Kaitangata Twitch

by Margaret Mahy

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t be up to anything like that without a bit of private nudging, would she? Canary by nature as well as by name,’ said Sebastian, using that falsely good-natured voice. Clearly he was reminding Meredith’s father of an old playground insult.

  Kate turned on him.

  ‘He didn’t think of any of it!’ she shouted. ‘It was all me. Just me and – and someone I’m not going to tell you about.’ Meredith knew this unnamed companion must have been Nick Chambers. Kate spun around and faced Mr Gallagher. ‘I was being a warrior.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Mr Gallagher. He flopped into a chair.

  ‘But nobody ever does anything!’ Kate said half-defiantly, half-pleadingly. ‘And while you all whine on about the bay changing forever, everything out there is being pulled to bits. Even you, Dad, you talk, but that’s all.’

  ‘And you really think that spraying posters with abuse counts as doing something?’ cried Mr Gallagher.

  How Rufus would have enjoyed all this, Meredith thought, but not nearly as much as Sebastian Cardwell was enjoying it. He was listening to her father, his face pulled into sorrowful lines while his eyes sparkled joyously.

  ‘Now then,’ said Tom. ‘Sebastian, you did promise that if I let you come along with us there’d be no trouble. So let’s keep our heads. And Kate, this business of defacing the notices – like I’ve already told you there are fines, of course. Those notices cost Sebastian money, and not only that . . . well, it’s not what you’d call nice language, is it? I mean, if you’re so keen on keeping the world beautiful, I can’t see why you’d go spraying words like that around – where little kids can see them, too.’ As he spoke, he reached into his coat pocket, brought out a spraycan and set it on the corner of the table. ‘You’d better have this,’ he said to Mr Gallagher.

  ‘It’s empty anyway,’ said Kate.

  ‘I know we don’t see eye to eye over this business, Canary, but I just thought I’d call in to tell you in person there are no hard feelings,’ said Sebastian Cardwell quickly. Meredith thought she could feel her father wincing at this false kindness. ‘I certainly don’t intend to press any charges, even though it has cost me a bit.’ Sebastian could obviously feel Mr Gallagher wincing too. He smiled. ‘I mean, what with all the argument and abuse and so on – well, naturally the kids get caught up in it too. Of course I would appreciate it if you spent a bit more time looking after your kids and a bit less slagging me off.’

  Mr Gallagher took such a slow breath that Meredith thought she could feel it quivering in her own lungs. Ignoring Sebastian, Mr Gallagher spoke to Tom.

  ‘It is my fault, Tom,’ he said. ‘As you know – well, everyone knows, it’s no secret – I do feel very deeply about all that destruction up there’ (he jerked his thumb upwards) ‘and of course Katie’s taken my views on board in a big way, so it’s really a bit of family loyalty gone wrong.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ cried Kate passionately. She turned on her father, pointing back over her shoulder at Sebastian Cardwell. ‘He’s ruining the bay. If he puts up any more bloody notices – OK, I’ll spray them again.’

  ‘No you won’t, Kate,’ said Mr Gallagher quietly. ‘Because if you do anything like that again – just once – I’ll withdraw all my objections. You’ll force me to stop fighting for the cause.’

  ‘Anyhow, she’s safe home again,’ said Tom Maxwell, looking relieved as if the worst was over and done with. ‘I’ll be on my way and leave you to work this out with her, Carey. But make sure you do work it out.’

  Then he nodded to Mrs Gallagher as he turned to go.

  ‘Nice to see you, Michelle! Use your influence, won’t you?’

  Sebastian Cardwell looked past Mr Gallagher, and his eyes lingered on Kate. But then he looked at Mrs Gallagher and Meredith felt that, even though this was the first time he had really looked at her, in a way he had been thinking about her from the moment he first stepped into the sitting room.

  ‘Pretty girl,’ he said. ‘Takes after you, Mickey. Really sexy legs – nice and smooth, just like yours. I suppose that’s why I feel I know her really well. Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hang on a minute–’ began Tom urgently.

