‘Are you amused?’
William shook his head. He tried to examine his feelings. It took a while but he finally figured it out. He wasn’t losing his mind—like Holly—he was just upset.
Before, what upset him was what was immediately in front of him: the cruel spectacle of the daycare centre; the treacherous changes in Sam’s behaviour; the whole idea of this man, a powerful and paternalistic warden. He’d be upset, and fine again the very next moment. He should have felt more. He should have felt what he knew everyone else had been feeling the whole time—guilt and gratitude. He’d survived. Holly was dead. Lily and Curtis were dead. Before now, none of the dead people had been his. Even his Kiwi colleagues weren’t his. When Sam and Kate had wanted to bury the residents of Mary Whitaker, and Warren to bury his aunt, Oscar his classmate, and Bub his friend from the café—William had coldly decided that it would look odd if he failed to insist that they gather up the charred remains at the helicopter crash site and give them some kind of the ceremonial interment. It was the done thing, so he did it. The whole town was full of corpses; disposing of them had been, for him, a matter of hygiene, and a public relations exercise. They were doing it—the Kiwis—so he did it too.
So, here he was, still a gravedigger and not a corpse. He had survived. Again.
William had a job where he got to talk to people about their problems—specific problems, their talk on-topic—and he’d almost always be able to say how he could help them. It was satisfying work. And sociable, too; he often worked as part of a team, and dipped his oar in time with others. He was professionally competent and comfortable. He was witty and people would laugh. He was charming and they’d smile. But right now it seemed to him that he’d spent his life with his back to the sun and his face to a wall, writing on its white surface, working in his own shadow.
People had called William hardhearted, but they never asked him to account for it. He was always interested in other people’s attempts to explain themselves. He’d listen with appreciation, if not empathy. But when it came to his own story he couldn’t shape an explanation that didn’t sound, to him, like an excuse. Even this: that he was the product of a final conscientious and caring foster home, but that, though the good things in his youth came in time to save his self-respect, they were too late for his heart.
So, he’d survived again, if only to dig graves and listen to eulogies. Meanwhile Bub and Belle would love one another; Kate and Jacob would mourn and still manage to tend to people; Sam would work her fingers to the bone, as dumbly faithful as a dog; Theresa would heroically soldier on; Dan would simply go on hoping; and Oscar would continue to chirp away like a lively bird, as entitled in his sweetness as the Gospels’ lilies of the field. They’d all keep doing some kind of good, and he’d be left as lost as that formless soul, Warren. Only he wasn’t formless, but badly-formed, armoured in ice, and no use to himself.
Myr was still there, watching him. ‘Are you in pain?’
‘What point would there be in that?’
‘Pain is a stimulus that encourages us to avoid it. That’s its main point, I believe,’ Myr said.
‘Fuck you,’ William said. ‘It’s fine for you—you have a job to do.’
‘Yes,’ Myr said, quietly, ‘I have a job to do.’
‘Are you saying that it’s not fine for you?’
‘I volunteered,’ Myr said. ‘I’m supposed to be here.’
‘I’m not.’
‘None of you are,’ Myr said, respectful, and sympathetic—and then he frowned, as though something had just occurred to him. ‘Sam is a resident of this settlement, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes,’ Myr echoed, contemplative.
‘So is Oscar,’ William added. He waited for Myr to tell him why this might be significant, but Myr didn’t say anything further.
When Bub and Belle came downstairs, both were wan, and Bub was faintly yellow. They found Jacob and Sam—Jacob with his ear to the open top of one of the treatment room’s ceramic tea-light holders. He had the wide end of the candleholder pressed to Sam’s back. A number of funnels and jelly moulds were scattered on the bench. Jacob told Bub and Belle that he was trying to contrive a stethoscope. He said to Sam, of the tea-light holder, ‘I think this will have to do.’
‘Belle and I are going to inspect the kitchen from stem to stern and make sure anything left over is thrown out,’ Bub said.
