by Fiona Kidman
The room was constructed of white concrete blocks, as if it had been tacked onto the older part of the building; a net curtain drifted across the open doorway. There were so many crystals hanging in this room that they tinkled against each other when one moved quickly. Jemima sat very still.
Magda leant forward and peered at her. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ she said, and Jemima agreed that yes she had.
‘You’ve run away from it, though. An impulsive gesture, but then you’re a Piscean. That’s what Pisceans do, off at the first sign of trouble.’
‘How do you know I’m a Piscean?’
‘You’re impressed. You think it’s a trick. Well, my dear, you’re wearing an amethyst ring. Someone might have passed it on to you, but I don’t think so. From the way you turn it on your finger, I believe it means something special to you, that it was chosen for you personally.’
‘Yes,’ said Jemima, ‘that’s true.’ The ring was for her engagement to Nick, although she wore it on her right hand now. She hadn’t been able to put it away for good. When they agreed to marry, he wanted to give her her birthstone. She was special, she was the one, he’d never given a girl a ring before. She was impressed by Magda’s quick eye, by the fact that she’d told her how she’d worked out her birth sign, rather than pretending it was some psychic knowledge.
‘You need to slow down,’ Magda said. ‘You’re carrying too many burdens.’
When Jemima nodded, Magda said, ‘I think you’re a giving person. But sometimes it’s necessary to put down your burden and let others carry it.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jemima, and began to cry.
‘Soon the burden will be gone. It will be taken from you. You must know how to let go when the time comes.’
‘How did you know?’ Jemima whispered, and then felt stupid. She had no idea what she was doing here. If she could leave the poetry reading, she could leave this place just as easily. But when she shifted suddenly, the crystals touched her hair.
‘My mother is very ill,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, of course, she’s been ill for a long time. But you’ve done everything for her. You’ve been loved and given love in return. It’s the best anyone can do. There’s a man in your life, too.’
‘No. Not really.’
‘A dark man.’ Magda waved a small fan in front of her face, and just for a moment Jemima thought she saw a little grin tucked behind the fan, which was black with Japanese women in kimonos strolling across it.
‘He’s gone.’
‘He was draining your powers. I think you’re creative, but as long as you let him steal your energy, he’ll stop you in your tracks.’
‘You sound like Gail,’ Jemima said, and suddenly laughed. ‘Creative energy. I think I need a friand.’
Magda looked offended. ‘Well, perhaps you’d like to leave it at that.’
‘I’d like to leave the dark man out of it. You’re right, he gets in the way.’
Magda nodded in a wise and knowing manner, and waited.
Jemima started again. ‘My mother, there’s more.’
The woman leant forward. ‘Go on.’
‘This sounds ridiculous. But my mother’s mother, my grandmother, that is, disappeared many years ago. I want to know what happened to her.’
The psychic looked flustered and blushed. Now, Jemima thought, now is the time to leave. We both know that she’s not going to take a chance on this, that she might get herself mixed up in something public, or with the police. And perhaps this was a betrayal of her mother, the story she had entrusted her with, laying it out to this woman, this phony. If Magda were to say that she, Jemima, was a little crazy right now, that would be right, and she wouldn’t have had to feed her too many clues. Probably people who came to her were always like her, despairing and powerless at some given moment. Yet the impulse to continue was overwhelming. She said: ‘My grandmother was a woman named Joy Mullens who vanished from a farm near a river a year or so before the last war.’ She related the story then, of how her grandmother had set off for Invercargill, how her husband had left her at a railway station and gone home to feed out hay to the cows, it being wintertime.
‘The police went looking for her,’ Magda said, as if this was a fact.
‘Yes, for a while, but she was never found.’
Magda closed her eyes. ‘I see green grass.’
‘Well, yes, there was a lot of grass. It was a farm.’
‘I don’t see a train.’
‘So you think she might not have gone to the railway station?’
‘Foul play, I suspect foul play.’
‘My mother thought that, too.’