  He was too late. Mr Gallagher flung himself forward. Mrs Gallagher shouted ‘No, Carey!’ as he fell upon Sebastian Cardwell, bowling him over sideways so that Sebastian’s face scraped against the door frame, still grinning as it grazed downwards against the wood. Then they both tumbled over and over, wrestling in what looked like a curiously clumsy fashion to anyone used to watching efficient violence on television. Tom spun back into the room, grabbed Mr Gallagher, who was uppermost, hooked one arm around him, and hauled him roughly away from Sebastian Cardwell, shouting, ‘Come on! Stop! That’s more than enough!’ Sebastian rolled over and then slowly got to his feet, brushing himself down. He was shaking – but not with fear. When he looked up, they could see he was laughing.

  ‘Oh Canary! Canary!’ he said. ‘I could have you for assault. I was as nice as pie, wasn’t I, Tom? I only came here to reassure him, didn’t I? You’re my witness.’

  ‘Talk it over tomorrow,’ said Tom, looking uncomfortable, for everything Sebastian said was true and false at the same time. ‘Unless you want to make some sort of definite charge,’ he added in an official voice.

  ‘Well, I do have the law as my witness, don’t I?’ Sebastian Cardwell repeated, stroking the side of his face as he turned to leave, grinning on and on, in spite of the graze. ‘And I’ll think about that charge tomorrow, Canary.’ It seemed as if he really was going at last, but then he stopped in the doorway and turned back into the sitting room. ‘And do you know why I’m even bothering to think? Because I had a sudden vision as I hit the doorframe back there. I might be semi-retiring, you know. Coming back home to settle down for a while. So I’m going to apply for permission to build a big holiday home for myself on the south side of Kaitangata, a little palace of a place, Spanish–American style. Terracotta, dusky pink, maybe – you’ll love it. And you’ll get a great view of it from here, too. Hey, we’ll be able to watch one another boating and swimming – shout across to one another, wave . . .’ He waved his hand at them all. It was a simple wave, but the smile behind it made it extremely unpleasant. ‘So just apologise, and then we can put this behind us and work our way towards being good neighbours.’ He waited, grinning, grinning, looking not at Mr Gallagher, but over at Mrs Gallagher and Kate.

  Mr Gallagher was silent. His lips were so tightly folded together they looked more like a ruled line under his nose than a proper mouth.

  Sebastian Cardwell sighed. ‘OK! Have it your way! Don’t worry about seeing me out.’ He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his cheek once more. His voice grew louder and more confident. ‘Just coming, Tom! Sorry about that, but hey, it’s just a graze. Anyway,’ he was saying as he vanished into the hall, ‘I need to get down to the boathouse. I’m late, late, late as it is, and–’

  The front door closed, cutting off his last words.

  20

  Meredith’s mother came to kiss her goodnight.

  ‘We’ll work our way through this,’ she said, talking as much to herself as she was to Meredith. ‘Oh dear! It’s all such a mix-up between present things and past ones. With some people, nothing’s ever over and done with.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried? About Dad and Kate? And Kaitangata?’

  ‘Well, it’s my job to worry, not yours,’ Mrs Gallagher said. ‘And I’ve had a lot of good worrying practice. But I’ll have to rush off now and comfort your poor old dad. And Kate too, probably.’

  Meredith’s thoughts slid on past her father, and the strange battering Sebastian Cardwell had given him without striking a single blow.

  ‘Do you think he really will build a house on the island?’ she said. ‘Mum, he’s horrible. I love Kaitangata. I don’t want his terracotta terror cottage there.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Mrs Gallagher softly. ‘Leave the word-twisting to Rufus. Anyhow even if old Sebastian
did build a terror cottage we’d find a way to get our own back . . . put up new water tanks, paint them purple and then stick big advertisements for herbal remedies on them.’

  ‘Or Kate could spray insulting anti-Sebastian slogans on them,’ said Meredith, briefly entertained with this idea. ‘And Rufus could think of something good.’

  Mrs Gallagher smiled and got up.

  ‘Kate!’ she said. ‘What an idiot! Spraying insults on Sebastian’s notices. Funny way of being a warrior!’

  ‘Mum,’ said Meredith. ‘Mum! Sebastian’s going to ruin Kaitangata, isn’t he, just for the fun of it? He’s going to make it into something we hate. He’s rich enough to do something like that, isn’t he?’

  Mrs Gallagher was silent. Then she sighed.

