by Chris Else
‘The end of the week, most likely. The prosecution case finishes today or tomorrow.’
‘We saw him on the news last night. He looked tired.’
Yes, Sylvia thought. He is tired. It’s not just that, though. He’s caught up in this case more than usual. It’s got its teeth into him.
‘She should get off,’ Maddy said.
‘She should. But she won’t.’
‘Didn’t Larry say he was going for manslaughter?’
‘Yes.’ Polly Drafton, who killed her husband with a kitchen knife, a single blow to the chest so powerful, so firmly wedged between bone and cartilage, that she couldn’t pull the weapon out again, although she tried.
‘Ghoulish, isn’t it, this preoccupation with another person’s misery?’ Maddy said. ‘I don’t really approve of people who get interested in such things, but I’m just as bad as the rest.’
‘It’s human nature.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Like gossip. I read somewhere that people gossip in all known cultures. They say it’s genetic.’
‘They say everything’s genetic these days. Nature versus nurture. Nature wins.’
‘You think so?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really make much difference, as far as I can see. Genetic or not, you still have to decide whether to have another piece of chocolate, don’t you?’
‘Not me. The answer’s yes!’
Maddy’s laugh was a whoop, a scoop of high, sweet sound, and Sylvia felt the tingle of it in her skin, remembering or at least realising all those years of Maddy’s friendship, the ease and simplicity of the trust between them. Because her relationship with Maddy was the longest of her adult life, going back to the beginning of their adolescence, the two of them giggling with their heads together in the playground of Highwick Intermediate School. When Maddy’s your friend, she stays your friend. You don’t get away without a fight.
The quick rush of feeling took Sylvia by surprise. She turned away, looked across the room towards the counter and felt another surge of the same strange combination of need and love and gratitude, for there was Lisa, ordering coffee. She’d come in without them noticing. Tall, slim figure in a black jacket, smooth cap of black hair. She turned, moved across the room between the tables with a loose-limbed, awkward kind of grace.
Maddy saw her too and gave her a little wave. Lisa smiled and Sylvia thought, as she sometimes did, what a lovely smile she had.
Thus, the three of them together, like always. Maddy teased Sylvia by telling Lisa about Josie and the praying mantis, although maybe it was just to give herself an excuse to talk about her own kids, or at least Damien who had scored the winning try on Saturday and you should have seen Ward, puffed up like a pouter pigeon. Not just Ward, of course. The pride in Maddy’s voice was clear enough and her delight, too. Because although she wasn’t interested in sport, not really, well, not the brutal macho kind, there was just something about a child succeeding that you couldn’t help but be pleased about and who would have believed that Ward and Maddy Lorton, Mr and Mrs Chubby, could have ever had a son who was a sports star?
Lisa might have been interested but she was chomping through a sausage roll with hungry bites, a scattering of pastry flakes about her plate. When she had finished, she didn’t ask Sylvia how Larry was, although she was no doubt curious about the Polly Drafton case, just like everyone else. Instead, she told Maddy she had heard a rumour that Ward was starting a campaign aimed at lowering the speed limit on River Road. Was that right? Maddy said, yes, he was, and her tone went quiet and serious all of a sudden because the thought of Carla had touched all three of them and their eyes turned down to the table for a moment or into the depths of their coffee cups. The death of a child was something too awful to contemplate, except you had to when it happened, right there, to a child you knew, a child you loved. Sylvia felt an impulse to ask Lisa how Tom was but she didn’t, perhaps because it might be better to have that conversation when the two of them were alone, although she did not know quite why she felt that way. Instead of saying anything, she leaned over and put her hand on Lisa’s wrist, squeezed it.
Lisa glanced at her, knowing what she meant.
Maddy changed the subject then, as only Maddy could.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ she said, ‘how different things are?’
‘How do you mean?’ Sylvia asked.
‘I was just remembering, I don’t know why, about the way we used to live. The things we put up with. Scuffed paint and old furniture.’ Maddy gave a little laugh. ‘Do you remember that sofa in Phoenix Street? The one Ward and I bought at the Boy Scout auction for five dollars?’
