Mum glared at him. ‘As usual. Leave the messy stuff to me. So you can go on being the Ice Man.’ She drew in a huge ragged breath and turned to me. ‘Bel, I’ve met someone else and I love him and I want to get married to him. This house is going to be sold and I intend to use my half of the money to buy another house with Reuben. Your father and I have discussed it and we agree that it’s best for you to come and live with Reuben and me.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth.
I felt as if I was watching a soap opera. This was someone else’s mother saying these crazy things. This was someone else’s life falling apart. ‘Who’s Reuben?’ I asked conversationally. It was important to get the facts straight. I had to have something definite to hang on to.
‘Reuben teaches at the high school with me,’ Mum said. She glanced at Dad. ‘We’ve been … seeing each other for the last six months. We’ve decided we want to get married.’
Six months? She’s been having an affair for six months? Zap, another piece of the plot fell into place. All those afternoons when she was at school supposedly running an extra-curricular drama class. The way she’d come dashing in the door at 6 o’clock, her hair electric and her hands flying in perpetual motion and her eyes sparkling. ‘Have I met him?’ I asked. I went to a different school to the one Mum taught at but I knew a few of her fellow teachers.
‘Uh … no, you haven’t met.’ She glanced at Dad again, her chin tilted at a defiant angle. ‘But that’s going to change.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Dad said coldly. ‘I have no desire to meet the man. Ever.’
‘Uh … I guess I’ll meet him soon then,’ I said blankly.
‘Oh, yes,’ Mum said. ‘I’m sure you’ll like him, Bel. He’s a very gentle, thoughtful person.’
I heard my father draw in his breath. Touché, Mum.
‘Where will we move to?’
‘We want to buy a house in Titirangi. We’ve both managed to get new jobs at the high school over there.’ Her fingers were fiddling with her wedding ring, turning it round and round. ‘We can’t stay at the school here. It would have been too … difficult.’
Difficult. Right. The understatement of the year. ‘How will I get to school from Titirangi?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to change schools, Bel. There’s no way you can get across the city each day.’ Mum’s eyes begged forgiveness from me but I looked away and stared at the floor.
So this is what we’ve been leading up to. Heroine’s parents hate each other’s guts and are divorcing, family house being sold, heroine’s mother taking her to live with a stranger, heroine forced to change schools and leave all her friends behind. What a bummer.
Except that it’s happening to me. Not to some soap opera star.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. I got up and left the room. I didn’t go back upstairs to the TV. I went to the front door and walked down the garden path. Then along the street for four blocks and round the corner and I found myself at the door of Rae’s house, leaning my head on the cracked paint.
That was just Round One. The punches didn’t stop coming. After I’d spent the night at Rae’s place and woken at 10 o’clock I’d crept back home. Rae’s mother had phoned my parents to tell them where I was and she’d also left me a note saying she’d phoned the school. I wondered if my parents would be waiting for me when I got home to tell me it was all a mistake.
But no, the house was empty. They’d both gone off to work same as always. Mum had left a note next to a fat pink rosebud with its stalk wrapped in tin foil. The note said, ‘Bel — what can I say? Sorry isn’t anywhere near enough. We’ve got to talk. How about tonight? Please don’t go off with your friends. Love and kisses, Mum.’ I put the note and the rosebud in the rubbish tin. Real corny, but for one second I felt slightly less shitty.
Memories are like having a sore tooth. It doesn’t take much poking to make me feel bad all over again. I sit on the little stone chair at Dawson’s Beach, surrounded by all this unbelievably beautiful scenery, and wonder what it would be like to just step off the edge of the rocks into the cold green water…
Like a lifeline a tiny thread of tune begins weaving through my head. It’s an old folk song called ‘Lilies White and Roses Red’ that my choir sings, a sad tune about true love gained and lost. Our choir teacher told us it was an English country ballad, probably eighteenth century. I begin humming it, softly at first and then louder, trying to fill my head with the tune so there’s no room for the pain.
