by Chris Else
‘I love you too,’ Lisa said.
‘Why aren’t you pleased I can have what I want, then?’
‘Just because I love you. Two things will happen. Either your father will disappoint you and you’ll be hurt and I don’t want that to happen. Or …’ Raising her voice to stave off any objection to the first alternative. ‘Or you’ll get your horse and then one of two other things will happen. Either you’ll lose interest in it and it’ll be a waste of money and you’ll get nagged at for being a selfish little bitch, or …’ Louder this time and with a warning lift of her hand. ‘Or you’ll love your horse to death and you’ll spend all your time with it and you’ll finish up living at your father’s. And that would make me a selfish bitch because I’d feel I’d lost you.’
Big brown eyes like moons staring at her. Something in what she had said had touched the teenage soul. The look called up a like response. A surge of love and yearning, sadness, welled up inside her. She put down her drink and hauled herself out of the chair, on to the sofa beside Imogen, arms around her child, her lovely child. She felt the bony body in its clumsy uniform, the thin arms wrapped around her back, the drift of silky hair against her cheek. Lisa felt her tears start to come and fought against them, patted her daughter’s back and was patted in return.
‘It’s okay.’ Lisa let go, looked into Imogen’s face and reached out, smoothed the dark hair back from her forehead, kissed her there, on the curve of her brow below the hairline.
‘We’ll work it out.’
‘He is my father.’
‘Of course.’
‘You don’t have to hate him.’
‘I don’t hate him, sweetheart. How could I hate him when he’s part of the reason I’ve got you? But, you know, there are other things, too. Like I really don’t want you riding your bike out to Cox’s Line every day to see your horse. That would scare me to death.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Another hug.
‘I know I have to let go a bit. I know you’re growing up. It’s just uncomfortable having you expose my inadequacies.’
Imogen laughed then. Thank God. It was time for a laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ A giggle. ‘It just seems funny.’
‘Look, why don’t you go and get out of your uniform and we can sit down and watch the news together?’
‘All right.’ Hauling herself upwards, gangly limbs extending.
Lisa went back to her chair, picked up her drink. Nothing was resolved. Maybe nothing could ever be resolved. She just had to give in. Colin had won. This time. She hated the thought that it could be expressed as winning and losing, that her emotions still forced that on her. Grow up, woman! God, your daughter’s more mature about it than you are.
‘Mum.’ Imogen was back, hovering in the doorway. ‘There’s a man here. A policeman.’
‘Stan. Hi. How are you?’ Wondering, why? Why are you here? Scared. Because she knew this situation. She’d been here before.
He was looming in the doorframe, dark figure with the gathering dusk behind him. He had his cap off, holding it in front of him in an awkward kind of way.
‘Come in,’ she said.
‘I was hoping to have a word to Tom.’
‘He’s not home yet.’ Which was a little odd, she thought. He was late. Just a bit.
She ushered Stan down the hall and into the living room. He sat in Tom’s chair, putting his cap on the floor beside him. His hand smoothed over his dark hair.
‘Would you like a drink? A beer?’
‘No, better not,’ he said, glancing past her at Imogen. ‘A glass of water, that’d be fine.’
‘Get Stan a water, will you, sweetheart?’ Lisa said and then went and sat.
‘Well,’ Stan said, leaning back, ‘maybe it’s better if Tom isn’t here.’
‘Oh?’
‘We had what you might call a tricky moment this afternoon. It seems he’s been making his own inquiries about Merry Gibbitson.’
‘But he doesn’t know about …’ Stopped herself. Trying to pick through the confusion.
‘You didn’t tell him?’
‘No.’
‘Ah!’ A realisation for him, too, then. She waited for him to go on.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘he knows now that you know because I told him this afternoon.’
‘Oh, shit, Stan. I’m sorry. You don’t need to get involved in our nonsense.’
‘It’s okay.’ Raising his hands to push it all away. ‘Not my problem.’
Imogen there beside him with a glass. He reached up, took it from her. ‘Thanks, love.’ He drank and then set the water on the table beside the chair.
Imogen stepped back but hovered there. Wanting to know what was going on, wondering if she would be allowed to stay and listen. Let her, Lisa thought. She’s a big girl now.
‘We talked to Merry,’ Stan said. ‘And yes, she was the subject of a bit of intimidation. And yes, it seems Carla was sticking up for her. She gave us a couple of names and we talked to them too. It seems there was a time, last year, when a bunch of kids fooled around down by the river. There was some talk, some nonsense about taking Merry down there. They never did. None of them went near the place.’
‘But Carla went.’
‘Yes, it seems so. She was going to meet Merry at the library but they missed each other. It looks like Carla went to the river to check. The timing would fit.’
Lisa turned to Imogen. ‘You don’t know anything about this, do you?’
‘No.’ Of course not. She would have said, wouldn’t she?
‘Do you know Merry Gibbitson?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Carla never mentioned her?’
‘No.’
