by Stella Duffy
FORTY-TWO
We sit in the boarded-up kitchen, Siobhan and I, sun slatting though what used to be garden centred windows. We drink tea from the flask I have with me, there are no biscuits, but anyway she is nicer than I expected, more real. I had not talked to the others, not really. The drunken conversation with Alex didn’t count, the water thrown syllables of Steve not the same as words. She is quite pleasant, this woman. She asks me to explain and so I do. In the very beginning—me and Gaelene at school, me and Gaelene at my house, at hers. Here, playing in Ruby’s house, Ruby’s garden, the long hot summer holidays. She is smiling. “It sounds like a nice childhood, Shona, fun, warm.” I agree with her, “Yes. It was. Even in winter we held a dream of warmth. I’ve lived in London for a while now, even though I’ve never liked the city, the size. It’s easy to be anonymous there, plenty of work if you don’t care what you do. I’m not there for me, I’m there to follow Gaelene’s progress. You are easy to follow, you know. Your tour dates, the places you stay, all that information. The world is so small when you know where to look.”
I remember I am telling her about the weather, the cold. “After I’d been in London a couple of years I was surprised when I came home to visit last winter, home to New Zealand. I was surprised by the frost and the cold and the rain that falls here for three days at a time. I must have rewritten my childhood. It must have been cold sometimes.”
“Greg says it felt like it was always hot. His New Zealand stories are all about summer.”
I frown. I don’t like how she keeps calling Gaelene by the pretend name. I want her to admit the truth. “Her name is Gaelene.”
She smiles at me. I do not want her to smile at me. I should be the one smiling. I am in control. This is my story.
It is on the edge of my mouth to tell her to stop smiling when I am distracted by the mess around me. Under the faded lino of dulled gold and red squares the floor is wooden, old boards laid down when rimu was everywhere and all the houses were built of the strong red wood and the pine tree was still just an idea for making money, bringing jobs to flat, thirsty volcanic land. This lino has been torn up in patches, a fire laid months or years ago against the wall where the oven stood, a cumbersome early electric model that baked cakes lighter and sweeter than any since. Children must have played here in the past few years, there are comics and empty cigarette packets. They did not know Ruby, did not know the woman to whom they have shown such disrespect. I think she would forgive them. I hope she will forgive me.
In the far corner there are possum droppings. I remember sleeping here at night, hearing the morepork on the telephone wire and the night we kids heard the possum in the loft. Tui, John’s uncle, had to climb up and get it down, he went up wearing the thickest gloves and still came back, his arms scratched and bloodied, baby possum wild in his hands. I thought they would let it go, us kids standing around in our pyjamas staring into its frightened eyes, tiny young/old face, but Tui took it outside and held it face down in a bucket of rain water. Drowned it. John and the other boys had wanted to do it themselves, talked about how they would kill the possum, John wanted to break its skull with the softball bat, but Tui said he couldn’t do that. It would be too hard. Possums have the hardest skulls, he said. So he drowned it instead. Water is soft, but stronger than a softball bat. And he told us it was kinder, better for the possum, better for the land. The possums kill the native birds and trees, they are a pest, brought here by the English like the rabbits and the deer, all pests. John said that if Bambi and Thumper were pests, why were there no possums in Fantasyland? But it was too late for those questions and we had to go to bed. I dreamt about drowning the possum that night. I wondered if it just closed its eyes underwater like the kittens did when my mum had to drown Squeaky’s babies. Squeaky was our big black cat and once a year his girlfriend Mama Cat would come back, leave a litter of kittens and then go again. She was wild as the possum, she had the kittens in the corner of the shed, fed them for a week or two and then left. Squeaky stayed behind, licking the kittens, crying for Mama Cat. We kept one of the babies and Tracey Myers had one and Kimberley Dickens had two but my mum drowned all the rest. I said she was mean but she said that’s just what you did. When I was an adult I’d understand. You have to do the right thing. And she’s right. I do understand. You have to do the right thing.
