‘No. I’m waiting for my husband,’ she said. He didn’t speak again, gave her just a quick glance, picked up his pack and ambled away through the throng. She was amused rather than shocked, and told Peter when he returned. She could tell that, rather than being affronted, he found it arousing. He put a hand on her hip there amid the crowd, as if he wished to cover her immediately in an act of possessive sex. For most men sex is something of itself, with no necessary connection to love, trust, procreation, even familiarity.
As Margaret had her sandwich, lemon slice and coffee at Tekapo, she wondered if that was to be the way of it now she was alone: slipping into the past rather than engaged with what was around her. Once her grieving was over things surely would be different, and after all the whole trip was an exercise in nostalgia in a way. So better to let it flow and then be done with it.
Before leaving Tekapo she sent texts to her son and daughter. ‘Make sure you check in, Mum,’ Greta had said, ‘otherwise I’ll worry.’ Margaret thought of the boys, the elder just at school. They would remember nothing perhaps of this part of their lives: her affection, the times together. That was one reason she needed a future. It was important to her that she have some place in their lives, leave an impression of her love that would be with them always.
In the late afternoon she came into Christchurch, the slanting sun and traffic making the driving unpleasant for the first time on her trip. The city was familiar, though, and she knew of a motel close to Deans Bush: off the main roads and not far from where they had lived when Greta and Andrew had been growing up. Motels were more convenient than hotels when you had a car in the city, and more private, once you had your key, your pottle of milk and the curtains drawn. She checked the bathroom, always her point of assessment — size, facilities, cleanliness, the quality and quantity of the toiletries. Sachets were inferior containers: she was pleased to see phials. Her only disappointment was the proprietors’ names. The man hadn’t introduced himself, but on the reception desk was a small stand bearing, in white letters, ‘Janice and Bruce Roberts’. So far away from the exoticism of Promise.
The house in Puriri Street was more recent in her past than the bach at Lake Alexandrina, but when she went there in the still, warm evening, Margaret found it had altered more. The side patio had been enclosed to make an incongruous conservatory, the Marseilles tiles replaced with long-run iron, and the cherry trees mutilated by savage cutbacks. She parked a little from the gate and stayed in the car so she wouldn’t attract attention by loitering at the entrance. As at the lake, she had no wish to go inside, and could furnish everything there from memory. Even in its existing form the house seemed brimful of her life, shimmering almost with barely suppressed experience. How could other people move and breathe there without awareness of earlier possession? The big windowed lounge late on Christmas Day with bottles of gift wine, chutneys and olive oil standing by a chair, a black bin liner crammed with bright wrapping paper, the ravaged plates of nuts, cherries and chocolates, the extinguished, floating candles on the stained cloth of the extended table, the strings of Christmas cards along the pelmets. Andrew’s presents gathered together by another chair, not yet taken to his room. The lesser detritus from the crackers still lying on the carpet — cardboard coins and strips from their construction, the dice, miniature whistles, tiny yo-yos, and keyrings that constituted the gifts. Peter’s discarded shoes and book, by the sofa he rested on. Greta watching clichéd television repeats. The pine branch Christmas tree drooping, but still spangled, the camera on the coffee table with images already drifting into the past.
Of all the places she had lived in, this home had the greatest significance. A time when as a family they were most inward and well knit, when she and Peter were most aware of responsibility, of their children’s dependence, of Andrew and Greta having no one greater in their lives than their parents. It was a time of striving and clear direction, a hectic time, and only in retrospect acknowledged as the high point of cohesion, no matter what individual successes lay ahead. It was an ordinary house, and they had moved on to better ones in which more money and leisure had allowed dinner parties, and art works bought with an eye for investment. But Puriri Street would not be dislodged. She sat in her car a little down from the gate and savoured past fulfilment and past regret.
In the motel that night she dreamt not of family happiness, but of Bevan Sugrue, with whom she had put all at risk. She hadn’t driven past the medical centre where he’d been a partner, and she charge nurse for five years and lover for one, but that dream came, perhaps because she suppressed the memory when awake. He was a small, nimble man with a bitch of a wife. His wife, overwork, his concern for his patients and fear of misdiagnosis, kept him in a state of nervous tension and unhappiness. He and Margaret became close not because of initial sexual intent on either side, but because they liked each other: because she felt he needed support, and he appreciated it. Cynics could roll their eyes, but it was the truth of it. Truth, too, that so often friendship and proximity lead to bed. They took no risks at the medical centre. He had a key to his sister’s flat in Papanui and they would meet there less often than they wished.
Margaret was surprised by the urgency and passion of his lovemaking, the thankfulness he expressed afterwards, the detailed praise of her breasts and thighs. It was flattery that Peter had dispensed with, though still eager for satisfaction. Bevan was a noisy and abandoned lover, revelling in the release. They would lie afterwards on the single bed in the small flat, his hot head on her belly like a cannon ball still reeking of the muzzle’s powder, and reassemble themselves. There was guilt, of course, that sometimes after lovemaking led them to decide to just be friends: a decision rescinded when their bodies had been a few days apart. There was for Margaret the specific guilt on those occasional nights when she simulated a pleasure with Peter that had been spontaneous with Bevan earlier in the day. The unforeseen and greatest loss was in her own sense of moral authority within her family: how could she expect principles if she betrayed them in her own behaviour? So as Bevan and she had swung out from friendship to the extreme of being lovers, so they swung back again within the year, not repudiating their love, or the sexual experience, but regaining the stability of a relationship open to examination. Relief was greater than regret, relief that his needs were no longer her responsibility.
