Etta agrees with the hospice doctor. ‘I think now’s the time, Gene,’ she says, so although she has been wrong about a few things recently – the day of the week, for example, or which visitor baked which fruitcake – he agrees.
And once he has given this approval, Bridget and Etta pack everything into the car immediately, ready to go the very next morning. It’s not the best time of year for fishing, of course, and his favourite spot – the tail race – will be muddy from the recent storms, but Gene is not one to argue with a pair of women once they have set their mind to something. Etta could probably use a holiday; they haven’t been away in so long.
‘But I’ll organise my fishing gear myself,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you and Bridget mucking things up.’
Mr Drury whom I do the rods for called for me tonight I put on a show of crabs & stones for business friends of his. Holy cow they handed me a prayer book & sang 5 hymns & had prayers. Save my bloody soul.
He unpacks all his reels and lays them out on the workbench in the garage. Most of them have become tangled; one of them he doesn’t remember having seen before. He turns it over and over in his hands, wondering how it came to be with his things. It is very new looking, and an expensive model.
‘Etta,’ he calls. ‘Etta!’
She bursts through the door, as if she is in a hurry to get somewhere. ‘What’s wrong? What is it?’ she says, grasping his arm.
‘Where did this come from?’ Gene holds the reel up for her inspection. ‘It’s not a hidden present, is it? Because it’s a pretty stupid place to hide it.’
Etta takes the reel from him. ‘That was your retirement present,’ she says slowly. ‘They gave it to you at your farewell function, remember?’ She peers at it. ‘Look, here’s the inscription. ‘To Gene Stilton, for forty years of service to Conway’s Construction Ltd. 16.11.91.’
Gene takes the reel back and looks at it again.
‘Shall I give you a hand?’ says Etta. ‘Where’s your fly box?’
Without waiting for an answer she begins rummaging round in the cupboards. She is a very efficient woman when she wants to be, thinks Gene, but unfortunately she has no idea what she’s doing. She sorts through containers of tiny fluorescent beads, she fingers a pair of iridescent starling wings. Gene watches her examine and reject old cigar tins rattling with lures, packets of metallic twine, samples of possum fur, rabbit fur, deer hide. He wonders why she should suddenly be taking an interest in his hobbies; she’s always hated his fishing and hunting trips.
‘Here it is!’ she says, waving an aluminium case. It slips from her hand and bursts open on the garage floor, scattering trout flies everywhere. Some of them land in patches of oil the car has left behind.
Gene didn’t mean to shout at Etta, but really, she was fussing around so much he doubted they’d ever get away. She didn’t seem to appreciate the amount of time that had gone into making the flies, the hours he had spent tying minute knots, lacquering, snipping feathers, binding the bodies with coloured thread. The sheer detail involved. The whorls and ridges of his fingertips becoming maps behind the magnifying glass.
Mum did a lot of painting of rods & some welding for me she doesn’t mind just sitting there doing a quiet little job although she is not keeping so well. I’m too busy with rods to do much with stones. I have one crab that’s been sitting on my workbench since Xmas and he’s still only half out. Of course the rods are profitable & stones aren’t you can’t eat stones. Doreen Booth (expecting) aged 16 was married this afternoon a very pretty bride Dolly 6 p.m.
‘If you’d just get off my back and let me get on with it,’ he snapped.
Because now that he has decided to go, everything seems much more urgent. He can’t wait to be standing out there again, his waders made slick by water, the lake hugging his chest.
It’s not the best time of year for a lot of things. As they drive up through Otaki, Levin, Foxton, there are none of the usual signs advertising summer fruit. It is a Stilton tradition to stop and pick strawberries on the way to the lake, and to eat them with the Christmas pavlova. Gene watches the farms slip by the passenger window – it is quite a relief, to be a passenger this time – and feels very sad that they will have no strawberries. Potatoes, apples, swede, the signs say. Parsnip, pumpkin. Broccoli, cauliflower.
‘Etta,’ he says, ‘we can’t make do with apples and cream, it won’t be the same.’
But Etta is concentrating on her driving, and only smiles briefly at him, and pats him on the knee.