Then I am explaining about Gaelene and me, how we will be once this is all over. Why I had to make a clearing to find Gaelene. She doesn’t understand. She keeps stopping me and asking for explanations. I am happy to tell the reasons, I want her to know.
“I had to make the boys go away. They were taking up too much space. Getting in the way. You are all in the way. You are all too much a part of it, you make it easy for Gaelene to live the lie. I had to stop you aiding her corruption. I want to help Gaelene find her way home.”
I am telling her the truth but she doesn’t know how to listen to it. She interrupts again, “But don’t you see that how he lives his life is Greg’s choice?”
I stare at her, don’t know what she means, why she won’t let me talk.
She carries on, “Greg couldn’t keep living as Gaelene. He was never Gaelene. It wasn’t him. He was never really Gaelene. He had to become his real self.”
I shake my head, “You’ve influenced her badly.”
She holds up her hands in frustration, her movement too big in this quiet house. The plastic lid of the flask holding her tea shakes at the action, the table is not steady, the chairs are not level on the floor that has been vandalized by marauding ten-year-olds.
She tries to persuade me, “No, Shona. It wasn’t me. Greg was already Greg when I met him. I never knew Gaelene.”
I don’t believe her. Gaelene is still there. Somewhere in that façade there is my best friend. My blood sister. I will find her again. Siobhan stands up, her eyes dart to the back door where we entered. I had pulled the boards away from the door to let us in. We are not ten-year-olds, we are grown women, there is no thrill for us in climbing through a broken and dirty back window. I wonder if maybe she has heard something that I have not. I stay silent for a moment. I can hear my heart and think maybe I can hear hers. Her heart beats faster than mine, less steady. But then she does not know the house, is not comfortable here. I ask her to sit down, she refuses. I move towards her. I do not know when the knife came to be in my hand. Was it before or after she stood up? Have I been holding it all along? Did I hold it at the house? I look at the knife and am not even sure when I picked it up. Maybe the knife belongs to Pat. Perhaps with this she has carved roasts and cut chops. It is a sharp knife. I know I have a plan to follow. I have to make Siobhan stop using the name Greg. I have stopped the others. Gaelene will be able to acknowledge the truth if people stop going along with the lies, colluding in her fantasy. It has been too easy for her, too many people have made it easy for her. She needs me to help her back to Gaelene.
Then Siobhan is moaning, there is blood on her face and on her silk dressing-gown. The dressing-gown is red and her blood must be red too, but it splashes darker, blacker than the dyed silk. Siobhan is holding her cheek, redness seeps between her fingers. There is another gash below her collarbone. The knife is bloody. I am skipping time.
Siobhan is flailing in this semidark room, this house. She has forgotten that we came in through the back door, or maybe she does not know where it is, she is a moth throwing herself against the windows in the lounge, she can see the sunlight as it filters in, still lazy and hot, warm sunlight, dust motes held like the single note of a lawnmower on a Sunday afternoon. She smashes the one window unsmashed but cannot push against the wood nailed from outside. Now she has cut her arms on the glass, there are splinters in her hands, her eyes are wide, pupils extended to their farthest diameter to allow in the light, to let her see what there is to be seen. She is quite bloody. It is hard to know where the cuts start and the flesh ends. The dressing-gown sticks to her now, dark stained patches where the real red is stronger than t
he silk. I tell her again to calm down, we can sort this out, talk about it, she does not need to keep trying to run away from me, from this house, she is safe here. I tell her she should stop screaming, stop screaming that name, I cannot stand to hear that name.
She is making a mess of Ruby’s home. I wish she wouldn’t. I wish she would stay still. Talk to me. I try to make her stay still, to pin her down. But when I move towards her she is screaming for Greg. Greg cannot help her. There is no Greg. I go right up to her, tell her to hush, to be quiet. I am close to her eyes, see the bright in them. Then she stops screaming. She lies at my feet. She moves her mouth but there are no words. I think she is still breathing, there is a gurgling sound, I hear her heart pummelling in her chest. Maybe I can see her heart pummelling in her chest. She stops. There is no sound now. There is a small hole at her throat, just above the cavity where the collarbones almost meet. The cavity where a diamond droplet might sit. Her mouth twitches but she is not screaming now.