  ‘Could be!’ she said. ‘Right now, he’s probably just having us on. But somewhere along the line, someone will probably want to build on Kaitangata. A lot of people would like the idea of a holiday house on an island.’

  ‘Mum, Kaitangata’s my special place,’ cried Meredith. ‘I don’t want it changed.’

  Mrs Gallagher glanced at the door. Voices came up from below.

  ‘Well, you never know,’ she said. She was not answering Meredith but chasing some thought of her own. ‘You know, Merry, sometimes it seems to me that . . .’ she hesitated. ‘Well, it just may be that the time has come for us to move on.’ Saying this, Mrs Gallagher stared out into space, as if testing the words, hearing how they sounded in the outside air.

  ‘Move on!’ cried Meredith. She had been lying down, but now she bounced up again. ‘You mean – leave the bay?’

  ‘Well, people do move on,’ said Mrs Gallagher. ‘It is going to change around here, in ways we don’t want it to change. It was bound to happen sooner or later, since we’re so close to the city. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life eyeball to eyeball with Sebastian . . . certainly not if he ever builds a terror cottage of any kind on Kaitangata. I mean, imagine him lying back on some balcony with a gin and tonic and field glasses like yours, peering in at us here. I know we can peer right back, but he’d probably enjoy it, whereas your dad and me – we just want to look out at the world, taking it all in, in a simple way. And a landscape gardener can always find work in other places, and there are a lot of other beautiful places in the country.’

  ‘But Mum . . .’ Meredith struggled with this horrifying idea. She flopped back on her pillow. ‘What we need is a powerful enchantress,’ she cried at last. ‘Someone with power who could put a spell on Sebastian.’ And, as she spoke, a strange thought came into her head, running round and round inside her like a mouse on a pet-shop wheel. It was not a thought she could share with anyone, for it had wickedness hidden in it, and Meredith did not want anyone to know just how wicked she could be, even if it was only in her dreams.

  ‘Look, I just have to go and be kind to your father,’ her mother said. ‘He’s hating himself for losing his cool, and actually hitting out at Sebastian. OK, so it’s what he’s wanted to do all year, but now he’s done it he feels terrible. Because, funnily enough, it’s turned him into a big loser. It’s hard to be a violent man with anti-violent ideals. And then he’s so strung up about Kate. And Kate’s miserable about him. After all she has landed him right in it, hasn’t she?’

  ‘We’re getting to be a dysfunctional family,’ Meredith sighed aloud, secretly pleased with herself for remembering a word like ‘dysfunctional’.

  ‘The hell we are!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘We’re great! We’re tough! Having a few ups and downs is part of life. But goodnight, sleep tight, darling girl.’

  Oddly enough, Meredith fell asleep almost at once.

  At last the house grew quiet . . . then even quieter. A velvet silence settled over it, as the moon, angling itself lower, laid a pale finger across Meredith’s face. She stirred, as if she could feel its touch. Then, suddenly her eyes opened wide.

  For a little while she lay gazing up dreamily through the shaft of light into the shadows that hovered under her ceiling. And then, slowly, very slowly, she climbed out of bed. She pulled a flat cardboard carton from under her bed and took out the little box, that looked black but was really blue. Meredith opened it; the moonlight shone on the silver ring that Sebastian Cardwell had once given to her mother. Taking it out of its blue box, she put it on her own finger and slid over to the window (walking a little unevenly like a doll answering the tug of invisible strings). Then, staring out into the shining night, she held out her ringed hand to the moon.

  The bay from this angle was oval-shaped, and Kaitangata, like the dark pupil of a silver eye, seemed to stare back at her. The fist of the island, both dark and bright, struck upwards into the shiny air. From further round the bay, Trident Cove winked at Meredith, who winked back, oh so slowly – so very slowly – that she seemed to be taking her time from a clock in some other world. If she had glanced to her right, perhaps she would have seen a faint, yellowish glow filtering up from Sebastian Cardwell’s boathouse, where he was obviously still working in that office tucked in behind his boats. Perhaps he was touching the graze on the side of his face from time to time and laughing to himself.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ she promised the island aloud, nodding as she promised. ‘No terror cottages for you.’ She held her hand with the ring on it still higher. ‘Silver to silver,’ she said at last, hissing the words into the night air. ‘Sebastian Cardwell . . . Sebastian Cardwell . . . Sebastian Cardwell. I call you! I call you! I call you!’ The strange voice that came out of her mouth was a sandy, gravelly voice that sounded as if it sifted out into the world through moss and fern roots. She took a deep breath. ‘Kaitangata! Kaitangata! Kaitangata!’ she whispered.

