Canny went to them, and then stopped short. The casket was lying on a finely woven, bleached flax mat, trimmed with pale green and white wool. Canny knew how much work had gone into that mat, and she didn’t want to put her feet on it.
Sisema came up behind her and leaned on Sholto so that she could kneel. Her corset creaked. She unbuckled Canny’s shoes and pulled them off her feet.
Canny went forward. Sione scrambled up and actually caught her, because she fell over. She couldn’t keep her feet under her.
Marli was so still. Her lips were dark and sealed. The casket was quilted like a movie star’s bedroom furniture, in gleaming white satin. Marli had a satin coverlet drawn up to her waist, and she was wearing a white organdy dress with orange and blue crisscross embroidery. Her hair was in a French plait with green and white ribbons braided into it. The casket was crowded, full of flowers, but it was as if Marli had fallen very far down, and Canny tried to look through her friend to see her. But she couldn’t see her. Marli was there, and not there. She was her, and not her. Canny kept saying her friend’s name as if impatiently prodding for attention, “Marli? Marli?” Then sharply, “Marli!” She sounded like one of their teachers. When I talk to you please pay attention.
Sione helped Canny crawl to Marli’s side. She slumped there, her elbows on the casket, opposite Marli’s father. He reached out and touched her hair and nodded at her. Nodded, and nodded. Tears were dripping off his chin. “She couldn’t,” he said. He was finding it difficult to speak. “She couldn’t. Eh.”
“Yes,” Canny said kindly.
She couldn’t live.
Marli’s mother said, “You look like you’ve been in the wars, darling. Are you better now?”
“It’s just a migraine.”
“Migraines don’t scratch you up.”
Canny looked at the scabs and bruises on her arms, and the scratches visible under her sheer tights. Her hands were the worst—all cut up, and hovering, trembling above Marli’s carefully braided hair. Marli’s hair felt exactly the way it should, but the give in her scalp was all wrong, her skin no longer elastic and resilient. Marli really had changed; had been changed. She really was gone.
* * *
THEY STAYED FOR A FEW HOURS till the pill Canny had taken, the one Sholto had warned would make her floaty, wore off. Her head didn’t hurt, but it felt as if it was hatching plans to start. When she came out of the cloakroom someone tried to put a plate of food into her hands—the kitchen was full, bustling, the tables at the far end of the hall were covered in paper tablecloths and paper plates piled with roast chicken and slices of taro cooked in coconut milk and sausages, buttered bread, fairy cakes, lamingtons.
“No thank you,” Canny said. “I’m just waiting for my mother.”
Sisema was at the end of the hall, rearranging the wreaths to make room for their own. Canny drifted over to the windows and leaned on one. The glass was cool.
Outside some of her classmates were sitting around a picnic table. They were the girls who used to play netball with Marli. They were lighting up, touching their cigarette tips to light as many as possible off one match, though that was said to be unlucky. Canny watched one girl swing herself up onto the bench to plant her bottom on the tabletop. Her Ma’eu teammate came up and slapped her legs, and Canny heard her say, “We don’t sit on tables. We never sit on tables.”
Canny had sat on a table herself, recently, although she knew never to do it. She remembered feeling stunned to find herself sitting on a tabletop—remembered being uncomfortable. But how had it happened? And why did she remember being startled, and delighted too? Because she’d been lifted up and put there. But when had this happened? And who had lifted her?
By the time her mother joined her, Canny’s eyes had clouded and were pinched at their corners.
“Is your head hurting again?” Sisema asked.
Canny didn’t nod or move her jaw. She didn’t answer. She just followed her mother stiffly out to the road. Sholto had fetched the car—they’d had to park hundreds of yards up the street. Sisema turned on the tap on the outside wall of the building and held her hands in the stream till her fingertips turned pink. Canny came and did the same. They were both clean, but the ceremonial second washing felt right. Sisema said, “You have to keep doing things like this. Just one simple thing after another.” She shut off the tap and shook her hands. “Life is all steps, but sometimes it’s only stepping-stones. This is a stepping-stone time for you. But I’m here with you.”