‘The blue one?’ Sylvia remembered it well.
‘Yes. The springs were so collapsed, it was like a hammock.’ Maddy’s hand swept through the concavity.
‘An instrument of torture,’ Sylvia said. She had liked Phoenix Street, the way the wind howled and the barge boards rattled when the southerly blew. Maddy had hated it, though.
‘God, that place was disgusting when we moved in. Do you remember the cockroaches in the oven?’ Maddy shuddered at the thought.
‘Cockroaches?’ Lisa asked.
‘Yes. You saw them. You and Colin helped us move. The inside of the oven was crawling. Larry lit the gas and shut the door and it was months before anyone would use it because of the roasted cockroaches.’
‘We could never understand why you took that place,’ Lisa said. ‘Or why you stayed so long. How long were you there?’
‘Three years,’ Maddy told her.
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘The four of us moved in just after Larry and I got married. Twenty years ago.’
‘You’ve been married twenty years?’ Lisa looked surprised. ‘Yes, I guess you have.’
‘May ninth.’
‘That’s next week. When? Friday?’
‘That’s right. Friday. Twenty years next Friday.’ She wanted to say it felt like for ever, but the others would laugh at her, not thinking she meant it seriously, in a good way.
So they drank their coffee and talked about other things, like Maddy’s plans for the Arts Festival, although Sylvia noticed that Lisa wasn’t asked to be on a committee. Perhaps Maddy had other plans for Lisa.
Stratos filled up with the mid-morning crowd, the room got warmer, stuffier, and the noise lifted to a buzz of people being people, just together. And it was quite pleasant sitting there, just for a little while, before you moved on, before the restlessness got to you, although Sylvia didn’t understand how it worked, really, how anybody could actually like anybody else. Why Lisa and Maddy, for example, didn’t hate each other: they were so different, but they talked and they laughed and they smiled at one another. Sylvia remembered the tension there had once been, when they were all at high school together, and how surprised she had felt when she realised that her two best friends were jealous of each other because of her. So strange to think that she mattered to anyone that much.
Lisa was asking about the Kerringtons, the people who had bought Clisserford, the big house down Cox’s Line, did anyone know anything about them. So Sylvia said the woman had used the library a few times when they first arrived last year and had been a bit of a bitch, and Maddy said she hadn’t met either of them, they seemed to keep themselves to themselves, although Ward had plans to get them involved. The male Kerrington was being put up for membership of the Businessman’s Club and someone on the Cultural Committee had wondered if Clisserford might be used for a celebration on Waitangi Day, because wasn’t the house built on the site where the Treaty was signed with the local tribes in 1840? Mountford had been such a crusty old fart and the place had got so run down that nobody would have thought of asking before, but maybe the new owners had a different attitude. A garden party on the lawn there. What do you think? Because, of course, by then, by next February, they would have had the local elections and perhaps, just perhaps, Ward would be Mayor. And Maddy? A big, beautiful smile from
our Lady Mayoress on our National Day! Was it possible? Of course it was. We hoped it was. We all hoped.
Twenty years, crammed with life. All the things done and things not done and things that ought to have been done and things that would have been better if they were left undone. None of it could be changed, though. It was like stone, like ice. Frozen. The beginnings and the endings. Like Polly Drafton’s blow to her husband’s heart and Carla Marino’s encounter with a car on River Road.
‘Are you busy tonight?’ Sylvia asked suddenly.
Lisa and Maddy looked at her, glanced at each other.
‘No,’ they said, almost in unison.
‘Would you like to come over for a drink then? You know, everybody together? I think Larry would really appreciate it.’ And she thought, that’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s why I’m being so melancholic. I’m scared for him. For us.
5.
