Weeping Waters

by Nicholson, Anne Maria

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She treads on the piece of pink writing paper as she opens her front door: ‘Make sure you come to the pool. It’s the best cure for tired limbs. See you there.’ It is signed, ‘Your neighbour, Shona.’

  Tired and dirty, Frances tosses up between collapsing on her bed or accepting the invitation. She opts for a quick shower and soon is making the twenty-minute drive to a bush-enclosed pool complex on the outskirts of town.

  For a weeknight, Frances is surprised by the number of people soaking contentedly in the steaming pools while their more energetic children are swimming and jumping in and out. She finds Shona in the massage centre chatting to a solidly built Maori man in his thirties with a crew cut. His broad shoulders and well-developed pectorals bulge beneath a black rugby jersey with an All Blacks motif.

  ‘Come in, Frances,’ Shona beckons her. ‘This is Bill Harp, my very special customer.’

  Bill shakes her hand, his smiling brown eyes engaging hers.

  ‘Bill’s coming over for a drink later if you’d like to join us. But you should have a swim now. We’re closing in an hour.’

  Frances sinks into the warm waters, breathing in the sulphur fumes, which she finds pleasantly therapeutic. She can feel her tired muscles relax. Leaning her head against the rail around the pool, she closes her eyes, shutting out the quiet chatter of those around her.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’ She starts as a hand brushes her shoulder beneath the water. Sam Hawks is floating beside her, his face uncomfortably close to hers, his breath tinged with beer.

  ‘Small world,’ Frances says, masking her annoyance.

  ‘It didn’t take you long to find the hottest place in town. Would you like to have a drink afterwards?’

  Frances grapples for an excuse. ‘Not tonight. I’m here with a friend and I’m going straight home after the pool closes. Maybe another time.’

  Sam lingers next to her in the water, clearly not wanting to leave. His eyes travel from her lips down her shoulders to the rise of her breasts visible above her red bathing costume.

  ‘I could drop around for a drink,’ he persists.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sam. Let’s try and keep things on a professional level. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.’

  With sure strokes, she swims away, leaving Sam looking after her, his face flushed.

  As she leaves the pool, she is pleased to see Shona beckoning her over.

  ‘I’ve twenty minutes to spare before closing. Fancy a quick head and shoulder massage?’

  Frances dons a robe and lies on the table on her stomach. With sure hands, Shona kneads her scalp, moving to her neck and shoulders. ‘You’re holding a bit of tension,’ she tells her. ‘You’ll have to loosen up.’

  Succumbing to the pressure, Frances starts to let go. Closing her eyes, her mind wanders back to the Crater Lake. What mysteries are hidden there? Can she really ever hope to discover its moods? Lost in her doubts, she is surprised to hear someone calling her name.

  ‘Frances, time to go,’ Shona is saying. ‘You nodded off for a minute or two. At least you were relaxed!’

  Feeling disoriented, Frances sits up and laughs apologetically. ‘Must have needed that. You’ve got a great touch.’

  ‘Glad you think so. You should book in for a full hour next time. Think you need it, girl.’

  The Family

  We were in a bit of a flap when we arrived at Wellington Station to catch the three o’clock overnight express train to Auckland. Eric wasn’t able to take the day off from his job as a postal clerk because it was the day before Christmas and he had to work till lunchtime. I had to pack our bags and get Valerie organised on my own for our first holiday away as a family. My mother had sent her a teddy bear from England so I gave it to her early to keep her happy. She just loved it and wouldn’t let it out of her sight. I dressed her in a new blue dress I’d made for her and the gold chain bracelet with the little heart that had been her christening present.

  There was a real festive air at the station with a huge Christmas tree in the middle of the main hall with shiny decorations dangling from the roof of the large cavernous building. I liked the grandness of it all. It reminded me of the holidays I’d had as a child with my parents in London when we headed off from Victoria Station south to Brighton before the war.

