The Hour Before Dawn

by Sara MacDonald

  Sam grinned and turned her to face him. ‘Fleur, I want you to come out to Australia once a year. I mean it. I miss you. Let’s try to spend some of each year together. I’ll even build you a house with a tree tenant.’

  Fleur laughed. ‘How about every other year? You come to see me one year and I’ll come to you and Angie the next.’

  ‘Done!’ Sam let her go and peered down at the picnic. ‘I sincerely hope you guys have left me something to eat,’ he said to the youths lying on their backs in the flower meadow.

  FORTY-FOUR

  We decided that the perfect time to bury Saffie would be at dawn when the sun rose on a new day. Often a mist would hang over the water and I would feel as if we were on an island cut off from all other human habitation, until the light filtered through making strange mountain shapes that evaporated in the heat of the day. I wanted the sound of seabirds calling and to hear the kokakos and takahe singing in the trees and scuttling in the undergrowth.

  I wanted a tranquil, given morning to lay Saffie at long last to rest, and I got my wish.

  We all made our way up the hill in the dark. I had found thick church candles and we shielded them from the wind in tubes of glass and they lit our way from the house to the flower meadow.

  I was still weak from losing so much blood, and Sam helped me on one side and Jack on the other. When we reached the top we lit nightlights in the summer house and I looked down into the earth where Saffie would lie, part of our garden and forever near me.

  We stood back and waited and soon we heard the low sound of Maori singing and saw the small candlelit procession making its way downhill from the tiny meeting house to the water. The tangihanga was moving our way and the sound of their voices rose eerily in the dark. They were carrying Saffie down the valley to the river. There they would cross the water in small boats to our side and take the path Jack and I had long ago hacked out of wilderness. They would carry her up the steep path to her last safe resting place here.

  The summer house was beautiful. More ‘of the earth’ and perfect than I could have imagined. The boys had immersed themselves in the spirit of all that I had hoped, and they had built the tiny house with thought and love, these cousins I hardly knew.

  I looked over at Fleur. She stood a little apart from us, small, very still, listening to the singing, watching the candlelit group flickering their way towards us. I could not see the expression on her face but the way she held her body tight into itself I knew her feelings were sharp and impenetrable. She was not crying. There is a pain worse than tears: it is the burden you carry to death. The shock you never lose; the death of your child.

  I thought about Alice and shivered violently.

  I let go of Jack’s arm and walked towards her, but Gran was quicker. She placed Fleur’s arm firmly in hers, her old hand covering Mum’s. I saw Fleur glance at her in surprise, then she saw me and held out her other hand and I went to her and took it and I wished with all my heart Fergus was still here to stand with her instead of me.

  We stood close together, three generations of women, as the little procession topped the rise and came towards the summer house. Gently they laid the coffin down in the grass in front of the house and the priest began to pray, and as he did so the first rays of the new day began behind the trees, filtering light to us in long shafts between the branches.

  Fleur and I had chosen Saffie’s favourite hymn and prayer. ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and the prayer ‘Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild’. Gran had taught us this prayer long, long ago, one Singapore Christmas, in a different life we once shared. Ah Heng made sure we said it every night before we slept.

  Sam’s boys chose a piece from Kahlil Gibran and read without self-consciousness or embarrassment. Our Maori friends sang for us, the whanau pani, the bereaved. They had not left Saffie’s tupapaku alone once in all the days I had been in hospital.

  I read a small piece from Fleur’s Hundertwasser book. I wanted everyone to understand what this place was, what this funeral meant. Not a shrine, but a part of us all.

  ‘Everything is alive constantly, only transformed into other forms…A person should be buried only half a metre below the surface. Then a tree should be planted there. He should be buried in a coffin that decays so that when you plant a tree on top, the tree will take something out of his substance. When you visit the grave you don’t visit a dead man, you visit a living being who is transformed into a tree. You can develop a beautiful forest which will be more beautiful than a normal forest because the trees have their roots in the graves. A fantastic place where you can live in constant contact with life and death…’

  My memory house. Containing Saffie and our private world of childhood. A place where we shared a secret language and the same face and our hearts beat in unison. Where we jumped from high boards into blue pools and raced each other to the side before we sank. Where the worst thing in the world was to be separated.

  One day this small house will return to the earth as if it has never been; but out of the windows trees will have sprung.

  When the moment came, Jack stood close beside me. We took Saffie inside the summer house and laid her in the place we had made for her in the ground, and the autumn sun began to warm the land as we knelt beside her. Fleur laid sweet peas on the thin coffin and I placed one gold Chinese shoe from the small box I held.

  The priest blessed her, whispered, ‘God and peace be with you’ and we sent her on into the next world.

  We covered Saffie with earth and while the Maoris swayed and sang softly of things I did not know we placed our plants into the new turned soil. In the spring they will flower and the saplings will have thin branches stretching to the sky and the palest green translucent leaves.

  In the spring I will bring Alice and it will be a new year of a new life. Fleur is part of that life; part of Alice and part of me. I will never let her feel alone again and neither will Sam. Fleur protected me and now it is my turn to protect her. We have both come home, Saffie and I. We have both come home.

