by Chris Else
But then there came a shift in the sky, the cloud breaking smoothly, quickly. The light flowed down in a rush of warmth across her cheek and the back of her neck, and all around her the green things throbbed with a sudden pulse of colour. She felt her muscles stretch to meet the sun, and then she was out of the maze of paths and striding through the grass. A lift in her chest, a need to run, to leap and shout, a savage stab of joy.
At the edge of the knoll the view stopped her. The ground fell steeply away. Ahead the farmland stretched out to the grey hills in the distance. The sunlight was racing like a breaking wave across the fields. Below to the left was a loop in the stream, just visible, with the light sparkling on the water, and to the right a house, surprisingly close.
It was a house she knew. It might once have been her own. She had passed it on the road coming here, of course, but it was hidden then down a long drive, behind a grove of half-grown trees. She had been to it many times over the years, pulling up at the front door, dropping off her daughter, Imogen, and picking her up again, stepping inside sometimes, just for a moment or, even longer, for a cup of coffee. But now, having it there, below her, she was startled by its presence: walls of yellow brick with colonial windows and a dark tiled roof, the long spine of the nearby greenhouse with its thin ribs beneath the glass, the beds where Heidi grew her dahlias, the garage like a flat box with its doors open. She could see the 4WD inside. She could even make out the garden furniture on the back terrace, white wrought-iron.
She stood there, looking, breathing. Every out-puff was a little gust of fear. But that was stupid, unnecessary. The house was nothing. Someone else’s ground. She had never had a right to it or wanted it. God, no.
‘Are you coming?’ Max was to her left, below her, on a path that led down the slope.
‘How do you get on with your neighbours this side?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Good. Good as gold.’ He took a step or two back up towards her. ‘I go and have a chat to her sometimes. She doesn’t mind.’
Do you know him, then? Colin Wyte? She might have asked that. I was married to him once. She might have said it lightly, casually. He’s the father of my child. He’s a bastard, an idiot. But you know what? We’re still friends. We socialise together. He’s the best mate of my best mate’s husband. Correction. He’s the best mate of both my best mates’ husbands and he’s the business partner of one of them. And I’d rip his throat out if I didn’t feel so guilty.
The dog was there, its head beside her thigh. It gave a little whimper.
‘Come on,’ Max said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’
She followed him, with the dog behind her. The path curved around the knoll and, to her right, the view opened up over the flats, a paddock with a herd of cows and the stream. It flowed in lazy loops through a cutting that curved away to the west. There was a line of poplars on its southern bank and a single clump of pines to the north, too, on a little rise.
Max stopped.
‘You own this place?’ she asked him.
‘This here …’ He jabbed the ground with the butt of the hoe. ‘Too right I do. This is mine.’ Then he raised his free hand and pointed. ‘That there’s the Kerringtons’ place, the other side of the creek. You can see it there.’ He pointed towards the poplars. The grey iron of a pitched roof and the white spike of a finial were just visible. ‘They own everything on the left-hand side as it is from here. Bloke called McCracken owns the other side. That’s his stock you can see down there. In between there’s a public roadway. It’s supposed to be along the creek bed. Look at the map down at the council. It’s clear enough.’
Lines on paper marking out our claims. This is why we are called civilised, she thought.
Max went on. ‘In the old days, the path ran along the right-hand side of the creek. If you look there, though —’ he pointed towards the pines — ‘you’ll see you can’t get through that way. That bend’s right up against the cutting. Didn’t used to be like that. The creek shifted in the big flood. Thirty, forty metres. If you surveyed down there now, you’d find the roadway actually crosses the stream about there —’ shift of his finger — ‘and goes up the left-hand side, right round that slope under those poplars. Now beyond where you can see is the back end of the Kerringtons’ place.’
She leaned forward, following his finger, caught a whiff of him then. A smell like dried blood, old meat. She moved back.
‘And you use the path round there?’