Margaret’s motel dream, though, had nothing of overall exposition. It was a sudden, inexplicable and utterly convincing visitation. She and Bevan in his sister’s sheets, the tight dark hair on his compact chest, a sheen of sweat at the base of his neck, the light above her seeming to sway although it was the bed that rocked, that wet slap of protracted sex. ‘I could fuck you for ever,’ he was saying when she woke, her breathing quickened.
Years after she and Peter shifted to Invercargill, she heard that Bevan had divorced his wife and moved to Brisbane. It was the right thing for him surely, and Margaret retained affection for him, but never regretted staying with Peter. Lying in the impersonal motel room she knew that all of that was past: the physical thing with men, sometimes routine, sometimes flaring with an unsettling and dangerous power. There were more important and enduring matters. She would ring both Greta and Andrew before preparing for the drive to Nelson. She would cultivate the ability to look ahead, to accept that her satisfactions in the future would have nothing to do with sex.
She was packed soon after eight, but waited in her motel room until after nine oclock so she would avoid the work rush of traffic as she left the city. There was a faint smell in the alcove kitchen she couldn’t place, until she opened the door of the microwave oven and found the inside had been sprayed with a cleansing foam and then forgotten. She resisted her first inclination to finish the job herself, but only because the same faint smell would then be on her hands and with her in the car on her journey. Margaret had a keen sense of smell. Fragrances and stenches were powerful fixing agents in the memory. The most evocative of all the senses, the psychologists said. P
eter had a poor sense of smell, but great sensitivity of vision, especially the subtleties of colour. He blamed the rugby he played as a boy, said that at primary school he had gained a reputation for heroism by being the only kid who would tackle Pug Morrison head on. Pug was in the special class and bigger, older, less tractable than other youngsters. Divided septum, broken nose, claimed Peter, and it had never been picked up, even when further damaged at secondary school. There was no visual evidence of injury — he had quite a distinguished profile — but it did for his sense of smell, he said, so that he could make only gross distinctions.
‘Now it’s my turn,’ Peter had said in the hospice room, on one of those days so like others there: when whatever was outside — sun, rain, wind, cloud, light or darkness — made no difference whatsoever. ‘I’d hoped for longer, Maggie, but that’s the bloody way of it. I know you’ll do the right thing for me. I’m counting on you. Always have.’
‘Greta said she’d bring the boys in later.’
‘There’s nothing for them here. They’re bored silly, poor kids. And they make me cry because I love them, and then that upsets them.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Could you take home some of these flowers?’ Peter said. ‘I know people are kind, but they crowd out such a small room. When I wake up I feel I’m in my bloody coffin already.’ He gave a laugh meant to cheer her. ‘It’s not as if I can smell them much anyway.’
‘But people who sent them will expect to see them when they come. It’s rude otherwise.’
‘But I’m allowed to be rude now,’ he said. When she kissed him before leaving she was conscious of the sickening decay on his breath, and his teeth seemingly enlarged. Barely could she keep her tears back. She deliberately inhaled his breath as proof that the organism does not represent the spirit. Love inflates a world: grief makes the earth flat. ‘I’m sorry it’s all fallen on you,’ he said.
‘So where are you headed this morning?’ asked the woman at motel reception. She was fullish of figure and her dark hair had recently been cut and coloured in a style that suited her well.
‘Nelson,’ said Margaret.
‘Lovely at this time of year. I always say the top of the south has the best weather of all.’
‘I haven’t been for several years.’
‘Enjoy,’ said the woman, as if granting dispensation.
Driving a long distance on the open road can be a form of justified idleness, and Margaret treated it that way. In the weeks before Peter’s death she had felt as if she was being wound up so tight that eventually, like a clock, she wouldn’t tick at all, and now the travelling, the time alone, even the dreams perhaps, were bringing some release. She didn’t have to hold herself together, to maintain strict coherence to reassure others: she could allow her mind to flit, past and present to flow without heed. Sometimes she just enjoyed the landscape; sometimes she was preoccupied with thoughts without any conscious trigger in the present.
As she passed by the few buildings at Cheviot she found herself thinking of discomforted Dr Cairney giving her the news that Peter wouldn’t live much longer. He knew she had worked in hospitals, had witnessed recovery and death, and the pronouncement of both: knew she understood he would give his prognosis, and then go to lunch, or ring his regular squash partner to confirm a playing time, or visit other patients and laugh with them on delivering an optimistic report. Professionalism was the euphemism, she supposed. No, no, unfair. She recalled Dr Cairney’s gently voiced opinion and the awkwardness that proved he cared. Margaret’s experience and training should have made it easier for her to understand and accept what was happening, yet knowledge had been no protection. It’s quite different when it’s you, or yours.