And he finds himself standing in a bed of straw, the sweet-smelling air soft around him, and rows of fat berries stretching away in all directions. Bridget is running towards him, laughing, calling look, Daddy, look at this one, and biting into a strawberry as big as her fist. Christina bends low over the bright leaves, checking underneath for the berries that have been missed, filling her cardboard punnet with only the most perfect specimens. And Etta? He thinks he can see Etta in the distance, a tiny figure in a sundress, waiting at the end of the vast berry bed, where the nectarine trees start.
‘There’s the Army Museum, Dad,’ says Bridget. ‘Remember how you always used to stop there and drag us round?’
Gene’s chest is aching. He wants to ask Etta to pull over and pour him some syrup, but she says, ‘We don’t have time for that today, Bridget. We have to get through the Desert Road while it’s clear.’
And they whistle past the angular concrete building where, Gene recalls, there are drawers and drawers of medals, and then they enter the icy Desert Road.
Drury the swine has hacked out of his order again my advice is never mess with church people & he will be sorry he messed with Clifford Stilton
Pulse 98
‘Put the blanket over his knees,’ says Etta, and Bridget leans through the gap between the front seats and tucks a tartan rug around him.
‘Make sure his breathing’s okay.’
Bridget holds her face very close to Gene’s, and touches his cheek with her hand. He watches Mount Tongariro, covered in snow now, as it moves from one side of the horizon to the other with the turning of the road. He imagines himself stepping into that whiteness, losing himself in white, and the more he thinks about this the less his chest aches.
The motel is not the old one they used to stay at in Turangi, right beside the lake.
‘Let’s have a bit of luxury this time,’ Etta had said. ‘We deserve it.’ And she had booked a unit at the Angler’s Lodge, one of the most expensive motels right in the middle of Taupo.
Ask about our paragliding package! says a notice at reception.
Etta unlocks their door with a key on a fish-shaped ring. She is brisk, efficient, inspecting the main room in a glance, placing bags and suitcases in sensible positions, identifying immediately the location of lightswitches, coat hooks.
‘There’s a spa bath!’ calls Bridget.
Gene stands in the centre of the room, turning a complimentary chocolate over and over in his palm.
‘Morning morning!’ chirps the fishing guide. He’s young, about thirty, and is wearing a baseball cap saying Angler Dan’s. There are a few colourful trout flies hooked on the side; feathers dyed fluorescent pink and orange. On his spotless jacket, underneath the matching Angler Dan’s stitching, there is an embroidered trout in mid leap, spraying tiny cotton droplets across his chest. All righty!’ he says, clapping his hands together. Are we all set?’
‘The Guide,’ says Gene.
‘That’s me all right.’
‘I must finish it, one of these days.’
‘Let’s do you up,’ says Bridget, fumbling with the zip on Gene’s jacket. It’s all back to front from this angle.
At 8 p.m. there was to be a big explosion in the Lyttelton tunnel I went out & listened but never heard it. The tunnel will be completely through in about three weeks. Also at 8 p.m. the Yanks were letting off a Nuclear bomb of about 1,000,000 tons in the Pacific. The last one was seen from NZ.
– Thursday:
Lyttelton explosion was 7 p.m. Nuclear was a fizzer.
‘He doesn’t usually fish from a boat,’ Etta whispers to the fishing guide. ‘He’s used to chest waders.’
‘Right you are,’ says the guide.
Etta presses a small plastic bag into his hand. ‘Here’s his medication. Give him 10ml of syrup whenever he needs it. And Dan,’ she says, reading the guide’s chest, ‘if he’s too sore then bring him back. He won’t like it, but just bring him back.’
‘Not a problem,’ says Dan. ‘Oh and I’m not Dan, by the way, I’m Rick. If you want to tell your friends about us.’
‘Rick,’ says Etta. ‘Right. Yes.’
‘Actually,’ says Rick, leaning in towards Etta, ‘there is no Dan. Looks good on the brochures, you know? The Yanks love it, can’t stop blabbing about Angler Dan the Fishing Man.’
‘Okay,’ says Bridget. ‘Let’s get you into the car.’
‘Please don’t bump him around too much,’ says Etta. ‘He’s not up to anything rough.’
