Starlight Peninsula

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  At the bottom of the stairs, she stood with a hand on her stomach, thinking of Hine at work, who, in the café that evening, had taken Eloise’s hand and pressed it to the hard mound of her stomach, the skin suddenly, astonishingly, moving under Eloise’s fingers, making her jump and pull her hand away.

  ‘So freaky!’ they all said, wanting to feel again. The baby was pushing its foot against Hine’s stomach. You could feel the hard bulge moving under the skin. Imagine it. The presence inside you.

  ‘Alien,’ someone said.

  Stop thinking about babies.

  Speaking of babies, she had kept up her surveillance of Anita O’Keefe. Her latest theory was holding: that the father of Baby O’Keefe was Prime Minister Dance, married father of adult children and secret lover of the beautiful young Minister for Social Development, whose travels around the country, revealed on Twitter and Facebook, used to, before the pregnancy, mirror his own. That was the theory anyway. But stop thinking about babies.

  Eloise was on the stairs. She looked out the window at a patch of dry grass and a pepper tree, its long shadow crossing the garden. Ahead on the landing, the door to her bedroom was open. She entered the room and saw that the window to the balcony was closed, that all was tidy and unstained, the Sparkler and Silvio not having passed this way. She heard whispering behind her.

  In the bathroom a tap was running a thin stream of cold water. She turned it off, returned to the bedroom and sat down to take off her shoes. A cushion had fallen on the floor. She picked it up and noticed that the door of the cabinet next to her bed was open. The book she’d been reading was not on the top of the pile. She searched, found the book at the back of the cabinet, behind the stack.

  How had it moved?

  Everything was uncertain, as mysterious as a migraine dream. In the next room she found the book she’d been trying to recall: Arthur’s copy of a collection of Chekhov stories. She sat down on a deckchair on the upstairs balcony to read:

  A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia … Some miles from where he was, some fishermen saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface of a lake. This second monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend seems not to recognise, and listen to the rest. That mirage cast another mirage, then from that one a third, so that the image of the black monk began to be transmitted endlessly from one layer of the atmosphere to another. So that he was seen at one time in Africa, at another in Spain, then in Italy, then in the Far North …

  The sun was going down behind the stucco house, the windows blazing with reflected light.

  I can’t stay here.

  But her phone was ringing.

  ‘Hang on a second,’ she said half an hour later, and tilted the wine bottle. The level seemed oddly low. She filled her glass. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I said to him, You say Pilger lacks balance. I say … I say Pilger has a point of view. He cares. He cares and he has a point of view and he gives it to you. He socks you right between the eyes. And I said, So what is this thing you call balance? Do we always need to provide the other point of view? Tell me this. What if there isn’t another point of view? What if there’s just the truth? Know what I mean?’

  Eloise, who had been looking at the ceiling, allowed her chair to fall gently back onto its four legs.

  ‘E? You still there?’

  She sipped, swallowed and said, ‘You get sick of the endless “on the one hand, on the other hand”. Sometimes there’s just the truth.’

  ‘Exactly. Exactly. I knew you’d … But we need balance to assess the truth. We need a balanced attitude. As I said to Thee …’

  She drank, tilted back her chair, listened. Scott roamed away from his central point, came back to it, veered off again. She liked the sound of his voice. She loved the fact that he was talking. In fact, at that moment she loved him, tireless Scott: his enthusiasm, his goodness.

  Keep talking.

  ‘Now, Pilger on the Aborigines. It’s searing stuff. I’m not saying there’s never another point of view. Obviously some things are subtle and you’ve got to cover the whole picture. But to dismiss it out of hand just because you want “two sides of the story”. I said, Mate. There’s a place for belief. There’s a place for anger.’

  Balance, she thought. Balance. Her mind wandered and she was back in Dr Klaudia Dvorak’s office at the rear of the old Herne Bay shop, the French doors open to the garden. Eloise was talking, elaborating, and something had caught her eye out there in the garden, a movement.