Along the coast, however, coming towards Kaikoura, she found herself thinking of her jewellery. She had decided to have it all valued when she got back from the trip, and wondered if there was anyone in Invercargill sufficiently qualified to carry out the task. Rings were her particular love, and each had a special and personal provenance. It relaxed her to think about her rings, the origin of each, and whom she would gift them to when the time came. Well, before the time came: she’d have to see that all was clear and in writing. Not counting the mere dress jewellery, she had eleven rings, and surely the total value of those would be over $50,000. She became absorbed again with the comforting task of bringing each to mind in colour and and detail, and making calculations. Those bought overseas were the most difficult to assess, and most likely to have appreciated considerably. And there was inflation to be considered too, so that real values were compared. Peter had advised her to get everything valued professionally, but she had quite enjoyed the anticipatory guesswork, although not greatly concerned with money in other ways.
Six of the rings were gifts from him, but she had rings from her mother, including a Victorian diamond solitaire in a claw setting so raised and liable to damage that she was afraid to wear it. It had belonged to her grandmother, and Margaret wouldn’t contemplate any alteration of it. The most precious of her rings were not necessarily those of greatest monetary value. The engagement ring had been purchased when Peter had the least money of their time together. There was her Istanbul ring with emeralds, diamonds and rubies channel set, which evoked the happiest of holidays, and a hotel room, overlooking the Bosporus, in which Greta was conceived. Just to wear it was imaginative passport to their closeness, their commitment, and the almost exultant confidence they shared in the future.
Margaret liked Kaikoura. The site had character and called for a settlement. When she and Peter had travelled north with the children during the Christchurch years, they had usually stopped there. Maybe the café she had her lunch in was one of those they had visited years before. It was another exercise in eating alone, but she would become accustomed to that. She told herself she was lucky: good health, family in the same city, friends, no lack of money. She could probably find work if she wanted to: nurses were always in demand. Another man could be found just as easily, even at fifty-seven. She wouldn’t say it to anyone, but she knew she looked younger than her age. But she didn’t think she wanted another man, not in the way they would want her. Maybe later, when Peter had been dead for much longer, that would change, but she didn’t think so. Friends and family, that would be the way of it for the future. People died too quickly anyway, at her time of life.
She thought about those things, but not in any particularly morbid way. In fact she felt quite chipper in Kaikoura, sitting with a view of the sea and with bright sun, as it had been each day since leaving home. Widow was an old-fashioned term, and most of its connotations irrelevant in a modern world. She would do all right, she decided. She would make a full life for herself.
Not far before Seddon there is a small lake shrouded by trees. Margaret pulled off there to have a few minutes out of the car. There was a dirt track through the willows to the lake, but no clear walkway around it. She watched ducks and black swans some distance away. It wasn’t a recreational place: nothing, as they say, improved on nature. The water was still, but dark, and there was a lot of insect noise from the fringing branches. Peter would have been mildly impatient to be on the road, and would not have suggested the stop at all. There was no hurry now, no business appointments, or deadlines, that bustled you through life. In his way he had been an ambitious man, but not from selfish motives. Comfort and security for her and the children were his largely unexpressed concern. When Andrew and Greta went to university Margaret thought they should take student loans and so learn the value of money, but Peter disagreed. ‘It’s something we can do to give them a better start,’ he said, and worked the harder to provide it. In Greta’s case he was probably right; in Andrew’s certainly wrong.
As Margaret went back to the car, through the few willows, she noticed something she had missed before. A pig’s head in the cleft of a tree. Some hunter must have disembowelled and decapitated the kill there, for even she could recognise it wasn’t a domestic pig. A head darkly
hairy, narrow snouted and palely tipped. It was another of those random and incidental things that nevertheless would stick, like Promise as a name, like the idling boy shredding catkins as Peter was dying, the burnished rose hips of Alexandrina, or the shop no bigger than a bathroom in the Istanbul market where they had bought her ring with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. She wondered by how much time she had avoided the dismembering of the pig. Maybe it had happened elsewhere, and young guys, drunk and happy, had driven with the head leering from a window until they tired of it, and left it in the tree. She would tell Melanie about it when she reached Nelson, and Greta and Andrew later. She would make an anecdote of it to prove she was capable of light-hearted involvement with the world.
The autumn brown of North Canterbury and Marlborough was a surprise to her after Southland, and the source of more childhood memories. In Blenheim she stopped only for petrol. She was keen to reach Nelson, find her motel and have the later part of the day to herself before Melanie’s party. She ran through the names of Melanie’s children in her mind, so that she could ask about each and not become confused, for old friends expect familiarity with their lives. Melanie had said there were to be no presents, but Margaret had ignored that of course and bought a lampshade of multi-coloured glass so attractive she had been tempted to keep it for herself. Just a few years more and she and Peter would have been would have been celebrating their own fortieth wedding anniversary. She consciously shifted attention to the country she drove through: the boutique wineries and new buildings superimposed on pastoral farming, the shingle-bed creeks and rivers.
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