‘No problem. Gidday there, Gene! How about we go hook a ten-pounder, eh mate?’
Drury has once more withdrawn his rod order & that’s it as far as I’m concerned he can find some other mug to do his slave labour for him see if he can get anyone as skilled It’s his wife I feel sorry for from what I hear the bastard has boozed himself more mental than when he was born. I would thrill to read of his accidental discharge from this planet & would give my staff a months holiday on full pay
Gene stares at the guide. ‘Who are you?’ he says. ‘Where’s Dad?’
Bridget and Etta manoeuvre him into Rick’s purple four-wheel-drive.
‘Can’t interest you ladies in a couple of casts, can we?’ says Rick.
‘Now remember to tell Rick if you want any syrup,’ says Etta, straightening Gene’s collar through the car window. ‘We’ll be waiting here for you when you get back.’
‘Let’s go get ’em then!’ says Rick, and in a moment, faster than Bridget or Etta or even Gene can imagine, the purple vehicle has pulled away from their door and is gone.
The boat is steady enough, Rick decides. He has anchored it more or less where the old guy told him to, and now they are unpacking their gear.
Barrie Davenport swam Cook Strait the first ever to do so. 11 hrs 22 mins too bloody far for me.
Pulse 93
The old guy is fumbling with boxes of flies. Rick has offered to help, three times, but the old guy has pretended not to hear. He’s decided to leave the stroppy bugger to sort it out himself.
‘You look like you’re a bit of an old hand at this fishing business,’ says Rick. ‘You won’t mind if I get myself set up too, will you?’
Len Booth of Sheffield died in St George’s Hospital this morning (Heart). He was a good Chap, a keen fisherman, he caught 18 groper in one season off the beach at Chertsey with Rod & Line.
The old guy ignores him. Rick turns his back and starts casting, trying four, five times until he gets it right. Great morning for it. Not too many tourists, this time of year. ‘You’ll sing out if you need any syrup, right?’ he says after a while.
And then it happens: the old guy begins reeling something in, and it’s jumping and thrashing, a big one by the looks, maybe eight pounds, and he still doesn’t say anything and is so absorbed in playing the damned fish in that Rick doesn’t say anything either, and it’s no sooner in the boat than the old guy’s recasting, and he’s no sooner recast than he’s caught another one, just as big as the first, and that’s the way it goes all morning until the old guy says he’d like to go back now, thank you.
By Mid-day we had 80 Swans. When we got a chance we would have a cup of Mum’s hot soup or some tea & a bite to eat. The way the birds were coming in we could have had a table & chairs & kept the guns beside our plates. Luckily Gene had brought his trailer with him. When we got to 90 we decided we would stop at 100 as the wind was not letting up at times we could hardly stand & that’s tough work. We were back at the car by 4 p.m. Goodness knows how many we would have got had we stayed but 100 had more than satisfied us & we could not carry any more on the trailer, as it was we had 1/2 ton of Swans.
Rick has caught nothing.
Aren’t you a clever old thing?’ says Etta, zipping away the camera. Gene insisted on photographs with each fish; when Etta snapped the last one the film started whirring back to its own beginning.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says to Rick. ‘You don’t know what this means to him.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ says Rick, pocketing his cheque. ‘Man of few words. See you next time then.’
The drive home is spent in silence. Gene thinks about the trout he has caught, which Etta has packed carefully in the boot of the car, in blue chillybins, in ice. Etta slows down at each sign saying Rest Area, in case he wants to stop. Bridget sleeps.
When they get home Bridget helps him inside while Etta begins unpacking the car. Gene watches her bring in bags, jackets, a thermos.
‘The fish,’ he says, ‘they’ll thaw, they’ll go bad.’
‘They’re in the freezer already,’ she says. ‘I unpacked them first.’
But Gene refuses to believe her, so she takes his right arm and Bridget takes his left and they lead him to the freezer.
‘Look,’ says Etta, opening the bottom drawer. ‘There they are, right down where it’s coldest, all labelled.’
Gene nods, and they start to direct him to his motorised chair, but he shakes his head and says no, no, no. He wants to be shown the rooms downstairs.