  This was true: while she was sitting with Klaudia, a large, pale brown rat had emerged from under a mound of leaves, and begun sniffing around the edge of the patio. Eloise didn’t stop talking, she droned seamlessly on, all the while watching the big, sleek rat picking its way through the undergrowth. Its nose so busy, its progress so cautious … While talking, she’d considered mentioning the rat, decided it wasn’t relevant, and carried on without missing a beat.

  I edited out the rat. And if she was editing, was there balance? How could she know she was telling Klaudia the truth? Wasn’t it all selective, and didn’t any conclusion Klaudia drew from their discussions depend entirely on Eloise’s subjective take? She wondered if balance was a question she could raise with Klaudia herself.

  ‘Know what I mean?’ Scott said.

  ‘Totally,’ she said into the phone.

  It really was surprising, the way the wine seemed to be emptying itself out of the bottle. There was soft twilight outside the window, the black horizon seamed with orange and gold, a wavering stain of light on the water. People hurrying home with the last of the sunset.

  Listening, the phone held in the crook of her neck, Eloise reached up to the very top kitchen shelf and edged a gin bottle into her fingers. She nearly over-balanced as Scott went on, ‘Have you watched Hartmann’s hip hop tracks? He does the whole gangsta DJ thing. Stupid backwards cap and bling, all that. The songs are absolute shit but the girls in hot pants are amazing.’

  Eloise primly slid the wine bottle back into the fridge. Best not to finish it off. You don’t want to overdo things. She upended a slug of gin into her glass, and searched in the fridge for tonic.

  She poured, sipped and said in a thick voice, ‘He’s being a Man of the People. He talks about the People reclaiming the internet. He doesn’t mention how much money he makes out of the revolution.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Scott yawned.

  He was fading. Eloise said quickly, ‘He’s got his political ambitions.’

  ‘Right.’ Scott livened up. ‘Totally opportunistic ones. He wants to prevent his extradition, right. Like I said to Thee …’

  Eloise tilted back in her chair, fixed her eyes on the ceiling.

  It was late when he finally hung up. She was by the lamp, in a little bubble of light. Beyond its glow the darkness seemed to throb, as if in time with her heartbeat. She pitched herself forward and up, into the warm shadows. As she went around the room turning on the lights, her heart, which was already racing with the alcohol, sped up so fast it ached. In the estuary the water reflected the lights of a fishing boat, making its way out to sea.

  Her chest hurt. She felt odd. But when had she last eaten anything? She and Scott had dipped into a bowl of chewy lollies at Kurt Hartmann’s; that was it. No wonder she felt light-headed. She found her shopping, selected the packaged curry meal and slid it into the microwave, watching it revolve on its glass plate. She turned, and her eyes fell on the book she’d been reading when Scott rang, the Chekhov story called ‘The Black Monk’.

  She picked it up.

  Then he passed out of the atmosphere of the earth, and now he is wandering all over the universe, still never coming into conditions in which he might disappear. Possibly he may now be seen in Mars, or in some star of the Southern Cross. But my dear, the crux of the legend is that exactly a thousand years from the day when the monk walked in the desert the mirage will return to the atmosphe
re of the earth again and will appear to men. And apparently the thousand years is almost up …

  According to the legend we can expect the black monk any day now.

  The microwave pinged.

  There. A bit of food, a calming drink. No problem. With her plate of hot curry and her drink, she settled carefully into a chair. It was like … It was like being on a plane, with the pilot’s voice on the intercom: Slight technical problem, folks. Nothing we can’t handle, but we’re going to have to change our course …

  And so she sipped, and gingerly ate her packaged meal, and plaintively sought more drinks, and didn’t look at the night out there, at the teetering height of the sky, the pitching blackness of the air.

  Eloise woke, but nothing was clear. The previous hours presented themselves as a series of images.