I notice that the sky has a strange look to it. The thin layer of cloud has thickened and changed colour to a sort of gun-metal blue, almost lavender. It seems to be drifting lower and lower. Weird. The water is changing too, even as I watch, reflecting the eerie metallic surface of the sky. The channel and the surrounding hills fade into a haze of grey and blue, and little swirls of mist dance across the water towards me.
The air is hot and heavy and damp. I can hardly breathe. I feel sleepy all of a sudden. But I don’t want to sleep. The tune keeps running through my brain. Love, loss, death … love, loss, death… I’m not humming it any more so why can I still hear it?
My eyes are closed but I’m not asleep. I open them and look sideways at the beach and there’s a person trudging along the sand towards me. A young woman with a dark red woollen shawl draped over her shoulders. She’s wearing a skirt down to her ankles, made of heavy brown material, and her black hair is hanging loose.
She comes closer and I can see she’s watching me as intently as I’m watching her. I suddenly feel she has something important to tell me. Despite the dowdy old-fashioned clothes she’s only young, about my age. Her face is sun-browned, her eyes are huge and black. She looks very sad. I can’t move. I can only watch and wait for her to come to me. Then I realise something. She’s walking across a stretch of shingly sand in heavy boots and I can’t hear the noise of her footsteps.
Suddenly there’s a shout from out in the channel. I blink, look round, and see Glynn gliding across the water towards me in the red kayak.
When I look back at the girl she’s gone. The beach is empty, not even a trail of footprints in the sand to show where she was walking. The sky is the pale colour of thin cloud and the water has returned to its usual shades of blue and green. There’s not a shred of dancing mist anywhere.
‘Hey,’ calls Glynn, gliding close to my rock. ‘How’s it going?’ I gape at him, unable to utter a word. He doesn’t seem to notice my condition. ‘Figured I’d come round to the beach for a quick swim,’ he says, grinning shyly at me.
‘Okay,’ I mutter, levering myself out of the chair. I’m stiff and slightly achy all over, as if I’ve been sitting in one position for far too long. I stretch my arms over my head till my bones crack.
It must have been a dream. I must have nodded off in the heat and dreamed the strange girl on the beach. That’s the obvious answer, despite the fact that I don’t remember waking up. It’s definitely time for another swim to clear my brain.
Glynn pulls the kayak up on the sand while I clamber back over the rocks towards the beach. Without waiting for me he strips off his life vest, drops it on on the beach, and gallops down to the water. I decide not to swim out and join him in the deep water. Let him do his macho stuff on his own. I splash round in the shallows for a minute then wade out and wrap my towel round my shoulders. I put on my sun-hat and sunglasses. I need plenty of gear to hide behind just at the moment.
Glynn powers along parallel to the beach for a hundred metres or so then turns round and swims back just as fast. When he joins me on the beach he’s not even panting. He grabs a towel out of the kayak and sits down on the sand about a metre away, neither with me nor apart from me. He doesn’t speak, just rests his chin on his knees and sifts sand with his fingertips. I have the feeling he doesn’t know what to make of me but he’s trying.
‘Who was Dawson?’ I ask suddenly. ‘Was he the owner of the whaling station?’
Glynn jumps slightly. ‘Eh? Oh, yeah. He was the headsman.�
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‘When did the whalers come here?’
‘Jack Dawson set up a shore whaling station at the end of the 1820s. He was an ex-convict from Sydney, determined to make a fortune from whale oil.’
‘Did any women live here then? On the station?’
‘Yeah, the whalers had Maori women. They called them wives, though most of them weren’t really married. George Martin lived with Marama.’ He glances sideways at me. ‘Hey, you do know we’re descended from George and Marama Martin, don’t you? I’ve got some stuff about them if you’re interested. I’ve done a bit of research.’
‘What about Pakeha women on the station?’
‘There was one,’ Glynn says, nodding. ‘The first white woman to live in the South Island. Jack Dawson’s wife, Lizzie Dawson. She was very young when she came to the station. Jack brought her out from Sydney.’