TOM DIDN’T MEAN TO stop. Of its own accord, the ute just seemed to swing the change of angle into the lay-by, gravel popping under the tyres, a slide as he applied the brakes. He sat, hands drooped over the steering wheel, staring up into the driving mirror, the little rectangle like a photograph of the scene. Stones and dirt, a clump of weeds, a wire-and-batten fence. A slim white cross nailed to a post. There was a wreath of flowers, tattered, faded. Imogen and Lisa had put it there a week ago. The twenty-second of April, the six-month anniversary. Tom couldn’t face it — not that, not any kind of ceremony. Let her be, let her rest. But he couldn’t explain why he felt that way. He remembered Lisa’s pained look as she resisted her urge to comment, saying everything with her eyes. Talk to me. What to say? What is there to say?
It was strange, though, having to drive past it like this on the way to Astra’s. Was Hannah Creswell right? Had he picked Astra just because she lived here?
The bike was found there, on the edge of the lay-by, Carla’s body a few metres further back. Was she riding it? The police didn’t seem to know. The back wheel was bent and there was white paint scuffed into the rubber of the tyre. He tried to picture how the bike had lain, and Carla, too, beyond it from this position, half in the grass verge, her legs out on the road. In the rain. Was that how it was? He didn’t know. She was still alive when Martin Wraggles drove along and found her and called the ambulance, still alive when the ambulance got there. She didn’t have her helmet on. It was lying in the bushes, halfway down the river bank. Why was that? Why wasn’t she wearing her helmet? He knew nothing except her body at the hospital, covered to the neck in a grey sheet, the bruises, swelling blue and shiny, deep gash across her forehead. Her face was so puffed up he might not have recognised her but for the streak of blue neon in her dark hair. The other injuries he did not see: the broken arm, the smashed leg, the lacerations to her left thigh and the chunk of glass buried in the flesh. Just her dead and battered face. And nobody knew how or why. Except the driver of the white car (two-door, late-model) heading south.
Hannah Creswell was supposed to be good at her job. And she had a method. Talk. We’ll talk about it. Talk about your thoughts, your feelings, dreams, yourself, your situation. Dreams? You want my dreams? I have none, never did have many, just a fright or two from long ago, a childhood nightmare best forgotten. But, then, you’re the expert. You know about this. You’ve been here before, with other people. Well, not quite here, perhaps. Not exactly. Because nobody has ever been here, at this moment, looking through these eyes. If you had the answers. If you had all the facts. Would it make a difference? Yes! He had wanted to yell that at her. Except the vehemence, the force of his impulse, was its own denial, like a recoil, kicking back and bouncing off the walls with the echo of a different answer. No; what difference could it make, in the end? What difference could it possibly make? Except that somebody knew. Somebody killed her. Somebody saw her in the last seconds of her conscious life come flailing over the bonnet, thump against the windscreen. Thoughts like that just wound him tighter, cold and hard.
Astra’s place was on the eastern side of the road with the river at the end of the garden. A chilly spot, damp on the winter mornings when the valley filled with mist as if the water were on fire. The house was old. It had an iron roof, a bay window, a veranda and a flowerbed at the front. The long gravel drive ran down past a stretch of unmown grass, a child’s swing, a slide and a seesaw, painted red, rusting.
He let the ute roll under its own momentum, his foot on the brake to hold it against the pull of the slope. Around the back of the house into the yard. He stopped in front of the garage with the little brown Toyota parked inside, got down from the cab and stood for a moment breathing the air. The sun was bright but a breeze from the valley took the heat of it away. If I feel the cold, he thought as the cool current brushed his forehead, I must be warm. The conclusion seemed strange, a paradoxical discovery that he couldn’t quite believe. He felt nothing, really, nothing inside, but the surface of his body was still alive.
The workshop door was open. He went and stood there, leaning with his forearm against the jamb. She was at the bench with her pokerwork iron in her hands. A red T-shirt, blue denim overalls, a blue and white bandanna tying back her frizzy ginger hair. She looked up, saw him.
‘Hi there, lover,’ she said, smiling. Fair face, rosy cheeks, blue eyes. Astra always looked so warm and healthy. Maybe that was what drew him to her.