  Eric carried Valerie because like all toddlers, she always dawdled. I carried our two bags along a platform that seemed to go forever. The great steam engine was fired up and ready to go and we were forced to breathe in the fumes drifting along the platform. But we didn’t mind. In fact it made it all the more exciting. Finally, we were on our way.

  We found our seats in Carriage C in second class, two seats facing forward and I crossed my fingers that we might be able to have the two facing towards us as well so Valerie might be able to lie down and we might all get a bit of a rest. As she wasn’t quite two, we didn’t have to pay for her but she’d only have a seat if there was a spare one. As it happened the train was fully booked but we were able to have the seats for more than half of the sixteen-hour journey when some other passengers would board further up the track.

  This was a special time for Eric and me. Things had been a bit of a struggle since we had immigrated to New Zealand three years earlier. London was still in a shocking state after the war and we wanted a fresh start to our lives in a new country. But I was terribly lonely in Wellington, a pretty enough city but one that could shut you out as coldly as its roaring forties winds if you didn’t know anyone. I missed my family and friends very much and longed to have a baby.

  At first I couldn’t get pregnant and I used to go to this beautiful monastery overlooking the harbour and sit there and pray for a child, even though I’m not Catholic. It must have worked and so when Valerie was born, we were both overjoyed. At last, someone of our own!

  When we heard the new Queen was coming to New Zealand on her first royal tour we decided we would plan our first trip north to Auckland to see her. Elizabeth was just 27, three years older than me, so I was always watching to see how she would go and often dreamed how wonderful it must have been to be a princess. I used to cut out all the pictures of her from the magazines and put them in a special scrapbook. There were pictures of her wedding, of her coronation and of her babies, first Charles and then Anne. And my mother had sent me a tin of biscuits with a photo of Elizabeth and Prince Philip on it. I loved it. It always reminded me of home and I used to keep it filled with peanut brownies. And of course I had to have my hair styled just like hers so one day I took the tin along to a hairdressing salon and said, ‘There, that’s how I want my hair done!’ All the girls there gathered round to look and when the stylist finished my hairdo it looked quite a lot like the Queen’s. Well I thought so anyway, even though Eric didn’t seem to agree.

  There were more than 200 passengers on board when we pulled out of the station and as the train moved north we took on more at each stop. There was a lot of excitement with people looking forward to Christmas. Many were going home to see families or on holidays and there were quite a few others like us who had decided to see the Queen.

  Valerie was enjoying herself but she was always trying to escape, running up and down the carriage, charming the other passengers. She had such beautiful blue eyes and blonde curls. Eventually though, she fell asleep with her teddy bear and we were all able to have a bit of a breather. When we reached Taihape Station around ten o’clock at night, Eric went to the refreshment rooms to buy us a cup of tea and a piece of fruitcake. We’d already finished the sandwiches I had made earlier in the day and of course some of the brownies I’d packed.

  We lost our spare seats to two young men who were heading to Auckland and when Eric returned, we had to lift Valerie onto our laps while trying not to spill the large heavy white cups of hot tea.

  Once Valerie was asleep, we all dozed off. Suddenly I was awake, sensing the warmth of Valerie leaving me. Instantly, I was thrown forward
s so violently that I felt as if I was flying through the air. Everything was black and people were screaming and I was falling out of control until I crashed into something. I felt fast-moving water rising around me and I desperately called out to Eric and Valerie. I couldn’t see or hear them. ‘We’re in a river!’ I heard someone shout. I think it was one of the young men who had just got on the train.

  Our carriage must have tipped on its side and the man pulled me up towards a window. I tried to go back to find my little girl and Eric but I was pushed through into the water. I just prayed they were together. It was then I heard Eric calling both our names and I feared the worst. I looked back to see him crawling out of the side of the mangled carriage that was now nearly completely underwater.

  He swam towards us on a wave of water that washed over us and then lifted the carriage away into the current. Some of the other passengers who had escaped from another carriage had formed a human chain to the bank and I was pulled along it.