‘I think she was under water.’
‘In the river?’
Magda closed her eyes. Her eyelids were waxy and blue and there were deep pouches beneath her eyes. Jemima felt sorry for her, this large elderly woman, making up tales for money. She looked tired and poor.
When she opened her eyes, Magda said, ‘No, I don’t think she’s in the river. I see long straight lines.’
‘The railway line?’
‘No, I told you. Under water. Straight lines. We need to do the cards. We’re running out of time.’ Magda handed her a pack of tarot cards, her movements agitated. ‘Go on shuffle them. Think of a question.’
Jemima shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can do that. About the straight lines?’
‘Well, that’s all for today.’ Magda stood up; the crystals swayed and clinked. ‘Your half hour’s up. I need to go home for a rest now.’
RUTH DIED ON A SUNDAY morning, towards sunrise. Jemima and her father’s sisters and two of his brothers, and Jemima’s own two brothers were there through the night, making cups of tea, taking it in turns to sit by Ruth’s bedside. The doctor had been at seven in the evening to administer morphine. He didn’t believe Ruth was in pain, but it would ease her restlessness, the occasional moments when she woke and looked at them with startled eyes, sudden bewilderment, even anguish.
Jemima looked out across the sea and saw that dawn was about to break. Ruth opened her eyes, with a look of lucidity, of happiness. ‘Is it spring?’
‘Soon,’ Jemima said. ‘In a little while.’
‘The gannets,’ Ruth said. ‘The little chicks.’ And in a moment it was over, her breathing shallow against the oxygen mask propped over her face, and then it stopped and the mask was clear.
WHEN JEMIMA AND HER OLDER brother Kirk saw Blanche step off the small aeroplane at Napier airport, Kirk said, ‘Just all we need.’
And Blanche’s appearance did seem incongruous. She had a curiously pale face, although her hands were ravaged by the sun. In some ways, she looked like the psychic Jemima had visited in Wellington — her hair thin and ragged, her patterned cotton skirt trailing above her sandals, a shawl around her shoulders. But she wasn’t decorated with hoops and bangles, the way Magda had been, and her light eyes were hooded and piercing. On one arm, she carried an enormous patchwork bag with wooden handles, dusty with red earth in its folds.
‘Your luggage shouldn’t be long,’ Kirk said, taking charge.
‘This is my luggage,’ Blanche said, indicating the colourful bag.
She had arrived in time for the funeral. ‘I’d hoped to see Ruth once more,’ she said wistfully. She had flown through time zones for twenty hours.
‘But you’ve come, Auntie Blanche,’ said Jemima, and hugged her, this strange woman who wasn’t her aunt, although for the moment this didn’t matter.
‘Did you let Patricia know?’ Blanche asked, almost straight away.
‘No,’ said Jemima and Kirk, almost in one voice.
‘Thank goodness,’ Blanche said.
‘There’s no reason for her to know,’ Jemima said, taking charge.
‘Perhaps not,’ Blanche said, and bent her head slightly.
There was standing room only in the cathedral. For every member of Neil’s large family, there were twenty more who had known him and Ruth. And her mother had mor
e friends of her own than Jemima realised — people who had visited her garden on tours, gardening circles, bookclub members. Jemima’s brothers read the psalms. They had suggested that Jemima read a poem, but in the end she didn’t. It seemed pretentious to read one of her own, and nothing else she could find seemed to fit. Instead she spoke for a few minutes about the last visit to the gannets, about how she and her brothers were so loved as children, and how that was their parents’ legacy. She spoke of how the gannets entwined their necks, and stayed together for life, and then she left it at that, because her voice broke. Afterwards, people came up and said that that was the part of the service they liked best. Jemima didn’t tell them that she had had to stop because she was thinking that she had failed the test.
At the last moment, Jemima asked Blanche if there was anything she would like to say, and was relieved when Blanche said no. Jemima had looked up Hindu customs on the internet, and realised that funeral services were conducted in a different way. Blanche simply said that the soul was indestructible, and that Ruth was released from worldly needs. She was now immortal. This was how she saw things, and it gave her comfort that her sister had reached this place. She had no need to say it in public.