‘That’s a good idea, but I’d feel happier if I could have a listen to your hearts before you exert yourselves.’
Sam got herself a drink of water. Belle saw that her hands were shaking. ‘You need to rest, honey,’ Belle said.
‘I’ll go when Jacob is free,’ Sam said.
‘If everyone is in clean bedding there’s nothing more you need do for now. You’ve been a trooper,’ Jacob said.
Sam stared mournfully at the three of them.
‘Has anyone remembered to feed the dogs?’ Bub asked.
‘It was the last thing Myr did before he took off,’ Jacob told Bub.
‘I couldn’t answer his questions. He needs answers,’ Sam said. Then, ‘You’ll have to take care of Sam.’
Belle’s scalp prickled. She touched Bub’s arm. He had stilled and stiffened.
‘Can you?’ Sam said to Jacob, and, ‘Is it really all right for me to go now?’
‘Yes. Get some sleep,’ Jacob said.
‘I should sit down,’ Sam said to herself. She went out through the swing doors into the dining room. Belle leaned on the doors and looked out after her.
Sam shuffled to the couch by the coffee machine. She sat down and looked up at Belle. Even from across the room Belle could see that Sam was smiling and that the smile was one of trust, and relief. Sam lowered her head so that her face was hidden by her hair. Then some change came over her. She was still in the same position, head hung, but her long hair seemed to fatten with static, and she began to shake. Her hands flew up to snatch her hair back from her face, and she stooped and vomited between her feet.
Jacob heard the sound and rushed out past Belle.
Belle told Bub to get some damp cloths. ‘Or whatever.’ She felt a little stupid. Sam and Kate had had a system. They’d been proficient: wiping faces and arses, bundling up bedding, sponging carpets, emptying basins.
Belle went to sit by Sam and took over holding her hair till the retching had tapered off. Bub appeared with a glass of water, and soaked, steaming dish towels.
Sam was trembling so violently she wasn’t able to take the glass. Jacob held it to her lips and she sipped, and looked around at them, her eyes assessing. ‘You’re all okay,’ she said—it was a statement, not a question.
Bub passed a hot wet cloth across her face.
She looked down at the floor and said, ‘I’ve regurgitated the ipecac, Jacob. Does that matter?’
In the glistening mass on the floor lay the tablet, whole, its surface only a little furred by its time in stomach acid.
‘Jesus, Sam!’ Jacob said. ‘Where did you get that? No wonder you’re vomiting. How many have you taken?’
‘Vomiting is good though?’ Sam said, and then writhed and clutched her stomach. Tears of pain sprang into her eyes. ‘This is rough,’ she gasped. She clutched Jacob’s arm. ‘Did you figure it out? Do you know what to do?’
‘Let’s get you lying down,’ Belle said.
They helped her upstairs and put her to bed. On the way up she managed to ask whether Oscar was all right, then once she was lying down she asked after William.
‘I still have to check everyone’s hearts,’ Jacob said. He produced the tea-light holder.
Sam looked at it in great puzzlement, which cleared when Jacob rolled her splattered shirt up over her head. He placed the wide end of the tea-light between her breasts and listened. He was still, listening. But, after a moment, his stillness altered
in quality. His gaze drifted up to meet Belle’s. He straightened. ‘Sam, what have you had to eat?’
‘That’s why we should check the kitchen,’ Bub said. ‘There’s no telling where else Holly planted her poison.’
Sam gritted her teeth and moaned. When the spasm passed she scanned their faces. She wasn’t looking for help. She seemed reassured. ‘You all came through.’
Belle said, ‘Give me that top and I’ll find you a fresh one.’
Sam sat up and pulled off her shirt and camisole. She said, ‘So it’s treatable?’
‘What did you eat?’ Jacob asked, more urgent. ‘Was there any orciprenaline left over? Where is it? I hope there’s some left, Sam, because you’ll need it.’
Sam had flopped down and was trying to cover herself. Her movements were weak and uncoordinated and she was very pale. ‘The bread tasted funny. I dissolved mine in the casserole.’