‘I do.’ He lifted his hand and pointed further. It was a big hand, creased and folded, with a thick yellow nail at the end of the finger. ‘It’s the quickest way through to that stretch of bush. There’s possum in there and hare along the fringe of it. Good dinners. I mean, this was a bloody stupid place to try and put a road, but it’s legal. It’s there. It’s even got a name. Little River Lane. That’s my legal address.’
‘So when did the trouble with the Kerringtons start?’
‘Six or seven months back. When they moved in. Old Mountford never bothered, but they’ve got this notion of making it all beautiful so they can have a nice view from their living room. I can understand that.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We argued about it. I ignored them. They put up a fence. You can see it. Down there …’ He pointed, but Lisa could not make out where he meant. ‘I cut a hole in it.’
‘Was that wise?’ Of course it wasn’t wise.
‘It was on public land! I know bloody well it was on public land!’ A quick flash from his mad old eyes.
She grinned at his ferocity. ‘What happened then?’
‘They got me arrested for trespass. Took injunctions out. Kerrington’s got plenty of money. He impresses people.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Stand up for my rights. What else can I do?’
What else can anyone do except knuckle under, give up, bow to the inevitable?
4.
WELCOME TO DURRY, POPULATION 15,000, tucked away in the Durry River valley, forty-seven kilometres north of Winston. It’s a town with an air of optimism, although it hasn’t always been that way. The history of Durry traces a minor theme of the twentieth century, the fall and rise of middle-class self-confidence.
A hundred years ago it was a vigorous trading centre on the main road north, smug with the profits of beef and timber. The trees were all felled by the First World War, however, and by the Second there was a new highway over to the west. Durry was bypassed and in decline. The Depression had shaken its faith, and no amount of hard graft and determination seemed able to revive it. The boom times of the fifties and sixties drifted past, and by the middle of the seventies there were empty shops in its main street and a feeling that life was elsewhere and had been for a long time. No one who attended the town’s centennial in 1978 could have guessed what would happen next, for no one understood that Durry’s greatest asset was not the fertility of its fields nor the diligence of its citizens but something else less obviously bankable.
It was a pretty place. It had always been pretty, with the hills shielding it from the worst of the nor’westers, the air fresh, and a sense of peace; an oddly spiritual feeling, as if the sky bestowed a blessing on the land. Hard to put your finger on, the source of this quality, but it was real enough. How else would a town with no beach and ten kilometres from the main road suddenly become a haven for commuters?
A horde of accountants, lawyers, bankers and stockbrokers descended on it. They were hungry for the fresh air and for open spaces that the kids could grow in, and they began to spend up large in the local economy. High Street was bustling again, lined with boutiques that were rich on credit. There was a new mall and car park in Victory Road, and Hardy’s, the department store that had served the Durry farmers since there was a pavement here to walk on, had transformed itself into a kind of rustic Harrods. Nothing you couldn’t buy in Hardy’s, if you had the means to pay.
One person who had the means was Sylvia Hannerby, wife of h
ot-shot Winston barrister, Larry Hannerby, and best friend of Lisa Cairnes of the Durry Advocate. The Hannerbys lived on The Rise, to the west of the town, in a two-storeyed house of white weatherboards, with a red-tiled roof and gabled windows, built to catch the best of the sun, morning and afternoon. It had seemed a huge financial commitment when they bought it seventeen years ago, although it was dirt cheap by Winston standards, but now the mortgage was paid off and there were two BMWs in the garage and the family took holidays in Queenstown or Japan and the wine on the dinner table cost forty dollars a bottle.
Sylvia was not easy with this affluence. It made her nervous to be burdened by things she didn’t need, and while she would have struggled to define her requirements she had a sneaking sense that they fell far short of what she had. She was an odd person in that she liked the cold, the crunch of snow under her feet, the nip of frost on naked skin. She wanted to live like that, not physically but spiritually — with a clarity of being that could sense things over great distances. Instead, she was distracted by the clutter of the proximate world: looking after Larry and their two children, working fifteen hours a week at the local library in a job she did only because she felt she ought to be useful somehow. She did not resent any of this but she wondered why it was necessary and why she couldn’t rise above it. Was it habit or a sense of duty? Was she ungrateful or neurotic? Was it just that she was badly organised?