Perhaps she should have been calling for Gaelene. Perhaps I would have heard that.
FORTY-THREE
Greg pulled Saz into Pat’s old station wagon, toppling his mother out of the front seat as he tried to force them faster to Ruby’s house. To the bearer of the message left for him: “Dear Gaelene, Siobhan and I are at Ruby’s place. See you there. Shona.”
Greg drove as fast as he could, faster than the old car wanted to go. He’d been to Ruby’s new house many times the year he left New Zealand. When the old lady already knew she was about to start the process of dying. It was her new house Greg drove them to, the one much closer to town. The new house Hone had bought for her when he had just started to earn money. At university and putting all his spare money into making some comfort for the woman who had been so much a part of his childhood, who he now wanted to hold soft in his adult life. Greg had visited Ruby before he left New Zealand, told her what he was going to do. Then Ruby in turn told Hone, shared the story with her own boy. But no one else knew. Greg had visited Hone quietly the one time he came home. Just the two of them to talk about Ruby’s passing and have a quiet beer. None of the sisters, none of the grandkids, none of the cousins. It was cool. Ordinary. Like two men having a drink together. Normal. But this wasn’t, not normal, not cool and not right. Greg screeched the car to a learner-driver stop and threw himself out, up the driveway, pounding on the front door. Hone opened it. Tall, dark, broad body pushing against the constraints of his suit and tie, he looked confused and then surprised when he realized Greg was standing in front of him, “Greg?”
Greg didn’t bother greeting his childhood friend, “Where is she? Where the fuck is she?”
“Who? There’s just me here. What are you talking about?” He looked out to Saz in the car. “Calm down, bring your lady inside. It’s only a couple of hours till lunch, I’m working in town tomorrow, that’s why I’m down from Auckland, but we could have lunch, right? Or dinner?”
Greg shook his head. “No. It’s Siobhan. My girlfriend.” Greg corrected himself, “My wife. Shona’s got her. Got Siobhan. She said they were here.”
Hone’s smile vanished. “Shona? That mad bitch? Jesus, mate, she went crazy. Used to come round here all the time wanting to talk to Ruby. And that was years after she died. Nah, she’s not here. We haven’t seen Shona for ages.”
“But she left this note, said she’d gone to Ruby’s house.”
“Sure. But no one calls this place Ruby’s house. It’s the old house she means. She’ll be at the old house.”
Hone came with them this time, Saz in the back seat. She introduced herself as Greg drove them off again, screaming tires out to the coast road and then south. Five minutes later they rounded the corner to the derelict houses down by the estuary, out where the little town had first been settled, from where most people had long since migrated to the suburban comfort of more easily manicured lawns, less exposed to the salt air elements. Greg parked the car as close as he could, still several hundred yards run from where Hone pointed out Ruby’s house. In a row of boarded-up houses, it was the green and white painted place at the end, paint peeling and facing out, away from the others, one side bordered by the estuary, the other by what was now an overgrown path through the high dunes down to the sea.
Saz sprinted down to the house, leaving the unfit lawyer and the panicking Greg in her wake. She almost ran right past before she realized that while everything else was boarded up, the back door was open. She ran through the house, six small connecting rooms, the nearly mid-heaven sun now meaning that there was no angled light to slant though the boarded windows, she fumbled through the semidarkness, waiting for her eyes to accustom themselves to the dim, heavy light.
She stumbled over Siobhan before she saw her, stumbled and then fell headlong into a naked mess of bared flesh and blood. Saz knew she should apply pressure to the wound, hold in the blood, but the wounds were so many and the light so dim, she couldn’t hold it in, didn’t know where to start. She tried to roll Siobhan over, listen to her heart, feel for a pulse, check her eyes, but the body kept slipping from her shaking hands. Then Greg was there with Hone, standing before them both and screaming, pushing Saz away. Greg picked Siobhan up in one move, holding her to him and screaming. The sound that came from him was not words but a deep moan, a lowing that started as a fierce rip inside his chest and came out in a choking eruption of meaningless sound. For a minute they stood, Saz and Greg, holding Siobhan up between them, standing her between their two bodies and holding her in an embrace that squeezed the limpness out and tried to force life back into her. Hone took one look at Siobhan and the dark room and, leaving Saz hanging on to Greg, ran out to call the police from the payphone back on the main road.