* * *
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Canny attended the funeral. It was a blur of noise and nausea. The interment, at least, took place out in the open air.
Everyone went to the cemetery. Marli’s brothers and uncles carried her casket from the hearse to the grave, and put it down, not on the cold ground, but on that same finely woven mat that had been laid ready. Then, when it was time to put the casket in the ground, Marli’s mother put out a hand to Canny and, gently whispering the few necessary instructions, she had Canny help her wrap the casket up in the flax mat. They made a parcel of it. “That looks warmer,” Marli’s mother said. Then, with great difficulty, because its handles were now hard to find and hold, Marli’s menfolk picked the parcel up and carried it to the big cradle of straps, the wet edge of the grave wheezing as they trod carefully along it.
By that time there were seeds of shining blackness appearing in what Canny could see, black seeds that became streaks, then bottomless holes in her field of vision. She leaned against her mother and shook.
She couldn’t see, but she heard the quiet engine of the undertaker’s hoist start up. And then the singing, the long, rolling swells of melodic chanting.
Sione caught up with them before they got to the car. He said, “Canny? We understand that you couldn’t make it in time. We know you were sick. We don’t want that to trouble you, so you need to know this. In the morning of her last day when we came to visit Marli, before she got very bad, she told us that you had been there during the night. She told us that you had come into the ward and braided her hair. You saw how her hair was in a French plait? It must have been one of the nursing sisters who did it, but Marli thought it was you. She told us, ‘Canny came to visit me. She was wearing a beautiful dress. She fixed my hair.’”
As Sione told his story he let the tears run on his face.
Canny couldn’t answer him. She was blind with pain, and crying. But she heard her mother say, “It’s very kind of you to tell her that. God bless you, dear.”
* * *
DESPITE THE BARBITURATES SHE’D TAKEN, Canny came awake in the middle of the night, driven up from sleep as people are by the memory of a thing that has to be done, a task, a duty that is theirs alone.
After a moment she understood that she’d woken because it had begun to rain. It was raining, and Marli was out there, beyond comfort, with the rain falling on her.
20
January 1963, Castlereagh, Southland
IT WAS THE FORMLESS TIME after the ceremony and the photographs, the toasts and speeches, the first dance, the cutting of the cake, and tossing of the bouquet. In the begonia house, where the wedding breakfast had been served, the piles of meringues had been reduced to rubble. The white tablecloths were stained with red wine and Fanta. The children were floppy and glazed, or were still grimly eating cakes. One flower girl had been sick, and her mother was in the washroom rinsing her hair ribbons.
The band had packed up. The dancing was over, but not before the clot of a bridegroom had stood on the bride’s train and torn a hole in it. The bride and groom had gone off to put on their “going away clothes.” The wedding party was only waiting for them to come back for final farewells and congratulations.
Some of the guests had already departed, others were nosing around a long table covered in presents. Those who’d maybe had a bit too much to drink were picking up parcels and shaking them. The mother of the bride issued warnings. “Don’t you separate that gift from its card. There’s
nothing worse than having to guess who to write a thank-you note to and resorting to faking it, writing ‘Thank you so much for your beautiful gift’ to someone who’s given you a garden hose.”
The best man and groom’s younger brothers had taken off their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves. They were doing handstands on the lawn between the conservatory and the beds of roses.
One of the bridesmaids had two bouquets, hers and the bride’s. She was giggling with her girlfriends about being next.
The other bridesmaid had slipped off her pearl-gray shoes and was plucking the flowers from her crown of plaits. The day had been hot and the flowers were wilted. After she’d done that, she was coaxed up to pelt around after some of the sugared-up kids, until one of them got into the fountain and flung water at her. She went off, shaking drops from her bias cut fawn satin dress. She showed the other bridesmaid the grainy streaks of damp, and the other bridesmaid pointed out the holes in the toes of her stockings.