  In the spring I will bring Alice.

  EPILOGUE

  The man folds the newspaper carefully into its natural creases and leaves it on his desk. His study overlooks the garden and he goes to the open French windows where the scent of tobacco plants is overpowering.

  He stands leaning on the doorframe staring out into the darkness. He brings his hand up to his face to brush away a moth and realises that his hands are trembling and his mouth is dry. Fear lies like ice upon his heart. The velvety night of summer draws him out of the light. He walks across the grass to the shelter of the apple trees near the old summer house.

  As he turns he sees his own footprints on the damp grass, walking away from the house, and it seems to him they belong to someone who has already left. As if he is no longer a part of the lives in the lighted drawing room where he can see his wife and eldest daughter watching television, unaware of him out here in the garden.

  Upstairs, in the spare room, his small grandson lies asleep.

  Standing under the trees a terrifying lethargy overtakes him and he shivers violently. He crosses the lawn again and goes back to his study. He cannot distract himself from the dreadful consequences of his discovery. It is a stark fact that makes all reasoned dialogue with himself meaningless.

  His daughter calls, ‘Good night, Dad,’ as she goes upstairs. His two black Labradors fill the doorway looking expectant, waiting for their last walk.

  He pours himself a whisky and sits down again, his back to the newspaper. The dogs move towards him, puzzled by his silence, and he strokes their smooth heads. He holds his glass up and examines it in the light as if surprised how quickly it is emptying. He can hear Beattie plumping cushions, switching the kettle on, turning off lamps.

  She comes to the door. ‘I’m going up. Will you be long?’

  ‘No, not long. I’ve just got a couple of letters to write and then I’ll walk the dogs. I’ll try not to wake you,’ he says as he always says
, but something in his tone alerts his wife.

  ‘Are you all right, darling? You seem sad suddenly.’

  He looks at her open and still guileless face. ‘Oh, just middle-aged angst…you know…if you could have your life again the things you would change. The things you would undo.’

  ‘What would you change, Alex? An army life?’

  ‘Maybe. Or a less selfish life. A more secure and settled life for you.’

  Beattie comes back into the room. ‘You’re talking rubbish. I’ve had a wonderful life. So have the girls. How many women get to be a general’s wife with all the privileges? Now get your letters written and walk the dogs and come to bed.’

  She kisses his nose and he catches hold of her hands. ‘You always were the strong one, Beattie. A general’s wife had to be his PA, admin officer and a hundred things besides. I got there with your help; because of you…’

  ‘Piffle! This is so unlike you. You were fiercely ambitious, even when I first met you…’

  She stops, remembering his sudden breakdown after Malaya. He had still been recovering from the accident that killed David Montrose and the tragedy of that poor child tipped him over the edge. That poor Montrose woman. It is a time neither of them ever refers to. She had to cover for Alex for months or he would have been discharged or deemed medically unfit to fly. As it was he had abruptly given up flying and changed regiments.

  ‘Don’t be long. You look tired,’ she says, all at once feeling anxious.

  ‘I won’t. Good night, Beattie…God bless,’ he adds softly.

  He pours himself another whisky and swivels his chair round to his desk. He writes four letters, seals the envelopes and lays them neatly in formation on the wooden surface.

  He finishes the bottle of whisky and then with unsteady fingers pulls the newspaper towards him. He turns to the page and he is back in the horror of that time and place in Malaya.

  So small the grave.

  He unlocks the small drawer in his desk, closes the French windows, calls his dogs and lets himself out of the back door. He walks down the lane that runs past the house towards the wood. He moves without a torch, deep into the heart of it; he knows the paths by heart and heads towards the river. The dogs, surprised at this change of routine, shuffle happily beside him sensing rabbits.

  The man is not in the woods of the English countryside but back in the heat and smell of that place and that time. The heat, the beautiful laughing man wrapped around white linen sheets under a mosquito net, their limbs entwined. Their flying suits thrown off, in a heap on the polished floor. They are abandoned in the supposedly empty house. Wife and children are at the dentist. The Amah is on her day off.

  They are unaware of the sick child, not at the dentist but waking beside her sleeping amah. She calls out suddenly from the other side of the mosquito net, grizzly with fever, waking them. Thank God, only waking them.

  He watches the man leap from the bed, pick up his child, make a joke to the child, who is pointing. ‘Who’s that? Who’s that in your bed, Daddy?’

  ‘He’s not very well…like you. He is having a little rest because he’s going to fly with Daddy later. He’s going to borrow our shower now to cool down.’

  ‘Oh.’ The child loses interest quickly, turning away, clutching her dress with one hand and her father with the other…

  As they stand on the tarmac waiting for one of the helicopters to be serviced they cannot look at one another. The man he loves turns to him, his face wretched.

  ‘We stop it here; now and for good. I have a wife and children I love and you have a pregnant wife.’

  ‘I don’t love her.’

  ‘Then you should. This is wrong. We can’t risk what happened this afternoon ever again.’

  ‘There are hotels. Singapore is a vast city, David.’