  She had virtually no memory of leaving the chair and going to bed, only a fragment to do with climbing the stairs. At 3 a.m. she had sat up and looked at the clock, and in the darkness she had seen something move. Then she was locked in the bathroom, sitting hunched on the edge of the bath. She saw the mirrored door of the bathroom cupboard opening, her image sliding quickly away, then swinging back. Her face shuddering, then still. Her eyes big and dark, spooked. But then she had left the bathroom and was lurching across the dark living room, pushing down a curtain that was billowing up in the night breeze. She was fighting down the curtain and closing and locking the ranch slider, which had been standing open.

  This yearning for touch, for someone to anchor her. She was lost, the night was all splinters and shards. And then the information came to her, as if the darkness had shifted just for a moment, revealing what lay behind. The door had been deadlocked when she’d arrived home. But when she’d last left the house and fled to Carina’s, she had not deadlocked the door.

  TEN

  Carina and the Sparkler were sitting on stools at the kitchen bench, their work spread out in front of them. Giles, a structural engineer (a builder of bridges), was away, in the Sudan or Somalia or Niger, Eloise hadn’t quite paid attention to which. The Sparkler was leaning over her maths book and Carina was typing on a laptop with extraordinary speed, occasionally looking over and saying things like, ‘Christ, what does that even mean? Turn the fraction upside down maybe?’

  ‘You suck at maths.’

  ‘Ask Eloise.’

  ‘I suck even more.’ Eloise, who was lying on the sofa, spoke from under a cold flannel. Silvio had settled himself across her feet and she was tentatively enjoying the weight and heat of him, although not the smell. His eyes were uncanny: yellow flecked with brown, weirdly intelligent. He was a strong presence. Earlier she’d stroked his head and he’d pulled away as if irritated, and she’d felt hurt. When he draped himself over her feet half an hour later her spirits lifted. Really Silvio, old boy? So I’m not that bad?

  ‘You all suck. Total suckedness.’

  ‘Just get on with it. Put something down. God, homework’s a drag.’

  Silence. Eloise lay low, occasionally turning the flannel on her brow. The doorbell chimed. Silvio leapt off her feet and hurled himself into the hall with an explosion of barks. The noise was unbelievable.

  Eloise sat up, taking note. He was good, Silvio: he was mild and friendly but big enough, with a deep enough bark, to sound like a proper guard dog.

  The door opened. They heard, ‘Ooh, you’re a big softie. Lick me to death will you? Ooh, hello, all.’

  Demelza entered, with a jingle of keys. ‘Carina. If you could just …’

  Carina rose without a word, and went out to retrieve the car from where it had been left in the middle of the road.

  Demelza’s eyes fell on Eloise. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Eloise sat up. ‘Just visiting.’

  ‘Pardon? What are you muttering about? And what’ve you got that thing on your head for? Ooh, hello, Sparkles, darling, I’ve brought you a present. Look, it’s for your room.’ She presented her granddaughter with a plant pot, from which a small cactus reared up, furred with prickles.

  The girl took it with care. ‘Thanks. It looks like an evil gherkin,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Demelza said. She sniffed. Her gaze moved to Eloise again. ‘Look at you, your hair all on end. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You been living it up?’

  ‘No. Want a cup of tea?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Demelza lowered herself into a chair and sat pushing her hair off her temples in quick movements. She was wearing a short skirt and a tight jacket. She crossed her shapely legs, now mottled with age, and flexed her feet in their high-heeled pumps.

  ‘Your father’s under the doctor. He’s not himself. I’ve had the locum pop in, she’s been wonderful with me. So attentive and kind.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘I understand it’s the lungs.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re not right, is all.’

  ‘Was there anything specific mentioned?’

  ‘Hark at you. Goodness me. It’s his lungs, chuck. Mind you, I’ve not been right myself, with the hot weather. It comes to us all, doesn’t it, the stomach troubles.’

  Eloise presented her mother with a cup of tea.

  ‘What’s this then? A mug? It’s terrible isn’t it, the way I am: so fussy. Only wanting the best china, me. Now, Sparkles, how are you dear? Enjoying school? Doing your homework are you? Ooh, your mother never did her homework. Mind, she practically never went to school. Played truant the whole time. I don’t know how she managed to get any qualifications at all, to be honest.’