‘So we’re no further ahead than we were,’ Lisa said, turning back to Stan.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. There were always some odd things about the accident. The scene was a bit of a mess, what with the ambulance and so on, but even so the crash site boys couldn’t quite make it add up. The skid marks. And where the bike was. The bits of glass in the road. Carla’s body. Maybe she wasn’t near her bike at all when it was hit. You know, if she’d parked it by the side of the road and gone down to the river. It would explain why she wasn’t wearing the bike helmet.’
‘You mean she came back up to the road and the car hit the bike and then her?’
‘The other way round, maybe.’
A silence. Imogen perched on the arm of the sofa. Stan sitting forward, staring at his hands that were loosely cupped between his thighs.
‘Does it get us any closer to catching anyone?’ she asked.
‘Probably not,’ Stan said.
31.
‘WHY?’ TOM ASKED.
‘Why what?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I was scared you might do something stupid. Which you did,’ Lisa said.
He sighed, closed his eyes. She could see the tension in him and the humiliation. It shocked her to realise how strung out he was, how close to the edge. She was afraid for herself and for him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess I wasn’t being that open and honest.’
‘I needed to know.’ Looking at her, haunted eyes.
He wasn’t going to forgive her, she could see. He wasn’t going to forgive her here and now, just because she asked him to. Oh, God, she thought, don’t let it damage anything. Don’t let it matter. Because she knew that situation, the slow accumulation of unforgiven wrongs, like crimes concealed, ignored, covered over with a layer of concrete, and then another layer, made smooth, and each one didn’t matter, each one was just a small thing, insignificant, except that gradually the floor gets thicker until, in the end, you can’t stand upright any more.
‘We could fight, you know. We could yell and scream,’ she said.
‘No.’ He sounded too tired to fight. And fighting didn’t necessarily clear the air, did it? She had fought with Colin.
‘W
e could get drunk.’
‘Maybe that’s the answer.’
‘It would be Larry’s answer.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good old Larry,’ she said. Her voice felt too bright, too cheerful. She was already running away, changing the subject. ‘We should buy them a present. We haven’t got long. Two days. What’s a twentieth anniversary?’
‘China.’
‘China?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know that?’
He shrugged. ‘I just know.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to Hardy’s. Do you want to come too?’
‘No. You do it.’ They’re your friends, he might have said. She heard it in his tone. God, she thought. We’re growing apart. This is really serious. What do I do? Panic. She felt the panic, but that was no good. That was pathetic.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I’m fine. Just tired.’
‘Are we all right?’
He looked at her, the same haunted look, and she thought, Don’t say no. Even if you think it, don’t say it. Because words are magic sometimes and saying it might just make it true and meant.
‘We need to look after ourselves,’ she said. ‘And each other.’
‘Yes.’ But he sounded empty, way past caring.
Well, she thought, if we have to, we’ll part, won’t we? Go our separate ways and never see each other again. I can run to Sylvia and Maddy and cry on their shoulders, and you can do whatever it is that blokes do in such circumstances. But the thought did not give her comfort. It was not bleakness she felt, not fear of the future, because without Tom there didn’t seem to be a future.
‘Can you talk to me, please?’ she said. ‘I need to know.’
‘Know what?’ Looking at her.
‘What’s going on with you?’
A moment of hesitation and she felt a quick stab of fear at what he was going to say.
‘Nothing much,’ he told her.
‘Is this counselling doing you any good?’
He sat up then. A twitch of his shoulders, awkward, embarrassed even. Has he been lying? she thought. Has he even been to the counsellor?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess so. At least, I thought it was. She’s a Jungian. We talk about dreams and archetypes.’
What? But she kept quiet. Held her cynicism back.
‘I guess the idea is to provide a theoretical framework in which you can understand yourself.’
‘And?’
‘It kind of makes sense. It’s like language. Just as the brain is wired up in a way that makes all languages the same deep down, it’s also wired up with certain kinds of images and symbols that we use to process our experiences. If you can understand how it works, you can process your problems.’
Like blended vegetables. Baby food. This was not the conversation she wanted to have. She didn’t need a lecture on psychoanalysis.
‘I guess it just seems to start from a long way off,’ he went on. ‘So far off that it’s hard for it to connect with the present. I thought it was beginning to make sense, but then this thing with this kid comes along and everything blows up again. I’m kind of back where I started.’
Of course. A rush of love and pity.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. Unreal. I just feel unreal. I think maybe I’m going mad.’
‘Don’t do that, please.’
What a thing to say. What a feeble thing to say. But this is the problem when you love someone. You are at their mercy.
32.
IT WAS EASY TO find once you looked for it. It began not where Carla had died but twenty or thirty metres north, closer to town. A steep, narrow path, no more than a strip of dirt maybe fifteen centimetres wide, led down through the green, tufted grass of the verge. As he descended, the strange silence of the river enveloped him. Above, to his left, was the road where, from time to time, a car passed with a quick, smooth growl. Below, to his right, the water. He felt the suck of the cold, like a force, as if he were a lifeless thing, light and floating on the air, and the river was pulling at him, drawing him towards its surface.
