Claudia takes the comb and places it back in the locker. ‘Don’t you dare go all evasive and kiwi on me. I’ve seen The Piano, I know your little foibles.’
‘Are you all this nosy?’
‘Come on, it’s not every day you get to meet your mother. Your real mother. You know what I mean.’
‘She was – ’ says Christina to her reflection. ‘She was – ’
‘A man? A nun? Fat?’
‘Rich.’ Christina pushes her locker shut.
Ah. Rich.’ Claudia considers this for a moment. ‘Is that bad?’
‘They won Lotto. They actually won, millions of dollars. I mean, how many people do you know, personally, who’ve actually won?’
‘People win?’ says Claudia.
Christina keeps waiting for winter to arrive properly.
‘Remember to keep warm,’ she says to her pregnant patients by way of ending a consultation. Most of them simply stare at her then, bare arms extending from sleeveless maternity dresses. ‘Warm, yes,’ they say, frowning, and then they leave the air-conditioned hospital and step into warm August weather.
I don’t miss the cold, Christina writes to her parents. I don’t miss the wind. The pay is much better here, although the shifts are demanding. At the moment I am treating a premature baby which weighed less than one kilo when it was born. We do not expect it to survive. Mum, I wonder whether you have heard much about HRT. It really is a miracle drug, I’ve seen quite remarkable results in the patients I’ve prescribed it to. It would probably stop you from shrinking any more. I feel like such a giant next to you now. You should talk to your GP about it. Hope Dad is well.
Christina never knows how to finish letters. She stares at her pen. Rulide, it reads. Three hundred milligrams once-a-day.
Winter does not arrive. There are some rainy days, a couple of thunder storms. She wears her long coat twice. She uses the heater in her apartment maybe four times. And then the weather starts getting warmer again, and daffodils and freesias are all over the place, stuffed into vases on the café tables, overpowering the eggs benedict brunches, and then in what seems like a few weeks it is thirty degrees every day. Christina receives a letter from her sister, who has arrived in Germany at the start of a raw European winter. Bridget misses the Wellington winters terribly.
Claudia insists on regular picnics. The one at the beach is the usual sort of affair: sandwiches, bacon and egg pie, powdery summer apples. Thorsten has brought some Austrian wine.
‘It’s made in Neusiedler See,’ he says. ‘We used to go there for holidays. I found it at Message in a Bottle.’
Sand has worked its way into everything; it even circles the rim of the wine bottle, and floats in the glasses. Christina wipes her tongue with a tissue.
‘He should,’ says Claudia, watching a sunburnt man in Speedos. ‘She should. He definitely should.’
She’s playing a game of her own devising. She calls it Melanopoly. She passes judgement on the surrounding sun-bathers, announcing which of them should have particular moles checked. A freckled red-head picks his way across the hot sand to the water.
‘I give him two years.’
‘You’re a morbid cow, aren’t you,’ says Max. Max is Claudia’s new boyfriend.
‘One does what one can.’ She smiles demurely. ‘He should. He should. Both of them should. Oh! Oh, how sweet! An entire high-risk family!’
Mother, father and three pink children walk past with dripping icecream cones.
‘Hello!’ calls Claudia. ‘How are we all today?’
The mother stops, peering towards Claudia, trying to recognise her. ‘Fine thanks,’ she says, smiling, nodding. Strawberry ripple drips over her hand. The children stare at Claudia.
‘Come on, back to the car,’ mutters the father, taking his wife’s elbow and guiding her away, flicking up sand with his quick steps.
‘Who’s that, Mum?’ says the girl, looking back.
‘See you!’ Claudia waves at the receding family. ‘Fairly soon, no doubt.’
Thorsten opens a second bottle of wine, a red, and balances it on the sand. ‘Got to let it breathe.’
‘Robust, fruity and full-bodied,’ reads Claudia from the label. ‘Enjoy at room temperature. Typical of your region, would you say, Thorsten?’ She feels his biceps.
‘This one’s French, actually.’
‘Hey!’ says Max. ‘Christina, did you see that?’