  ‘Sordid, and there are eyes even in crowds. Do you want to be disgraced and drummed out of the army?’

  ‘No, I don’t. But I don’t want to deny what I am, either.’

  ‘Well…’ David laughs bitterly. ‘I’m afraid this is the British Army and you chose it, so grow up and accept things as they bloody well are. I love flying. I love my wife and kids and I am not throwing it all away for…anyone.’

  He turns away angrily and Alex calls out, stung, ‘I’m not anyone, and you bloody well know it. You’re just less honest than I am. You are what you are. You cannot deny your nature any more than I can. This is not a miserable, guilty one-night stand. Oh, you can dance with your beautiful wife all evening, but it was me your eyes were searching for last night and this is how it will always be for you…’

  ‘Get off my back, will you, Alex?’ David faces him. ‘I’ve told you how it’s got to be and you’ll thank me later, believe me. You’re far more ruthlessly ambitious than I am. Let’s fly. The planes are ready. Get your arse in gear.’

  He turns and starts to walk across the airfield.

  ‘Do you know what they are saying in the mess?’ Alex shouts, running desperately after him. ‘That Fergus is fucking your beloved wife…’

  David swings round so fast Alex didn’t see the blow coming. Then he marches off to his plane and climbs in.

  That evening David’s wife wears a red dress. That evening David watches Fergus kissing her…and so does he.

  The storm caught them a few minutes before landing. He climbed out. David did not. The man shivers and feels in his pocket. Funny how you keep things, just for the sake of it, never thinking you will have real need of them.

  When he gets out of hospital he is on sick leave and he and Beattie go to Malaya. It is like a sick joke. David’s widow is there with her parents and children. He keeps out of the way; watches those twins in near panic from a distance.

  He is out smoking and pacing on the deserted beach going over and over what he said and what he should not have said to David.

  If only the house really had been empty. If only the child had not caught them. If they had not had a row; if he had not yelled the things he had David might not have tried to get home. He would not have been so furious with Fergus; he might well have laughed the kiss off. Instead he had a burning need to get back to Fleur and punch Fergus on the nose.

  David might still be alive if he had kept his mouth shut…

  ‘Hello,’ a small voice says. Here she is. Oh God. His mouth goes dry and sweat runs down inside his shirt. He feels a sudden terror of exposure. His flying, his army life, his marriage, his reputation…all blown away. He understands what David felt now and he was damn right to feel it.

  Is it the same twin? He sees the white dress with the pink roses, the one she had been clutching that afternoon, and he hears Beattie’s voice.

  ‘So sweet those twins! Even their parents can’t tell them apart. They have to be dressed in different dresses…one wears pink and the other blue…isn’t it killing?’

  He will never know how it happens. He tries to get rid of her, tries to shake her off, but she will not leave him alone. She remembers him all right. She remembers it was him with her father. She dances around him as if to taunt him, smiling, and her smile seems to him innocent but knowing. He feels blind anger as he pulls her along, then…

  He has to stop her screaming. He puts his hand over her mouth and somehow the thought comes and he leaves it there. She is a small child and he has large hands.

  A moment; a moment only. A rush of insanity and it is done. He is safe. His life is safe.

  He buries her. He buries her deep; turns and runs and his leg throbs painfully.

  It did not happen. It did not happen. It never happened. Not to him. It is someone else’s tragedy. Not his. He never left the beach. He saw nothing. No, no one suspicious.

  He helps them search. He even helps them search.

  When the detectives are flown out from England he waits for them to come for him. All his life, really, he has waited for the knock on the door. It never came. That life faded. He retired. Terrible things became something that happened to someone
else; a different, younger, fiercely ambitious self…but a man who would once have given up all he had for a life with the man he loved.

  Yet, from the moment his first daughter is born he thinks about that child every single day of his life.

  The child had looked up at him bewildered, suddenly terrified. Little beads of sweat lay on her top lip. Her fear had ignited something in him, something primitive and powerful. A predator sensing blood. One single evil moment that bleeds into the rest of your life, the horror of it dormant but pervasive, preventing happiness, preventing peace.

  He leans against a tree to steady himself. Raises his hand. Opens his mouth. The shot rings out and lifts the crows from the treetops. The dogs race back from the shadows to the body lying in the bracken and stay with him all night until Beattie comes looking for him.

  A story started long ago, finally ends. At the other side of the world, in a garden with no straight lines or angles, just the wild curves of land and blue sea and sky, a child is being laid to rest and another life is just beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am indebted to Taschen GmbH Publishers for allowing me to quote from Harry Rand’s book Hundertwasser.

  I had not heard of Hundertwasser, architect and painter, before a visit to New Zealand in 2003. I became fascinated by his unusual buildings and ecological paintings. One painting, The Garden of the Happy Dead caught my imagination and so my book was born. A note on this painting is at the back of the book.

  The New Zealand garden at the end of the book was inspired by the remote and beautiful garden belonging to (my son) James and his wife Susannah, an amazingly creative and resourceful horticulturist who, in true pioneer fashion are hacking and taming wilderness into a place of spectacular beauty.