After everyone left, and the dishes were stowed and the living room vacuumed, Blanche and Jemima were left alone in the house. Jemima had no idea what Blanche might want to do next. She hoped she would go to bed soon.
‘Let’s open some wine,’ Blanche said. Jemima wanted to cheer. She thought that perhaps Blanche wouldn’t drink.
After they had each drunk three glasses of pinot gris, Blanche seemed perfectly normal to Jemima. All the same, she couldn’t help saying, ‘You chose an unusual life. Like a saint.’
Blanche shrugged. ‘I’m no saint. There’re a lot of us in India, doing what we can. I’ve tried to model my life on that of a woman I know who runs an orphanage. A writer, as it happens.’
‘Jean Watson?’
‘That’s the one. Now she is a saint. Are you going back to Auckland?’ she asked as if wanting to change the subject.
‘Not for the moment. The boys don’t want me to sell just now. They want to see the garden kept up. Perhaps later on. I don’t know really.’
‘What about that no-good husband of yours?’
Jemima felt herself bristling. ‘Nick and I just didn’t get along too well.’
‘When was his last play?’
‘A couple of years ago. About the time we split.’
‘Hmm. Still living on his looks, eh?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about Nick,’ Jemima said.
‘No, perhaps you don’t. You know, I keep up with things here. I expect you think I’m eccentric. People have thought that all my life. I just don’t want to see you ending up like me.’
‘I thought you were very happy. With enlightenment, I mean.’
‘I’d have liked children. It’s not too late for you. There’ll be someone, you’re very pretty.’
‘That’s not really the point, is it? I’m sure you could have had someone if you’d really wanted.’
‘I thought not.’
‘But why? Was it Patricia? My mother told me about her. Cruel, she said she was cruel.’
‘She had her own problems, I think.’
‘Oh, that’s too full of karma for me, Blanche, sorry, but really it is. Do you keep in touch with her?’
‘I haven’t seen her in a long time. She was at my father’s funeral. There were only five of us there. Me and her, and her boyfriend Seymour, who I heard she’d married, and a neighbour doing his duty, and a lawyer. People didn’t think too well of my father. Patricia inherited the farm, you know. Well, that was a long time back.’
‘Why didn’t people like your father?’ said Jemima, pouring them the last of the wine. But Blanche just sighed. Jemima felt tipsy and tired, and knew she was on dangerous ground. She hadn’t slept properly for three nights. She walked through to the kitchen and unwrapped a plate of asparagus rolls from under a dampened cloth, and found a camembert in the fridge, and a loaf of bread. When she put the food on the table in front of the older woman, she noticed the way her hand shot out to take a roll, the hungry way she ate.
Jemima felt better, her head clearing. ‘Do you know about my grandmother? About Joy who went missing?’
Blanche gave a barking laugh. ‘I heard about it on my first day at school when I was five years old. My father wasn’t trusted. Well, why would he be? Who knows, he might have killed your grandmother. Nobody knew for sure.’
‘So, is that the point?’ Jemima said.
Blanche’s eyes were raking Jemima’s face, as if appraising her. Still she said nothing.
‘I’d like to find out,’ Jemima said. ‘My mother only spoke of it the once.’ As Blanche didn’t demur, she went on, telling her about the newspaper cuttings, and the visit to the psychic. ‘You’ll think I’m stupid,’ she finished, trailing off.
But Blanche was leaning forward, her eyes intent. ‘Straight lines, well, yes, of course. That woman sounds as if she was quite good.’ She was shuffling through the objects in her bag, pulling out a bottle of vitamin pills, some tissues, a notebook, a thin wallet, a spare pair of voluminous pants, all of which she placed in a heap on the table. ‘Now here we are,’ she said. In her hand she held a small plastic bag that, on opening, revealed a worn piece of fabric. It might have been green once, more like lichen now, or the colour of mildew. She held it out to Jemima.