Claudia takes a swig from the bottle and swallows. ‘Any more breathing and it’ll be singing Happy Birthday Mr President.’ She spits. ‘Bloody sand.’
Christina inspects the view across the water, shielding her eyes against the glare. Everything is too bright here.
Thorsten places his sunglasses on her nose. ‘At least you can’t see the Opera House from here,’ he says.
‘That,’ says Claudia, ‘reminds one of bathroom fixtures.’
‘I quite like it,’ says Christina. ‘It’s what people think of when they think of Sydney. It reminds me I’m really here.’
‘The Opera House. Surfers Paradise. Ayers Rock,’ says Claudia. ‘There’s more to us than landmarks, you know. We are a complex, misunderstood, highly sensitive people.’
‘Yep. Chuck us another tinnie, would you love?’ says Max.
Claudia and Max have monopolised the rug. Thorsten and Christina sit on a pair of sheepskin carseat covers plundered from Thorsten’s car.
‘Were they a present from Christina?’ asks Claudia. ‘Traditional first anniversary gift, I understand.’ She and Max roll themselves in tartan.
The sun has gone down, and the beach is almost empty. They have finished the wine, thrown away the leftovers made stale by the sun. They have slapped at twilight mosquitoes, put on extra garments, moved back and back from the incoming tide. When the beach is too small for them, they leave.
‘Shit.’ Thorsten grabs a slip of paper from the windshield. ‘Fifty bloody dollars.’
‘It’s so cute when he swears,’ says Claudia.
Christina takes the ticket and reads it, as if to check its authenticity. ‘We’ll all chip in, darling.’
‘Bollocks we will.’ Claudia grabs the ticket. ‘I’ll do you a letter.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Dear Officer – ’ she scans the ticket, ‘Menzies. On Saturday November 18 at 1.45 p.m. I parked my maroon BMW – registration blah blah – on the corner of Hillcrest Avenue and High Street in order to call at the nearby home of Mr and Mrs Braithwaite. Upon my arrival at their place of residence I found Mr Braithwaite to be suffering a cardiac arrest and, as my Hippocratic Oath demands, I treated him. I then accompanied him and his distraught wife in an ambulance to the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital, where I am employed as a Trauma Surgeon. I am delighted to say Mr Braithwaite has made good progress and, thanks to my timely intervention, his chances of a full recovery are high. Unfortunately, when I returned much later in the day to collect my car, I discovered that I had been issued with a parking ticket. I appreciate that you were simply performing the proud duty demanded by your Traffic Officers’ Oath, and that you were unaware of the emergency situation that demanded my infringing the parking limit by several hours. However, I am sure you will understand my obligation to fulfil the demands of my own oath. I therefore respectfully request to be excused from the payment of this fine. Yours sincerely, Doctor Thorsten Schildling.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘I do.’
‘But I’ve never treated a Mr Braithwaite. He doesn’t even exist, does he?’
‘They never check.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Christina, taking back the ticket. ‘He could get deported for that.’
‘Nonsense.’ Claudia pokes Thorsten in the stomach. ‘You should make yourself a sign. For the next time.’
‘A sign.’
‘Claudia keeps it in the glovebox,’ says Max. ‘Medical emergency. My name is Dr Claudia Foster and I may be contacted at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital. It’s kind of
scrawly, like it’s been written in a hurry. Never fails.’
Claudia traces circles on the footpath with her toe. ‘You’re making me blush.’
It is past midnight when Christina remembers. The carseat covers, they’d left them on the beach. She sits up in bed, groans above Thorsten’s snores, thinks about getting up. Then she lies back down and pulls the sheet up to her chin.
She can see the covers, soft on the flat sand. Or floating, white in moonlight. She can smell the wet wool. Sodden, perhaps. Or sunken, fleecing the ocean floor. She thinks, salt water is a preservative. A brine. Thorsten will say it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. He will tell her she worries too much, she is too mindful of trivialities. He will bring up the inordinate amount of time she spends making the bed, straightening curtains, arranging coffee-table books. He’s not sure he could live with her. He will probably mention the care she takes in packing a suitcase; how she found, just last week, a glove coiled in the tip of a seldom-worn shoe. When she tells him how she remembered the covers in the middle of the night, he will laugh. He will say, in his precise English, that he did not know kiwis were so attached to their sheep.