After about twenty metres, the path turned back on itself and plunged more steeply. Three crude steps had been cut into the dirt. Even with their help he had to cling to the trunk of a small mahoe to stop himself falling. He could hear the water now, and its grey-brown surface there below him was no longer flat but scored with little folds and ripples, flexing like muscle. Flowing smoothly and quickly. Bits of flotsam, green or yellow leaves, dragged past and away. The water was close to the bank right here. On the further side was a stretch of grey-white shingle with a layer of rounded stones beyond. Rough shrub clinging to the cliff face, a steep slope lifting to the sky.
Then, suddenly, ahead of him a small tree, a taupata, with shining, dark green leaves clinging to its gnarled and knotty branches, and below it, at the edge of the water, a rock. It was a big rock, the size of an armchair and, as he got closer, he heard the water lapping at it, clucking and complaining. Beyond it, on its downstream side, was a little beach, a strip of river stones and gravel, maybe two metres long and almost a metre wide. This, it seemed, was where the path went. Nothing more than this: a small cramped space, not much bigger than a coffin, tucked between the water and the grassy slope. There were a couple of empty beer cans lying among the stones. No other sign that the path meant anything.
So he stood, with his hands in his pockets, listening to the river, looking across it at the further bank a dozen metres away. The air was cool, the light bright. Sun on his face in a pool of warmth, which emphasised the chill of the rest of him. Blood beat through the head. The drift of air in breathing lungs. A kind of stillness, but it was not peace. It was waiting. Waiting without purpose, without reflection. Because he knew that there was nothing here. No answers. No leads. A dead end that he had been drawn to because there was nowhere else to go. Love, hope, rage and shame stopped here. Behind him and above him was the road where Carla died. In front of him the river and beyond it the wilderness. What to do? Just wait. For something to happen. Some tick of the clock, some trick of the cells. Wait and watch. For a sign, a meaning somewhere. You search for it, but without a purpose, as if the will has stopped, as if the conscious mind is paralysed, stung by a spider, but the body goes on, trying to make its own kind of sense of things, looking for comfort, looking for sensation to fill the emptiness. He had become the skin of a thing, an illusion, a ghost that scarcely existed, grabbing hold of anyone who came within reach. Are you the one? Please, please help me. Can you see me? Am I real?
A display cabinet full of china, white and bright with spots of colour, gold. Too clean, Lisa thought. Too cutesy. She could imagine what Larry would say to a Lladró figurine. Of a shepherdess. Something about haystacks and the ploughman’s son and the sentimental bullshit of the upper classes.
‘Can I help you?’ A slim young woman with her hair in a bun. Round-rimmed glasses that enlarged her innocent expression. The little Hardy’s name tag on her left breast said Brenda.
‘Yes, I’m looking for something for some friends of mine. It’s their twentieth wedding anniversary.’
‘Ah, yes. You’re wanting a single piece, are you?’
‘Well, not a dinner set. No.’
‘Only some people, for an occasion like that, they arrange with us for their family and friends to each buy something from a set.’
‘No, not these people.’
‘Ah. Well, what about a vase? For flowers.’
‘She might like a vase but he wouldn’t. He’s more a toby jug sort of person.’
‘Oh, well.’ Brenda turned, with a sudden look of hope in her eyes. ‘We have some toby jugs over here.’
‘She would hate a toby jug.’
‘Hmmm. A bowl, then? A fruit bowl.’
‘Yes, that might do.’
‘Traditional or modern?’
‘Good question.’
> ‘You’re thinking he might be traditional and she might be modern?’ Brenda looking at her, bright bird expression behind the lenses. This girl’s sharper than she seems, Lisa thought.
‘I’m thinking I don’t really have much idea what I’m doing. Why don’t you point me towards the bowls and leave me to it?’
‘Well, over there, behind the pillar, there’s some rather nice stoneware. More contemporary. And the traditional styles will be around here. They’re arranged by pottery.’
‘Thank you.’ Lisa moved towards the more contemporary, picking her way between the display tables and cringing back from the fragility around her.
On the other side of the pillar, standing looking at the stoneware, was a man. Colin. He was dressed in dark-grey pants and a maroon polo-neck. Tall and straight. His right hand in his trouser pocket.
Her first impulse was to turn and walk away, keep on walking, but then, no, she thought, we are civilised beings, aren’t we?
‘Hello. Day off?’
He turned, saw her. A pause as he registered who it was, monitored his reactions as she had monitored hers on seeing him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be bothered. Mental health day. You’re obviously here for the same reason I am.’
‘Leaving it late,’ she said. ‘Disorganised.’
‘Impossible job.’ He gestured towards the display. Bright summer colours. Yellow things covered in gaudy fruit and flowers. ‘I mean, if it was just Larry it would be easy. You could buy him a quart of Haigh’s in a commemorative bottle and be done with it.’
‘Yes.’
A pause.
‘How are you anyway?’ she asked.
‘I’m okay. I’m well.’
She was not sure he looked well. Strain in his face, puffy round the eyes. She turned away. It was hard to look at him, she realised. Was it the business of the horse? She could have fooled herself, maybe, that it was no more than that.