‘There was some of Holly’s bread left over? Why on earth did you eat it?’
Sam made a strangled noise; she was in pain, but laughing.
‘The poison was in the bread!’ Jacob shouted. ‘I’d have thought even you would have sense enough not to eat anything unless it was out of a packet or tin!’
‘Let me be,’ Sam said. She pushed weakly at Jacob.
He gripped her and shouted again. ‘Your heartbeat is too slow! Where did you put the orciprenaline—the second lot of pills I asked you to pass around? Where are they?’
Sam was still. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you look?’
‘Try to remember.’
‘This is the other Sam,’ Bub said. ‘She doesn’t remember. Maybe the vomiting was psychosomatic. You know—they both have to have a turn at being poisoned?’
Belle poked Bub and shook her head. He should remember that Sam hadn’t been ill. She had carried on and cared for them all.
‘Get away from me,’ Sam said. ‘Go find the pills.’
Jacob told her that she had to snap out of it now. Her life depended on her putting herself back together this minute. ‘Just step up,’ he said. ‘Right now you’ve got more to be scared of than whatever happened to you in the past to make you this way.’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Sam yelled. ‘Just fix me.’
Belle reflected that being furious was probably stimulating Sam’s heart as effectively as Jacob’s heart drug—albeit temporarily.
Sam reared up, leaned across Belle and vomited on the carpet—this time only thin bile. Belle put her arms around her. ‘She is mentally ill,’ Belle said. ‘Shouting at her about what she can and can’t remember is about as effective as telling an anorexic to eat. She is not going to suddenly stop being crazy, even to save her own life.’
*
Sam was weak and chilled. She wanted to be left in peace to sink back into the bed. She wanted to fall through the mattress, bed base, floor, through the whole building, and on through the earth itself. She wanted to lay down her flesh and bones and melt away; to be still, where she was; to stop, where she was. But she heard what Belle said, and knew that Belle was absolutely right.
Sam may have played games with people, hinting at her true predicament, but she wouldn’t tell. She would rather die than tell. She was sick and cold and sluggish, she had sunk as low physically as she’d ever been; her heart was beating slower and slower; her cells were starved of oxygen; her consciousness had been hunted into a corner, and it seemed the last thing keeping her company was that old, powerful compulsion to keep their secret—her and Fa’s.
For the first time in her life Sam turned to regard that compulsion. ‘This isn’t rational,’ she thought. ‘Why would I rather die than tell?’ And then she thought, ‘Why did Sam keep bringing us back to Kahukura, no matter what I did to punish her?’
Belle was still holding her, and Sam took hold too, as a way of remaining conscious. She gripped Belle’s arms and dug her fingers in. Belle gasped as Sam’s fingernails pierced her skin. Sam held on and pursued her thought, plunging like a freediver following the rope that measures her depth.
There are understandings that are summations of many experiences—the grass, rags, threads, and moss that magically shape themselves into a nest, into something for the future. Sam suddenly understood the only thing she had ever needed to understand.
The other Sam had kept them in Kahukura. She and the other Sam had concealed their nature, kept it a strict secret though it had been a tormenting nonsense to both of them. They had rules they’d rather die than break—because the rules had been given to them with what was done to them. The rules, simply stated, were: ‘Stay in Kahukura’ and ‘Stay hidden’. (Wait here. Lie in wait here. Lie in wait for what will come. For what will, one day, come back.)
Sam clutched Belle and swam up again so she could see them—Belle, Bub, Jacob—with the darkness bleeding in around their worried faces. ‘Jacob,’ she whispered. ‘Either she’ll know where the pills are, or you’ll have time to search the pharmacy again.’
And she went away.
Belle snatched her arm out of Sam’s grasp as soon as Sam relaxed. Frigid, astringent air blew up into Belle’s face, and she closed her eyes for a moment, so was first alerted to the change by the silent flurry as Jacob and Bub leapt back from the young woman on the bed.
Belle opened her eyes.