Thus, she dwelt in the shadow of her own disquiet. It gave her an air of nervousness as if she half expected someone to shoo her away. She thought that people might object to her because she was false to herself, and she tried hard to be honest and straightforward. Her hair was grey but she refused to have it tinted. She welcomed the little lines that had appeared between her eyes because they were the marks of authenticity. What she failed to appreciate was the startling quality of the eyes themselves, the long dark lashes, the clear whites and the irises the colour of forget-me-nots. Sylvia’s eyes, together with her fine cheekbones and pale complexion, caught people’s attention and moved them to ask her where she came from — a question that always disconcerted her. Winston, she would say, Thomas Street, Highwick. Any mention of her ancestors, who had lived for generations in a tiny village in the Urals, would have seemed irrelevant. Sylvia didn’t care about her lineage any more than she valued her own good looks. She wanted to be here and now and inconspicuous so that she could move about in secret and find what she was looking for.
There were maybe a dozen people in Stratos, in pairs or small groups. No Lisa yet. No Maddy. Sylvia was tempted by the fresh air on the terrace, but the others would think it too cold out there so she took her coffee to the usual table in the window. It was a bay window that looked out onto the lawn in front of the coffee shop, the gnarled grey trunks of the pohutukawas, the cars parked along the kerb. The view was diced into little rectangles by the leaded window-glass. An autumn morning, sunshine now.
Stratos was in the Esplanade, an old street along the river, full of buildings from the beginning of last century when Durry was in its heyday. Fat cats in their top hats, carriage wheels with iron rims, the clop of horse’s hooves. Perhaps the window brought these antique thoughts. Perhaps it was her melancholy mood. She sat there staring, not at the scene outside but at the bright panes. Each pane was like a page in a notebook ready to be written on. Who was it wrote a poem on a window? She couldn’t remember and then she thought that if it had really been a notebook, one of her own, the pages wouldn’t have held poems anyway. They’d have been full of lists. But then maybe a poem, especially a modern poem, was just a list held together by associations. But so was a sentence, in that case. It was a list of associated words with some rules attached to tell you how to build it. But then the rules were just sentences too, weren’t they? So they were lists as well. So what exactly was it that held the words in a sentence together?
The idea intrigued her. She felt she had stumbled on something interesting, but then, suddenly, it was all gone because there was Maddy beyond the pages of the window, walking down the pavement, plump and bustling on her little feet, her mass of brown curls bouncing with the rhythm of her stride. She was wearing a scarlet coat with a big floppy collar, a black leather bag in her black-gloved hand. She turned into the path that led to Stratos and, catching sight of Sylvia in the window, smiled and waved, a little twinkle of her fingers. Smiled again as she entered the room before she headed to the counter. She ordered her coffee, a trim latte, no doubt, and chatted to the girl there while it was made. Head toss from side to side. The girl, half-turning from the machine, smiled back at her. Everybody smiled at Maddy, who, in any case, was the wife of a town councillor and a tireless worker for the local community. She peeled off a glove and delved in her bag for the money.
And, of course, she knew some of the other customers as well so she had to pause and say hello, make a joke, move as if to touch someone on the shoulder, although she had a plate in one hand and teetering coffee cup in the other.
‘Oof!’ she said, sitting down, squeezing into the bench seat. ‘How was your weekend?’
‘Difficult,’ Sylvia said. ‘The cat got Josie’s praying mantis.’
Maddy gave a little wince. ‘Oh, yuk. Where was it?’
‘In her room. She was feeding it flies to see how big it would grow.’ The memory of the argument, Josie’s fury, came with a rush of anxiety. Anxiety and guilt, because she was the one who had opened the door and let the cat in.
