’t get me off.’
‘No, he can’t. But what he can do is get you maybe eighteen months instead of two years. You’ll be out inside twelve months. Good behaviour, Gordy, you’ll be good at that. And lots of weekend leave. They’re giving it to all the boys with nice clean fingernails. They’ll park your Audi by the prison gates.’
‘Jesus, you’re a mean old prick.’
‘That’s better’ – and it was – ‘call me names.’