The young woman on the bed looked surprised, then tearful, and very, very tired.
The young woman on the bed had a clenched, raw-looking scar where her left nipple should be.
Part Seven
A late equinoctial gale had swept into Tasman Bay and was blustering about, surging in short gusts from every point of the compass, like an attack dog looking for an opening. Those survivors who were fit for strenuous work were out in the weather, either rigging lights or painting the supermarket carpark. They had scavenged three long-handled paint rollers and a collection of paints—only pale colours. They were making a bull’s-eye, its rings brightening towards a reflective centre.
First Oscar drew three concentric circles. Theresa stood still, holding one end of a piece of string, while Oscar circled her with a pencil tied to the string’s other end. Then they began to paint. First they made a bright bull’s-eye using spray cans of silver rust-preventer from the petrol station’s shop. Then they picked up their paint rollers and filled in the next ring, using the contents of scavenged tins of ceiling-white. They rinsed their rollers and started the outer ring. They painted it with all the other whites they’d gathered; the yellow, pink, green, and blue-shaded whites. They didn’t combine the colours, and the outer ring ended up a pleasing patchwork of pastels.
While the painting was in progress, Jacob and Bub were rigging lights and putting up reflectors—sheets of cardboard wrapped in aluminium foil. Only the supermarket and spa had power boards robust enough to handle the required wattage, and the repeated switching on and off of many lights.
The day turned dark early. The wind settled in one quarter, a rare easterly, and pushed a cloud bank across the hills. Most of the rain was already spent inland, but the cloud flowed out across Kahukura and filled Tasman Bay, dense and damp and accompanied by a surprisingly strong wind. The riggers and painters packed up and went back to the spa.
William and Warren had been allowed downstairs. Jacob was being careful about their convalescence. Warren was improving, but William was still pale and tired. He was permitted to go a little further every day and, that morning, had been as far as the gate and back.
He was now in the atrium, in his pyjamas, up only so long as he showed no sign of fatigue. He was helping Theresa compose a first, exploratory message in their improvised code, while Bub made a rocker switch for the lights.
Sam sat beside William, her mouth and nose pressed against his shoulder. This was the first Sam—Samantha. When she’d appeared, Bub, Belle, and Jacob had finally understood that the reason Myr had bee
n so puzzled by their insisting that he’d cured Sam was because he’d done no such thing. There were in fact two young women, one who worked as a caregiver in Mary Whitaker, and was a bit slow, having never recovered from a brain injury caused by traumatic blood loss, and who had been in Kahukura when the Wake first arrived, and who had gone mad and attacked her charges and herself with kitchen scissors, harvesting nipples and frying them up till something—perhaps pain—made her go, and leave everything in the hands of the other Sam, her whole and competent twin sister Samara.
Bub caught on very quickly, because he’d seen the birth certificates. He was able to explain to Belle and Jacob—though he did it in a torrent of ungrammatical babble—that Samara and Samantha could of course have been born in 1967 and not be in their mid-forties, because they were sharing a life, and whenever one of them went away she wasn’t present in the world where time was passing, so that Samantha was in her mid-twenties and Samara a little younger because Samara had spent more time there than here.
Bub paced back and forth thinking it all through aloud, while Jacob kept saying, ‘Where, Bub? Where is there?’ And Belle kept trying to question Sam herself, who stayed motionless as they flung themselves about the room raving at one another, her knees drawn up to cover her lopsided chest. She trembled and sobbed soundlessly, tears shining on her face. Belle fired questions at her and she flinched, but didn’t answer, only asked one herself: ‘Why didn’t she stay?’
Jacob finally calmed down enough to tell her what had happened and to ask was there any heart medicine left? ‘The—other Sam—needs it,’ he said, and nearly lost his mind in the middle of his sentence.
Sam’s face crumpled. ‘When you said “give them another pill” I kept giving out pills until they were all gone.’
The three of them stood still and considered this. Then Bub said, ‘Am I right about you?’
Sam tucked her chin behind her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.
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