My hearing goes all strange. It’s like I’m hearing fuzzy echoes of Glynn’s voice saying the name, over and over again. Someone or something doesn’t want me to forget that name. Lizzie Dawson, Lizzie Dawson, Lizzie… ‘How old was she?’ I say in a slightly choked voice.
‘Sixteen, I think. Much younger than Jack. He was close to forty.’
Sixteen! Same age as me. Living in a strange place, away from her friends and family. Like me. ‘Do you know what she looked like?’
Glynn laughs. ‘Pass. There are no pictures of her in the history books. People like that didn’t get their portraits painted, you know.’
I hardly hear him. I can sense her so strongly, watching, listening. Lizzie Dawson. It’s her. It has to be! I didn’t dream her after all.
‘D’you know what they used to do?’ Glynn stares out over the channel, a scowl gathering on his face.
‘Who?’
‘The whalers, that’s who. Murdering bastards.’
‘What?’ I want to keep thinking about Lizzie Dawson, but Glynn’s anger distracts me.
He hurls a pebble at the sea. ‘They’d row out into the Strait and kill the calves. Then it was dead easy for them to get the cows because they wouldn’t leave their calves. Once they’d made the kill they’d stitch the whale’s mouth closed and tow the carcass back here and haul it up on the sand with pegs and winches. Then they’d cut the blubber off with knives and spades. Bloody murdering butchers. And that goes for George Martin too. He was just as bad as the rest.’
‘Umm … about Lizzie Dawson …’ I begin, but Glynn is in full flow.
‘They just kept on catching and killing till there were hardly any whales left. The last station here in Tory Channel was closed in 1965. Can you believe it? They were killing whales right up to then, using harpoons with gelignite in them. There are only around eight thousand right whales left in the whole world now. It will take hundred of years for the population to recover.’
‘Uh …’ But I can’t stop him.
‘They’re just starting to come back to the water round here. And then you read in the papers about the Japanese wanting to start whaling again. And the International Whaling Commission is still dithering about setting up a South Pacific whale sanctuary. It makes me sick!’ He hurls another stone at the water.
Wow. It’s the longest speech I’ve heard him make. Obviously I’m dealing with another fanatical greenie here. He and my mother would make a good pair. She’s right into saving whales and tigers and orangutans and so on. ‘Umm … what did they do it for? I mean, what did they get out of the dead whales? Stuff for making perfume, wasn’t it?’
‘Oil for lanterns and machinery,’ Glynn says bitterly. ‘And baleen for ladies’ corsets and skirt hoops and buggy whips and umbrella spokes. Later on they used whale oil for margarine and cosmetics and chocolate. Chocolate!’
‘Yeah. Obscene.’ But I’m still thinking of Lizzie, not chocolate, and Glynn obviously thinks I’m sounding a bit bored.
‘Sorry! You don’t want to hear me raving on about all that stuff.’ He jumps to his feet. Shooting a quick embarrassed smile from under his fringe, he picks up his life vest. ‘I think I’ll head back to Karaka Bay. D’you want to come with me in the kayak? I brought an extra vest.’
I look across at the skinny kayak sitting on the sand and shake my head. ‘Thanks, I think I’ll walk back today. But you can show me how to use one of those things another time. I’d like to learn.’
‘It’s a deal. See ya.’ He pushes the kayak out into the shallows, slips into it with a smooth movement that no doubt comes from long hours of practice, and paddles out into the channel without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 5
Eventually I gather my things and begin the trek up the hill behind the beach. I can’t get the girl’s face out of my mind. It’s so weird. I couldn’t have seen her. I must have been asleep and dreamed a sad young woman wandering along the beach. It’s the logical conclusion. The conclusion Rae would reach.
But there’s a small voice whispering in the back of my mind that has nothing to do with Rae and her logic. Maybe Dawson’s Beach really does have a ghost. A real live ghost. Her expression is so clear in my mind’s eye, with that sad mouth and those intense black eyes. I can remember the sense of misery that came to me when our gazes met, a misery that matched my own mood so exactly.