‘Urgh.’ Maddy took a bite from her lemon slice. Little tip of a pink tongue licked a crumb from her upper lip, perfect lip, the bow red, scarlet to match her coat. Then, as if she suddenly thought she was being impolite, she held the slice out to Sylvia.
‘Have some. It’s yummy.’
‘No thanks.’ Sylvia sipped her coffee, thought about the argument. That’s three months of my research programme completely wasted! Larry had gone and hidden in his study so Josie wouldn’t see him laughing. Sylvia couldn’t afford to laugh. It was better to look remorseful, under the circumstances. I told you to stay out of my room! Why can’t you do as you’re told? Should a mother let her fifteen-year-old daughter speak to her like that, especially with James, her younger child, standing there listening, wide-eyed at the drama of it? She supposed not. At least the cat hadn’t got into the spiders.
‘It was my fault,’ she told Maddy.
‘Poor you.’
‘And I don’t know why I did it. I mean, consciously I was thinking maybe there are rats or mice in there. But, on another level, it was one of those moments when you’re in a kind of dream and you just do something, knowing full well it’s going to be a disaster.’ A kind of dream, she thought. Like just now, looking through the window. ‘Has that ever happened to you?’
Maddy laughed. ‘All the time. It’s the state I live in.’
Sylvia laughed too, of course. Because she knew full well how organised Maddy was, despite her carefree air. ‘So what have you been up to?’ she asked.
‘Oh, God. We had the first meeting of the Arts Festival Committee yesterday. What a bunch of geriatrics! Plenty of time! Plenty of time! This thing’s supposed to be on in September and they don’t have a blind clue what they’re doing. And let me tell you, David Langden’s the worst of the lot. You should be there instead of him.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes! The library needs decent representation. Somebody who doesn’t fall asleep in meetings.’
‘Maddy, I’m a part-time library assistant. I shelve books. He’s the Head Librarian.’
‘Yes, but he’s useless. Like the rest of them. Durry Arts Festival Team. I actually called them that yesterday and no one had the wit to figure out the acronym. No, what I’ve decided is that they can maunder on however they like and I’ll put some sub-committees together to do the real work. I want one for the Writers’ Weekend and I want you on it.’ Maddy took a mouthful of coffee, swallowed.
Sylvia waited. Maddy hadn’t finished.
‘We need people wh
o read,’ she said. ‘Literate people. Otherwise it’ll be the same old, same old. You know, Angela Paine.’
‘What’s wrong with Angela Paine?’
‘Tired. Passée.’
‘She’s sixty. Not exactly on a walking frame.’
‘But she gets wheeled out year after year. It’s like an annual unveiling. Where’s the new talent? There has to be someone young and exciting who’s got connections with the town. Or maybe one who hasn’t. Who cares?’
Sylvia thought about it. ‘Helen Talbot?’
‘Who’s she?’
‘A poet. She won the Grenville Prize last year. Her aunt and uncle have a farm out Baledon way.’
‘How old?’
‘I don’t know. She looks Josie’s age but she’s probably late twenties.’
‘She’ll do. See? I knew we needed you.’
This was how it went. The cost of knowing Maddy, of being gifted with her love and attention, was the occasional demand that you serve on a committee. Not that Sylvia minded. When it came to the actual doing, she quite enjoyed it, working with other people towards a shared objective. As long as it didn’t take too long. Big projects with distant goals made her nervous. It was like being shut in a room when you could be outside wandering the hills.
So she didn’t reply to Maddy’s request. Just drank her coffee. Maddy didn’t say anything more on the subject either. This was Maddy’s way. She didn’t pressure you. She let you decide for yourself to do things for her.
‘So how’s Larry?’ she asked, after a moment.
It was a question before a question and it brought Sylvia up with a start. ‘Fine. He’s fine.’
‘When’s the verdict?’ That question.