Christina rolls on to her side. She regards the smooth, boy’s body beside her, the fine wrists, the narrow shoulders. You belong to me, she repeats to herself as he sleeps, his lips apart, a long hand resting on a hairless chest. We look alike, she thinks, we could be brother and sister. She expects other people – Gene, Etta, Bridget perhaps, when she returns from Germany – will comment on the likeness. She hopes they will.
‘That’s the patches, isn’t it,’ says Etta on the phone. ‘Shirley tried them for a while.’
‘Right,’ says Christina. ‘They look like sticking plasters, or those ones you can wear to wean yourself off cigarettes.’
‘But I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked.’
‘She hasn’t,’ says Gene. He’s on the other phone.
‘No, Mum,’ says Christina. ‘They’re nothing to do with smoking, they just look like those other patches you can get.’
‘Shirley says you wear them on your bottom.’
‘On the buttocks, yes.’
‘Would they do to fix my waders?’ says Gene. ‘There’s a hole in the left thigh needs repairing.’
‘Shirley says they made her feel sick.’
‘Some people do experience slight nausea for the first few days.’
‘Shirley used to be a nurse.’ Etta is beginning to sound quite agitated. ‘And I don’t need repairing. I am not punctured.’ The words rush out of her.
Christina sighs. ‘It’s up to you, Mum. I just thought you might be interested. Have you heard from Bridget yet?’
Native Birds
of
New Zealand
‘Do you like your new room?’ says Etta. ‘Dad spent so long making those shelves I thought I’d go mad.’
‘It’s very nice,’ says Bridget. ‘All my old things there –’
‘It was so lucky we shifted when we did, you know. We couldn’t have stayed in the old house the way he is now.’
‘No.’
‘I just couldn’t have looked after him there. All the bedrooms right at the end of the hall, and that big cold lounge.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was fine when you girls were little, of course – ’
‘Yes,’ says Bridget, thinking of the deep wardrobes, the fig tree, the many places to hide. The brass doorhandles that smelled like money.
‘We’ve still got the three bedrooms, though. Too cramped otherwise. We had Colin and Jim to stay a little while ago, I think I wrote to you, and Aunty Beryl came up the week we heard about Dad. You will say thank you for the shelves, won’t you love?’
‘Mum,’ Bridget says, slower than is necessary, ‘I will say thank you for the shelves.’
She doesn’t like her new room. In fact, she hates the whole house. She is profoundly irritated by the flat formica kitchen, the carpeted bathrooms. The lightweight toilet seats. Although Gene and Etta have been able to keep most of their old furniture, none of it seems to fit in this neat little townhouse. The heavy oak lounge suite, with its fat flowers and honeycomb cane, has squashed itself in front of the gas fire. And as if the stairs weren’t cramped enough already, a motorised chair has been fitted to the banister so Gene can go up and down.
The noise of it is enough to wake Bridget up. On her first night home – in this new house – she was shaken from a German dream by what sounded like a concrete mixer.
‘At least we can hear him coming,’ said Etta when Bridget remarked on the noise. ‘In case I’m on the phone to the hospice, or something.’
Bridget is not convinced that this is an advantage; the new house is small, and her father has developed the habit of announcing his every move.
‘I’m just off to the toilet,’ he’ll say, and then, a little while later, ‘Just back from the toilet.’ Or, ‘I think I’ll go and sit in the sunroom for lunch.’ Or, ‘Might turn the radio on now.’
‘Do we have to know that?’ Bridget hissed once, after Gene had finished explaining his walk from the lounge to the kitchen via the dining room.
Gene looked at her for a moment and then said, ‘Well, I might just pop into my electric chair now and go upstairs for a rest.’
He seems to enjoy referring to the stair chair in this way, and Bridget is never sure if he is being deliberately morbid.
‘You must see my electric chair,’ he says to everyone who visits, and he wriggles into it and gives a quick demonstration. ‘It’s just wonderful,’ he says. ‘I’d only have the run of half the house without it.’