  Carina came in with the car keys.

  ‘Thank you, dear. Did you leave a window open for Gerald? He does get so hot. Carina, if you could just … Goodness, Eloise dear, what’s that you’re wearing? What a lovely jacket. Look at that. The colours. You do always manage to look so elegant.’ She looked pointedly at Carina, who stood holding out the keys, in her jeans, her faded hoodie.

  ‘Look at your sister’s lovely jacket, Carina. I suppose she does have to maintain standards, working in the television environment. That Roysmith, mind, he’s all hairdo, that one. If you ask me. Right clotheshorse. All style and no substance.’

  Eloise closed her eyes. Carina dropped the keys on the coffee table.

  ‘Anyway, I just thought I’d pop around, since your father and I never see you. You’re always so busy, I don’t know. Your brother comes and sees us all the time. He’s been wonderful with us. Let’s see, he’s reconcreted the driveway, done the lawns, painted Terrence’s study, and that’s just this week. Let me tell you about a fascinating book I’ve been reading. You’re welcome to borrow it if you wish.’

  ‘Want some pasta? There’s a lot left over.’

  ‘Full of garlic, is it? Why don’t you make a nice shepherd’s pie?’

  ‘It’s only got a few capers in it.’

  ‘I don’t eat capers!’

  ‘Do you want a muffin then?’

  ‘I don’t eat muffins!’

  Eloise opened a high cupboard in Carina’s basement and reached for the old sports bag. Down here in the homely, cobwebby space, with the bikes and the humming clothes dryer and the smell of hot laundry, it seemed possible to take a look at the past.

  She unzipped the bag. And look: the fashions of yesteryear. That jacket, those shirts. She’d never worn them again. Could you believe you needed to wear that colour? Or that cut? She drew out a pair of dated shoes, an ornate belt. Unlike Carina, who didn’t much care, Eloise had a strong fashion sense. The once-valued items now looked clumsy, absurd even.

  Underneath the clothes was Arthur’s cardboard folder.

  Most of the file was the typewritten script of Arthur’s play, a political satire that had been put on at a small theatre. It was funny and original and got some excellent reviews. He’d been discussing a run in a bigger theatre and had been improving and editing parts. The script was
covered in notes. She flicked through it. There was also a screenplay for a satirical TV show he’d been working on with a group of writers.

  Just Arthur’s current work, then. Time to go and have a glass of wine.

  Under the screenplay was a thin pile of handwritten notes. Here was Arthur’s small, cramped scrawl that she’d always found hard to read. It sloped backwards, perhaps because he was ambidextrous. He wrote with his right hand but batted left at cricket, kicked a ball with his left foot. She bent to decipher the handwriting.

  Notes for The Night Book Screenplay.

  Back then, he’d been working on a film script about a National Party politician. He was interested in the prime minister, David Hallwright. He wanted to write about society: rich, poor, high, low, good, corrupt.

  He said, ‘I want to write about money. To do a Père Goriot. I want to create my own Rastignac. A man who comes up against society, is horrified by its cruelty and then says: I am ready for that world. I will not lose. I will not go back. But I don’t know any rich people,’ he’d added. ‘I need to find some money. I want to get into Hallwright’s world.’

  Was The Night Book the name of the screenplay Sean had mentioned when she first met him?

  She lifted the handwritten pages and found an envelope; inside was a stack of photos of Eloise and Arthur. A trip they’d taken to the South Island: Eloise on a rock, waving, Arthur on the Cook Strait ferry, the stormy sea behind him, the two of them in front of a motel on the West Coast.

  She sifted through the pictures. A day of rain, and they’d walked beside a river banked with grey stones and come upon a melancholy, sinister scene: a pile of severed deers’ feet, left by hunters. The rain falling into the slow river, the grey stones, the hunters’ gruesome leavings. She remembered a tree fallen across the riverbank, its roots thrust up into the air. Rusted farm machinery in a paddock. The wooden motel in the distance under a giant bank of black cloud, its windows glowing through the watery dusk like a Jack o’ Lantern.