  Then she dropped her arm and stared out to sea again. Nothing changed. Meredith stood there, silent now, staring and staring towards the island until a distant sound broke the stillness. Somewhere on the long beach below, in spite of the late hour, someone had started an outboard motor. Immediately Meredith turned, and, though all lights were out in the house and there was no way the moon could shine on the stairs, she made her way down to the front door, walking without the slightest stumble. The door was locked on the inside, but the key was still in the lock. She turned it, opened the door and moved on out into the night. Once across the verandah she paused and whistled soundlessly. But though her whistle was nothing more than the pursing of her lips, the laundry door opened behind her, and Pudding and Pie followed Meredith unobtrusively as she walked across the lawn, making for the End of the World.

  21

  Weaving her way now right, now left, Meredith found her way unerringly down the Zigzag with Pudding shooting ahead and arriving at the boathouse first, while Pie scuffled so closely around Meredith’s feet she had to be careful not to trip. One after the other, Meredith and the two dogs stepped from the shadow of trees into a different world. The moon seemed to have disappeared. There were no stars in the arching darkness overhead, and yet the air seemed polished by that brassy light, almost like a dark sunlight but without warmth or welcome. It oozed to meet her, out of the sand, perhaps, or out of the air itself, touching everything with its nightmare gloss. Arriving at the boathouse, Meredith hooked her fingers through the loop of rope at the prow of the blue canoe, and pulled – quickly! quickly! Her family might be at her heels, and she must be on her own – must give herself freely to a world in which she would be nobody’s daughter, nobody’s sister, just her true, single inside self – Meredith the enchantress. Just me! Meredith found herself thinking, Just the dogs, the blue canoe and me. The canoe seemed to flinch and pull back like a third, unwilling dog, but Meredith was too strong. It surrendered at last, slid obediently across the sand, and into the shallow water.

  Dreamily buckling on her lifejacket, she watched the tide coming in. A little wave ran towards her, carrying something on its back. A hand? No – of course not! Another rubber glove! The wave laid it on the sand, then seemed to vanish in two directions at once, running back towards
the sea, but sinking down into the sand at the same time. The glove was left lying on its back, fingers curving slightly upward as if asking for something. Meredith waved at it, lying there, and thought the fingers flexed in answer.

  ‘I know I’m dreaming,’ Meredith thought. ‘I know I’m dreaming, but this time the dream is doing what I tell it to do.’

  So she climbed into the blue canoe and paddled out into the advancing water.

  Pie sat in the prow of the canoe, while Pudding swam beside it, and Meredith was pleased to have the two dogs with her. She was alone, and yet she had company.

  They landed at Shelly Beach. Pie hesitated, then leaped out, but without his usual eagerness, while Pudding came churning after them. Both dogs looked reluctant but resigned as they stood on the beach, Pudding shaking the water out of her woolly coat. As for Meredith, though she was frightened it was a different fear from the fear of other dream-visits, for this time she had deliberately chosen the fear. Walking towards the prow of the island, ignoring the mist that crept behind her from the west, she went from one little beach to another, nodding at the wet sand, and the undecipherable sentence the tide had written across it. The two dogs trotted just ahead of her, instead of casting backwards and forwards as they usually did, and the mist followed at her heels. There lay the skeleton of the fish, there lay the yellow glove and – yes again – there the sodden black sandal: spells set down in signs, spells which might counter that other spell, the one engraved by bulldozers on the hill above her home.

  Meredith rounded the eastern end of the island and, carefully, looked ahead of her. The two dogs stayed beside her, seeing not smelling, calm and careful, too. Meredith read the sign beside the first beach, and thought she could feel the dogs reading with her. White printing on blue . . . HAND BEACH. The sign on the beach beyond, which she already knew would say EYE BEACH, gleamed in the strange light. In the distance, on the third headland, she saw the gleam of a third sign, and made out yet again that host of nameless shadows with the smaller shadow standing in front of them. ‘OK, let’s get on with it,’ she said to the dogs.