Spent the day at Bullens Rock, Goose Bay. Had New Years Eve on the beach cooked about 40 Crayfish on a fire. Around Midnight I played the part of a ghost with a white sheet around me & I danced on the road as the cars came along. Colin & Jim behaved very well.
‘I didn’t know you played the flute,’ says Antony, clapping.
Bridget spins around. ‘How long have you been listening?’
‘Only a couple of minutes. I was coming up to tell you I’m off home now. I have to drop the car back to Dad.’
Bridget puts her flute down on the dressing table and goes to the bed. She leans across it, straightening the blankets, smoothing the sheet.
‘Naughty Antony,’ she says to Gene. ‘He crept up to the door while I was playing. Isn’t he sneaky?’
Gene’s head lolls back on the pillows, his mouth slackening in an unformed reply.
‘Night night then,’ says Bridget, kissing his forehead.
In the hall Antony puts his arms around her and tries to hold her in a tight hug. She wriggles free and gives him a quick peck on the cheek and says, ‘You’d better get the car back.’
She decides to stay home on Saturday night.
‘I thought we were going to Rachel’s party,’ Antony says when he phones.
‘You go,’ says Bridget. ‘I should really spend some time with Dad. Watch a war movie or something.’
Antony can hardly argue. ‘Okay. But it would be good to see you some time this week.’
Etta looks at her watch. ‘Time for your eight o’clocks,’ she says to Gene, and leaves him sitting with Bridget while she goes to get his medication ready. The only place for it all in their compact new kitchen is by the window, so she keeps the bottles and boxes hidden under a teatowel saying Native Birds of New Zealand.
‘No I don’t think it’s being silly,’ she told Bridget. ‘There have been cases of homes being broken into, the hospice said. So if anyone asks, Dad is just on medication.’
Outside, the neighbours’ pohutukawa is still flowering. It attracts a lot of birds in summer; sometimes they get a few tui. Any Etta doesn’t recognise she compares with the teatowel, but she has had no successful identifications as yet. She thinks it might have been washed a few times too many to be an accurate index; most of the birds on it have faded to light blue or grey. Gene knows his birds. He can even do convincing birdcalls
. Etta remembers when he used to come back from hunting trips and tell her about the birds he’d seen, or sometimes just heard. The tiny fantails were his favourite, he told her; if you made a sound like a kiss they would come and flutter around you, making the same sound back. Sometimes they would even settle on Gene’s shoulders or hat, or on the cool rifle barrels.
Etta busies herself measuring syrup and counting pills. She ticks these off as she goes, on the little chart from the hospice. Amitriptyline 25mg, tick; Lorazepam 10mg, tick; Diazepam 5mg, tick; MST elixir 20ml, tick; right down to Melleril 10mg. Tick. She had been worried that she would accidentally give Gene the wrong dose, or a lethal combination. She knew what sort of drugs she was dealing with, and what their potential effects were; she’d asked the hospice doctor to explain everything to her when Gene was out of the room, and to draw up the medication chart. The doctor said that the relatives of home-care patients often asked her for charts. Etta is grateful for Gene’s one, which makes it all so simple; the days are divided into squares and columns, and all she has to do is count and tick, as regular as a clock, or the beating of a heart.
She places the tray of medication on Gene’s side table and hands him a glass of water.
‘Why don’t we have two-dollar notes any more?’ she says. ‘I used to like the twos. All these coins weigh you down.’
Bridget inserts the first video – she has rented four – into the machine. ‘Do you know what two dollars buys you these days, Mum?’
‘They had fantails on them, didn’t they. A beautiful dark purple.’
‘The ones had the fantails. And they were brown.’
‘Really? The ones, not the twos?’ She looks at Gene, pats his hand. ‘Obviously I never saw enough of either of them, did I, love. What did the twos have on them, then?’
Bridget sighs. ‘Wood pigeons I think. Something fat. Can I watch my video now?’ She has fast forwarded to the end of the copyright information and paused it. The room is filled with a flickering warning.
‘Aunt Ursula,’ says Gene, ‘died of a swollen finger.’
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