The bride and groom returned, he in a cinnamon-colored sports coat, she in a cowl-necked burnt orange dress, with a yellow hat and gloves. Everyone crowded around. The couple’s car was tufty with streamers. The groom had tried to tear off some of the decorations but had forgotten the “Just Married” sign in its back window.
The bride went around kissing everyone and had a little cry with her sister, the bridesmaid who’d caught her bouquet. The other bridesmaid was wearing her shoes again but had a pencil behind her ear because she’d been helping the bride’s mother make a preliminary list of the gifts. The clot of a groom tried to pull the pencil out and managed to free a long loop of hair. He tried to tuck it back and about five people said hastily, “No, it looks fine, don’t try to fix it.” The bridesmaid held his hands down and kissed him on his freshly shaven cheek. She and the bride hugged, and held on for a long time. The bride shed a few tears. The bridesmaid said, “You look really lovely in that color, Susan.”
The bride said, “Thank you for everything, Canny. Get one of these oafs to drive you home. Don’t think of walking.”
Canny laughed. “So close to home, and in daylight, of course I’m going to walk.”
“But no one’s waiting for you at home.”
“My key is in my purse. At four o’clock on a Saturday, University Hill is as safe as houses.”
“Not all houses are safe,” said Susan darkly. But that didn’t mean anything to Canny.
“Come on, my sweet,” urged the clot of a groom. “We’d better hit the road.”
More kisses and hugs and backslapping and teasing jokes, then the couple got into their car and wavered away over the speed humps.
* * *
CANNY WASN’T, THESE DAYS, particularly prone to embarrassment and was happy to walk out of the gardens in her long bridesmaid’s dress. She picked up its hem and began to climb the ten flights of steps that zigzagged up University Hill. People she met coming down looked delighted to see someone in wedding finery. One old man struck his walking stick several times on the ground, like a formal herald, and said, “What a vision of loveliness!”
She stopped at the top to take in the view. It was a windless day and the harbor was like silk. The Westbourne ferry was halfway across, its decks crowded with day-trippers. The wharves were busy, the cranes in stately motion. The light was clear, the air pure, and everything faraway looked close.
Canny went along the street and through the gate in the arch of the hedge. She found a car in the driveway. It wasn’t one she recognized.
Sisema and the Professor were away at a conference in Founderston, and Canny had the house to herself. So when she found the strange car, and the house unlocked, she didn’t close herself in straightaway. She stood in the hall and called out. “Hello?”
“Hello,” came back. It was Sholto.
Canny ran upstairs. Sholto was standing at the window of his old bedroom, which faced the Botanical Gardens. The rose gardens, fountain, begonia house were all completely visible.
“Could you make her out?” Canny said.
“In orange, at the end,” he said. “I haven’t been here long enough to see her in her wedding dress.”
He turned around and studied Canny’s outfit. She did a little twirl.
“Beautiful.”
“Yes. Some brides put their attendants in nasty colors.”
“Sue always was very generous.”
Canny looked at him soberly, then sighed and said, “Well, you know what I think.”
She thought he’d been an idiot to let Susan go. To decide that their small differences were important. To not try to change, even a little. To not see the warning signs. To take things for granted. All the usual stuff.
“How was the clot?” Sholto said.
“Blissfully happy. A great lummox. And sweet,” Canny said, knowing she was being unkind to Sholto. Then, “What happened to your car?”
“I sold it. That’s a borrowed one. Sisema sent me a letter saying she wanted me to clean out my room, and she preferred me to do it when she and the Professor were out of town.”
Sholto and his father had had a bad falling out, a year ago, when Sholto’s book came out.
Sholto said, “I think they even expect me to take all the dusty sports trophies. The stuff parents usually keep.”
Sholto’s room smelled musty and unused. There was a sad little crowd of cricket, swimming, and debating trophies standing on the carpet, ranged like a circled wagon train, with empty cardboard boxes looming around them.