  The current was so strong it washed away most of our clothes and I was left wearing just my bra and pants. I begged them to let me go and swim down the river to find my baby. But they held me back, pushed me forward. I wept and prayed. But I knew she was gone. Nothing was ever the same again.

  Ada Nelson, 24, a survivor of the Tangiwai disaster

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I‘ll be back tonight,’ Frances tells Theo on the phone. It’s Saturday morning and she knows she can’t postpone her visit to Tangiwai any longer.

  ‘But why do you want to go there on your own?’ he asks. ‘I could take you there one day when I have a little more time.’

  ‘It’s OK, really.’ She hesitates before continuing. ‘Theo, there’s something I’d like to tell you. It’s about Tangiwai. I do have a special reason for wanting to go there and I’d prefer to be on my own. You see, my parents were on the train and ah…they survived but knew others who didn’t.’

  ‘You’re full of surprises, Ms Nelson,’ Theo interrupts her. ‘Here’s me thinking you’re an academic seismologist but you’ve been bottling up all that emotion. Nothing like a passion to keep you going in this business. Trouble is, you never know where it will lead you.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth. Sometimes I think I’m already all passioned out,’ Frances replies.

  She has woken early on her first day off and at first pretended to herself that she could stay in bed all morning. But like unfinished homework, she knows she won’t rest easy until she has visited the scene of the disaster.

  Shortly after eight, before the Saturday shoppers have emerged, she drives out of the still town and heads south, retracing her way back towards Ruapehu. Ever changing in the late morning light, the mountains seem to mock her as she heads for Taupo. As she steals glances at them they almost seem alive—she swears she can see faces. Too much time worrying about ghosts.

  She passes the turn-off to the Chateau and heads west towards the township of National Park, then south again. There is little traffic as she drives into Ohakune, a small town rescued from oblivion by a skiing boom when the Turoa slopes were opened up on the western side of Ruapehu. She smiles as she wonders what Shona would say about the giant sculpture of a carrot she glimpses on the side of the main street, a proud phallic tribute to the local produce.

  It’s dead quiet and when Frances drops into a café there’s just one other customer there. Over her passably good cappuccino and a salad sandwich with too much carrot, the waitress, a dark-haired woman in her forties, tells Frances how the town was thrown another economic lifeline when a horde of people arrived to film scenes for The Lord of the Rings. The tourists had followed, hot on the Tolkien trail.

  Enjoying a new audience, the woman recalls how, during filming, the few small streets of the town looked like something out of Gulliver’s Travels, filled with very tall and very short people specially picked for their height extremities.

  ‘Lots of people around here were extras in the film. They did it for the fame and the glory, certainly not for the money,’ she explains. ‘My son got a bit part but it was so cold up the mountain, I went out and spent a hundred and fifty dollars on thermal underwear. Then the wardrobe people had to slash it to bits to get the costume to fit. I think he made a loss out of it. Came back freezing to death but had a good laugh!’

  Frances continues driving south, winding through harsh countryside. She has been told the turn-off to the accident scene is easy to miss so she scans the road closely. Soon she sees a small sign and pulls into a lane. Surrounded by rough farmland, she can see the metal spans of the replacement Tangiwai bridge ahead. At first glance, the place is indistinguishable from many other lonely outposts.

  The few cars travelling along the main road flash past, oblivious to the dark history they are bypassing. In front of her, a man and a woman on a motorbike stop just ahead and walk over to a tall black granite obelisk. Beyond them is the bridge and rising behind it, partly obscured by grey cloud, is the volcano. The middle-aged riders, wearing black leather jackets emblazoned with their club motif ‘Growing Old Disgracefully’, remove their helmets. Frances can hear them discussing the memorial, which is decorated with the doomed steam locomotive’s original red and black number plate, KA 949. The woman, who has unruly plum-coloured hair, nods to Frances in acknowledgement as her grey pony-tailed partner studies the inscription.