‘Hello.’ He moved around to her side of the bench. She put down the iron and turned to face him, lifted her arms as he reached out to her. Mouth to mouth, her lips and tongue. He wanted her at once, the ache of it flooding through the numbness in him. Hands explored her back and buttocks through the thick cloth. Then he tried to drag the strap of the boiler suit down so he could get at her breast.
‘Hey,’ she said, pulling away. ‘You’re in a hurry.’
‘Shows how much I missed you.’ Holding on to her as she leaned back, looking into her eyes. She was grinning, pleased to be wanted.
‘I’m trying to finish your order.’ She tossed her head towards the bench. A scattering of wooden plaques in various shapes and sizes. Pokerwork texts and tendrils of design like flower stems entwined, little spots of colour for the blooms. You are nearer to God in a Garden than anywhere else on Earth.
‘That’s all right. It means I can come back tomorrow as well.’ The words sounded hollow, false. He wanted her now.
She laughed. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’re the reason I’m late. I was making you a present.’ She broke his hold and reached under the bench, took out an oblong strip of wood about five centimetres by twenty. It had a fluted edge and lots of scrollwork, little red flowers, a message. To the Sexiest Man Alive. ‘Just so you know I appreciate you.’ She held it up under her chin, like a number in a prison mug shot. Looked at him, eyes bright. She was awkward, blushing. Such a silly message.
‘You’re wonderful,’ he told her. Leaning forward, he kissed her on the brow.
She turned away, moved over to another bench, pulled open a drawer.
‘This is a reverse present,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘First you see it, and then it gets wrapped.’ Her hands busy with a sheet of purple tissue paper and a pair of scissors. ‘I know it’s stupid giving you this. I mean, don’t feel obliged to keep it or anything. You can throw it away if you like. I guess you’ll have to. Just so long as you don’t tell me if you do. But you wouldn’t, you’re not that kind of person.’
Words in an awkward rush, like a child. She needs protecting, he thought. She needs looking after. What on earth do you think you’re doing to her?
‘There!’ Turning back to him, holding out the plaque wrapped in the purple paper with a silver ribbon, little silver rosette. He took it from her.
‘Thank you.’
‘I have a terrible confession to make, too. The real reason I’m late with the other stuff is that I had to do that one twice. You know how lousy my spelling is? Well, the first one of those I did, I missed the second E out of sexiest. Awful, eh?’
‘Freudi
an slip,’ he said.
‘No! You’re not sexist. I know sexist. I’ve been there. Have you had lunch?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want some?’ Stepping closer to him.
He put his arms round her, kissed her again, felt the desire lift in him, and something else, too, something deeper, an opposite, guilt or fear, except that whatever it was made him want her more, somehow.
Afterwards, together in her bed, she began to talk about the accident.
‘I asked around. Like you wanted. The people down the road. They didn’t see anything. Not until the ambulance arrived.’
Too late by then.
‘There’s a woman lives by Scanty’s Corner saw a white car going south,’ he said.
‘Mrs McIlroy?’
‘Yes.’
‘It scares me the speed people drive down here. I worry about Brad and Timmy all the time. I mean they’re responsible kids, they know the danger, but there’s always a risk. And Brad wants a bike now. What am I going to do about that?’
‘It’s hard,’ he said.
She sighed. Fingers in his hair raking slowly back from his forehead. He stroked her hip, the outside of her thigh, the smooth, complex curves of her body. Made it better, all better. Not only that, though. There was more to it than that. He bent his head and kissed her belly, licked her, felt her chuckle, smelt the smell of her. Every woman had a different smell. And taste. And Astra’s body was pink and white, her skin a little dry, a sandy quality. Like beaches and summer. Like hot sun and kids playing. Vincent and Carla, running to the water’s edge and out into the waves. He and Annabelle sitting together in the sand. And Carla’s shrieks so high-pitched, like a bird. It would be her birthday in three weeks.
‘Kids … I don’t know,’ Astra said. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it, how they can get you hurt.’
‘Hostages to fortune.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Just what you said. All the things that can happen to them and you’re helpless to stop it.’ He stroked the inside of her thigh and she lifted her leg to let him in between.