‘But Dad, you’re tired,’ says Bridget. ‘You’ve just had a long drive, we should get you into bed.’
Gene does not want to go to bed. He wants to be shown the rooms downstairs.
‘All right,’ says Etta, and gives Bridget a look, so she takes his left arm again and the three of them move from room to room.
‘This is the living room,’ says Etta. ‘There’s the TV, and our armchairs. There’s the calendar you gave me for Christmas.’
Gene nods.
‘Here’s the kitchen. Mind the rubbish bin – ’
Bridget kicks it out of the way.
‘Through the dining room,’ says Etta. ‘There’s the dresser where all the good china is.’
They creep along the re-laid carpet as if they do not want to make any noise; possibly wake someone who is asleep in the house.
‘And here’s the lounge,’ says Etta. ‘Here’s the suite we bought in Christchurch.’
Gene leans more and more heavily on their arms as they move across the flowered rug that is almost as big as the lounge itself.
‘Here we are in the hall,’ says Etta, ‘and there’s your chair waiting at the bottom of the stairs.’
They propel Gene towards the chair, moving past the battle scene on the wall.
‘There’s your Chunuk Bair print.’
‘No,’ says Gene through barely opened lips as they position him in front of the motorised chair. ‘No no no no – ’
‘What’s the matter love, what is it?’
‘Airroom,’ he says, ‘airroom.’
‘I think he wants to see every room,’ says Bridget quietly.
They pass Chunuk Bair again. Rifles aimed, bayonets raised.
‘This is the downstairs toilet,’ says Etta. ‘There’s the soapdish you attached to the wall and the mirror we bought last year.’
Past the print again. One hand lifted in surrender.
And here’s the garage.’
The car is cooling down after the five-hour drive. The metallic ticking, growing slower and slower, sounds very loud against the concrete floor, the hard walls. From above the door the skew-necked pheasant regards Etta, Bridget and Gene with its glassy eye.
Gene nods and they return to the hall, and the waiting chair.
It’s terribly windy outside; at times it feels as if the windows will be blown in. Etta can’t sleep. She switches on her light, flicks through a Woman’s Day. A lot of the visitors bring
her magazines, to take her mind off things they say. To help her relax a bit. Etta thanks them; they mean well. She is too polite to tell them she has no wish to make a Handy String Holder For The Kitchen, or to Crochet This Cheeky Hat, or to solve the Wonderword. She’s made a stack of magazines by her bed; every week a new covergirl watches her dress and undress. Now, above the shuffle of glossy pages and the mounting wind outside, she can hear Gene’s uneven breaths. She closes the article on My Miracle Baby.
In the dark hall she almost trips over the cardboard box of diaries. Bridget put them there; after the flood they lay drying on the garage floor for weeks, getting in Etta’s way whenever she did the washing. She nagged Bridget to tidy them away, aware of the fact that she was nagging. Bridget put them in the upstairs hall. Etta said no more on the matter.
She pushes the box into Gene’s room with her toes, step by step, feet bare on the rough carpet.
A shock for me Mum was taken to hospital this morning with chest pains eleven degrees of frost & no fire until I got one going I’m not used to that she will stay in for a few days yet I am frightened to think about it
The night-light is bright enough to read by. She takes the top diary, comforted by its weight, the absence of pictures, horoscopes, recipes. Some of it seems legible, despite the water damage. It’s half past one in the morning. She’s got hours and hours.
Gene’s fingers flutter against the sheet now and then, but he’s not awake. Etta turns the radio on, very softly. The announcer’s voice is kind, lulling, providing her with soothing information such as the time, the day of the week, the fact that the following piece is one of his personal favourites. She listens and reads, or reads and listens, depending on which is the more distracting. And then a piece of music starts that she thinks she has heard before. Classical, flute and orchestra. Sustained, tranquil notes. Etta finds herself listening very closely, straining to catch them all as if each one were extremely important. She wishes she knew the name of the piece. She grows restless, digs her nails into her palms, wanting to absorb as much as she can of the music and at the same time wanting it to finish so she can hear the kind voice telling her the name. Gene’s breaths are very shallow, out of time with the deep, slow music. His fingers knead the sheet.
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