  ‘This is for those poor buggers who went down with the train,’ he says, reading the date on the side. ‘I’d forgotten how many people died. God, this place gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Let’s get out of here. Nothing more to see,’ his girlfriend replies as she moves aside to make way for Frances.

  Smiling at them, Frances edges closer to see if the names of the lost are recorded. She is both relieved and disappointed that they are not. Sometimes, she thinks, seeing the names of the dead eases the grief. It makes the deaths real, not just a locked-away pain, nibbling at the subconscious.

  Walking towards the river, Frances is affronted by its smallness: in parts it’s reduced almost to a trickle. The clear shallow waters of the Whangaehu flow over submerged boulders, snaking around little islands of river sand punctuated by metal-grey stones. It moves around bends fringed with poplars already stripped of their leaves, dark-green pine trees and the wispy, straw-coloured fronds of toetoe. Layers of black sediment stain the banks, hinting at bygone floods and lahars.

  Coming back here fills her with memories of her parents’ still raw grief, the droop in her father’s shoulders and his sad eyes, her mother’s carefully arranged expression. It was the first time they had been back to New Zealand since their abrupt return to England following the train crash. They told her they wanted to come back just once more, to remember the dead and thank God for their lucky escape. They always seemed to be locked into a past of unresolved grief, which annoyed Frances—after all, they had survived. They said they knew people who had died but would never elaborate. Frances watched them exchange glances that concealed secrets.

  As the unexpected arrival in her ageing parents’ lives, she had always felt out of place.

  ‘You don’t know how lucky you are if that’s all you’ve got to worry about,’ her father would chide whenever she went to him with some childhood complaint, some grievance from the schoolyard. She dreaded time alone with her father, whose moodiness she learned to avoid. She stuck to the monotony of small talk that they all felt comfortable with. By the time she was 12, Frances had stopped confiding in her parents completely. Instead she would store her hopes and disappointments deep inside her like the red squirrels she saw hoarding their winter supplies of cones and nuts in the forks of the large trees on the edge of the local common.

  She walks towards the river and trembles as she remembers the memorial service, the sad circle of mourners standing on this very spot. Her parents slipped into the group and she reluctantly followed. The survivors had moved from youth to middle age, losing hair and gaining girths, yet many recognised each other insta
ntly.

  At the end of the ceremony came the two sentences that changed Frances’ life forever.

  ‘Ada, it’s so lovely that you were able to have another daughter. It must have helped you get over losing your baby girl.’

  The lines were delivered innocently by an elderly woman who had also survived the train crash. But Frances could only stare in disbelief at the faces of her parents.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ the woman said, stepping back to appraise the girl as if she was a work of art.

  Frances stared at the stranger whose words hung in the cool still air. ‘Another daughter.’ Frances felt her heart beat faster. She caught her mother’s dismayed expression. She looked across to her father and saw him shaking his head, incapable of further speech.

  It wasn’t until Frances screamed that her mother ran to her and held her. Her father didn’t move.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Frances cried out. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her mother said, holding her close now. ‘We thought it best you didn’t know. Thought we should start over. Valerie…’

  ‘Valerie?’

  ‘Yes. Her name was Valerie. She wasn’t even two. She was swept away. We found her body…someone found her body a couple of days after the crash.’

  So much had suddenly fallen into place for Frances. Looking back on her childhood, it felt like an old black-and-white movie with her as some sort of imposter.

  ‘Frances!’ Her mother rushed to her as she tried to escape her grip. ‘Wait. I’ll try to explain.’

  Frances had stopped but she could not release the words that were shouting in her head. She could not express the shock—she had had a sister, she need not have been an only child.

  Her mother grabbed her arm. She held her close and stroked her head. ‘I’m so sorry we didn’t tell you. We couldn’t bear to,’ she whispered at last. ‘We’ve never recovered from her drowning here. We couldn’t even talk about it ourselves.’