“You’ve hardly made a start,” Canny said. She sat on his bed and once again slipped off her shoes.
“I’m sorting. Making it clear what it’s okay to throw away. I’ll give them the pleasure of doing that.”
“Purging the house of Sholto,” Canny said.
“The Professor was making a big, scrupulous fuss about what I was going to take and keep, like he always does about family things,” Sholto said. Then he repeated with the right emphasis, “Family things.” He pulled a face. “As if the family having things and passing them on with due ceremony represents family to him.” He turned away and opened the wardrobe. Empty coat hangers rattled. He said, “I’ve bought a berth on the SS Arcadia, sailing to England. I’m off on Wednesday. I hate this place. There’s nothing for me here.”
Canny said, “You have ideas about Southland, and it’s your ideas you hate. All you see is smug, timid, insular Southland, instead of gentle, reserved, dignified Southland. It’s both. You should stay, Sholto, and keep asking questions.”
“Oh sure,” he said. “No one needs a twenty-six-year-old thundering from the pulpit. And anyway—who are you to say I shouldn’t cut and run? You were supposed to be doing something better.”
After a time he noticed that his rummaging was the only sound in the room. He came to sit with her, though he didn’t apologize, because he thought he was telling truths she needed to hear. But he took her hand and held it.
What Canny remembered was that the thing she’d been best at—math—became lethal to her. She remembered it in her gut. It wasn’t just a story others told about her, or an explanation she sometimes had to give. Her deep, irrational gut memory of severing and sacrifice was too mysterious for any explanation to make sense of it.
Her mother’s story came closest. Sisema’s take on what happened to Canny was this: Canny’s grief for Marli was so great that it was like a serious illness. Canny had a kind of breakdown, where she persuaded herself that her sorrow-induced illness should cripple her, as Marli’s illness had crippled Marli.
The summer before, Canny had been on her way down the ten-flight shortcut to the city when she’d met Jonno on his way up, carrying a smart new houndstooth coat over his shoulder. They stopped to talk, and when she asked why she hadn’t seen him lately on campus, he told her he’d left. “I didn’t fit in,” he said, and then he winked at her because she was supposed to know why. “University isn’t for us, eh.”
Jonno said he’d gone and done a bookkeep
ing certificate and was working for an importing firm. But he’d just applied for a job at IBM in Founderston. “They have these giant computers that can calculate the average of sets of up to two hundred numbers, in a fraction of a minute. If I get the job I’ll be the first person from my family to go north in five hundred years.”
Jonno’s “five hundred years” made Canny forgive his “not for us” remark. “I love it that you can say that,” she said.
Jonno gave her one of his “I’m testing you” looks (she always failed his tests) and said, “You know, we all read your brother’s book.”
“Your family?”
“No. All of us.”
He meant the Faesu, the people of the archipelago, Southland’s first people, who had twice settled, and twice abandoned, the mainland.
At the time of the conversation, Canny made a mental note to tell Sholto what Jonno had said next time she saw him. Then she forgot. She’d become a forgetful person. She’d stood on the steps that day, chatting with her old Math Competition teammate, and feeling like he’d let her down. No doubt he felt the same. It was meant to be different for them. They were expected to put up with feeling uncomfortable at University—surrounded by white students. They were supposed to put up with feeling out of place so that their kids wouldn’t. (That was one of the many sensible things the Professor had said to Canny.)
So—Sholto reminded her that she was supposed to be doing something better. Then he felt remorseful and came to sit with her and held her hand.
After a moment she said, “Never mind about me.”
“No! I’m not going to listen to that. You could have made some useful contribution. Proved or invented something new.”
“I mean it, Sholto, never mind about me. Now I’m going to argue with you using your own thesis, the one from your book.”
Sholto’s book was called The Forgetful Land: An Immaterial History of Southland.
Mortal Fire Page 33