‘What is it?’ Jemima reached out gingerly; the cloth was so weathered and thin that the threads seemed to be falling apart.
‘I brought it because I thought Ruth might want it at the end. But of course I see now it was truly in the past for her. She was in a state of detachment from the moment she left the farm. Perhaps she reached a state I’ve never been able to achieve.’ Jemima gazed at her blankly.
‘You see, after Ruth left,’ Blanche continued, ‘I went on hunting the swamps, walking in the paddocks, searching for wetland ferns, the little wild orchids and the birds’ nests. I was on my own, not a child that anyone wanted to play with. And I came upon this, sticking out from the side of one of the drains my father had dug. The ground had been dug over and over again, but by then I think it had been compacted down several layers. The water was very low that year — usually it would have been full. My father didn’t mind that I walked in the swamps, but he said I must never go near the drains. I supposed it was because he wanted to keep me safe, although later I learnt that nothing was safe when my father was in a rage. I found this ordinary piece of cloth. I pulled and pulled at it but it was stuck in the earth. It tore away in my hands. I see pictures of mass graves in countries like Cambodia and Kosovo, where bodies have been left, and the tatters of their clothes are visible in the dirt, and I think of this discovery of mine. At the time, of course, I knew none of that, and those horrors were still to come. All the same, something made me hide it. At first, I wanted to keep it because it seemed so mysterious. I thought that the next time I saw Ruth I would tell her that I’d found something quite different in the paddocks. But then …’ and she seemed ready to stop again. ‘But then,’ she resumed, ‘as I grew older and began to truly understand, I thought it best not.’
‘Did you ever tell anyone?’
‘Never. You asked me the point. Well, that’s it, of course. You grow up thinking you’ve got bad blood in your veins. The murderer’s daughter.’
Jemima stood up unsteadily. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’ She pushed the cloth away. Outside the dark closed around the house. Someone had left a window open to air the place. Cold air and the scent of wintersweet and early daphne filled her nostrils. She thought she could hear the sea against the distant shore but perhaps it was the sound in her ears, some terrible knowledge that was being laid out before her. She picked up the cloth again, stood holding it.
‘The next summer,’ Blanche said, ‘the peat fires flared up again. The peat used to burn underground. They were especially b
ad that year, smoke and fire billowing across the landscape. But the smell was lovely, rich and aromatic. I’ve smelt that smoke in India sometimes. Smoke that reminds me of it. In the winter the rains came again. When I went back to the drain, there was nothing to be seen. It was under water.’
WHEN SOME WEEKS HAD PASSED, Blanche went back to India. Jemima asked her to stay on as long as she wanted, and her brothers seemed to have taken a liking to her too. She hadn’t told them of the conversation she had had with Blanche on the night of the funeral; she didn’t know whether she ever would. There was so much to think of: the garden to plan for the coming year, her mother’s affairs to put in order, lawyers to see. She thought about burying Nick’s ring in the garden, but that didn’t seem final enough, as if she was leaving a place where she could find it. Instead, she put it in a bubble wrap bag and sent it to him, with a note suggesting he might want to use it again.
She also bundled up some poems and sent them to a publisher of slim books of verse, and hoped for the best.
‘I love it here,’ Blanche had said longingly. ‘It would be easy to stay and make myself useful in the garden. I’d like that. But I have to go back.’ The ashram took in poor people who were sick and injured and had nowhere to go. When she was a teacher in her youth, she had learnt first-aid skills. She knew how to bandage wounds, to clean out infections. She wished she had been a doctor. It was time to go back and see how everyone was.
Jemima drove her up to Auckland to catch the plane. On the way, they detoured across the plains to the Waikato farmland where Blanche had grown up. Hang Dog Road had been renamed, but she knew the way. You never forget, she said. The countryside of your childhood is like the palm of your hand, an indelible imprint to carry into eternity.