Saz heard the movement from the corner before she saw what it was.
Greg’s face buried in Siobhan’s neck, Saz with her arms holding them both, twisted as she heard the sudden beat from the corner, saw Shona come at them with the knife. She let go of Greg and he fell backwards with Siobhan just as Shona lunged at the two of them. Saz doubled down as the knife whizzed past her face, its already sticky wet blade catching her on the shoulder. She heard the thin material of her shirt rip, felt a hot shock of pain and then stopped thinking about herself completely. She saw herself touching Siobhan. Remembered the first time Siobhan had opened the door to her. Felt Siobhan warm lying beside her, heart rhythms matched by their on-the-breath kisses.
Then Shona was coming for her again, screaming at her, “Leave us alone. I need to talk to her. Me and Gaelene, leave us alone.”
Saz dodged the knife, knocking Shona back against the wall as she turned to avoid the blade, kicking out at the taller woman. Scrabbling to her feet and out of Shona’s reach, Saz slipped on a slick of Siobhan’s blood, took two uncertain steps and then fell heavily against the window, smashing her already cut shoulder into the broken glass, a thick splintered shard edging its way through her shirt and into the earlier wound. She slid down the wall in the shock of the pain and winced again as she bashed her knee on the edge of a board of wood. Groping in the semidarkness, the board came away easily in her hand. The searing pain in her shoulder stopped her getting a very good grip on it, but when Shona flew at her again she held the board in her right hand and smacked it clean across Shona’s face. She heard the crunch of wood against Shona’s nose, saw the blood begin to flow and, in a detached and surprised way, noted the exhilaration she felt when Shona cried out in pain.
The fourth time, Saz was ready for her. Greg was still moaning, Shona screaming to be allowed to talk to Gaelene, the sirens wailing outside keeping time with the blood throbbing in her temples. Shona flew at Saz with the knife and Saz knocked it out of her hand, smashing at Shona’s knuckles with the lump of wood. In a single curved movement Saz dived for the knife and then turned back to stand in front of Shona. She grabbed Shona’s hair with her left hand, her shoulder wrenching in pain and screamed into her face, “Did you kill her?”
Shona looked at Saz in
surprise, “Kill her? Gaelene’s here! She came in with you. I saw her, she ran in with you!”
“Did you kill Siobhan?”
“Who?”
“Siobhan! The woman! Did you fucking kill her?”
For a moment Shona almost knew what she meant, why it mattered. Shona looked right at Saz, spoke quietly, calmly. “Yes. I expect so.”
Saz heard Hone calling from outside, heard the door slams of the police cars, heard their shouts, looked first at Shona and then at Greg and Siobhan. For a second she held Shona and the knife really very close. And then she let go of them both.
When Shona died, she fell on her own knife.
FORTY-FOUR
Siobhan wasn’t dead. She was badly scarred, her vocal chords severed and unlikely ever to heal properly, but she wasn’t dead.
It took one long statement from Saz and little police work to acknowledge that Shona had done the damage. The knife she had picked up from Pat’s kitchen bench, the knife she had used to persuade Siobhan to go with her, had a blade which perfectly matched the cuts gouged into Siobhan’s body.
Saz explained her version of events to the helpful policewoman. Then the same version of events to a less helpful more senior policeman and then the whole lot again to another man who would be able to pass the information on to those working on Alex’s murder and Steve’s drowning. “And Ms Martin, it didn’t occur to you that these two deaths were in any way linked?”
“Of course it did.”
“But you said nothing?”
“I had nothing to say. My client didn’t want me to make a fuss and it could hardly have escaped anyone’s attention that Steve and Alex died within weeks of each other. I didn’t exactly have to point that out.”