At the top of the hill I flop on the ground to get my breath back. I’m kind of spaced out, and I put my head down on the grass and close my eyes. Bad mistake … my memories slide down into that awful time just after D-Day…
After I came home from Rae’s place I spent the whole day watching soap operas on television. I also ate a jumbo-size bar of caramel chocolate and half a carton of strawberry ice-cream and a whole packet of Mallowpuffs.
Mum came home at 4 o’clock and appeared at the door of my bedroom. ‘Bel,’ she shouted over the noise of the television. ‘Can we talk? Please?’
‘Uh huh,’ I said, without looking at her.
‘Turn the TV off?’
I sighed and pushed the button on the remote. ‘Well?’
She looked even worse than she had yesterday. Her eyes were red and there were dark bruises on the skin underneath. ‘So what have you done today?’ she asked, sitting on the end of my bed. ‘Rae’s mother phoned and told me you wouldn’t be going to school.’
We were in teacher-counsellor mode. I knew all about it. Right now we were easing our way into a meaningful dialogue. ‘I watched TV all day,’ I told her.
‘Okay. That’s fine. Bel, tell me, how do you feel right now?’ Her voice was steady but her hands were clenched together so tightly I could see the tendons standing out.
I stared at the grey television screen and shrugged.
She sighed. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about last night. Probably we shouldn’t have landed everything on you at once. It must have been an awful shock. It’s just that there’s never an easy way to say these things. Once we’d started it all had to come out.’
‘I guess.’
‘I’m sorry you felt you had to run away to Rae’s place. Perhaps if you’d stayed here and talked things over with Dad and me you might have felt a bit better.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’
‘Bel, don’t close yourself off from me. We’ve got to keep talking to each other. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.’
I shifted my gaze from the television screen and glared at her. ‘Why? How is talking going to make it any better?’
‘Well … I think you need to try to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘Why things have worked out the way they have. How your father and I got to this stage. It didn’t just happen overnight.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ I said.
She blinked and jerked her head as if I’d swung a punch at her. ‘Oh, Bel. Don’t say that. You need to know. It’ll help you deal with the whole situation.’
I hauled myself up against the pillows and folded my arms. ‘Okay. I’m listening. Say it.’
Mum pulled a tissue from her pocket and
methodically tore it into little strips as she talked. ‘Andrew and I … well, we were very young when we got married. Terribly young. We did love each other then. You’ve got to believe that. But we’ve both changed a lot over the years. We’re different people now with different interests. We’ve got nothing in common any more.’
You’ve got me in common, I thought. Your daughter.
‘We were going to wait till you were a bit older before we got divorced. Oh yes, we have talked about it before. But then I met Reuben. I knew him at school, of course, but we didn’t really become friends till we both worked on the drama production last year. Our … um, relationship just sort of developed from there.’
‘I see,’ I said coldly.
She didn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm. She was totally caught up in her thoughts of Reuben and her face was suddenly full of life. Like a jolt of electricity shooting through her. ‘I know you’ll like him as much as I do, Bel. He’s a marvellous person, warm-hearted and loving. He cares about all the same things that I do. Things that Andrew simply can’t be bothered with.’
‘Warm-hearted,’ I mused. ‘How interesting. Does Reuben care about taking away all the important things in my life? Such as my home and my school and my friends and my choir singing?’ For good measure I added, ‘And my father.’
‘Bel … oh, Lord, this is so hard.’ The sparkle had vanished from her eyes. ‘Of course Reuben and I are both terribly worried about what this means to you. We’ve been agonising over what to do for months. But … well, I’ve got to the stage where I simply can’t carry on with a fake marriage any longer. Not even for you.’
She drew in a very deep breath and shifted closer to me. I could smell her perfume, light and flowery. I’d always thought of it as a happy perfume. ‘Look, I know it’ll be difficult for a while. But you’re young. You’ll soon settle down and make new friends. And there’s bound to be a choir at the new school.’ She tried to hold my eyes, willing me to agree with her. ‘Tell me the truth, Bel, it can’t have been much fun for you with Dad and me barely speaking to each other?’
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