By the same author
Provocation
Guilt
Foreign City
Opportunity
Singularity
The Night Book
Copyright © 2012 Charlotte Grimshaw
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in New Zealand in 2012 by Random House New Zealand
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Jonathan Cape
This edition published in 2013 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801
Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4
Tel. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.houseofanansi.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Grimshaw, Charlotte, author
Soon / Charlotte Grimshaw.
Originally published: Auckland, New Zealand : Vintage, 2012.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77089-434-1 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-77089-435-8 (html)
I. Title.
PR9639.3.G753S66 2013 823’.914 C2013-903633-4
C2013-903634-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013943053
Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk
Text design and typesetting: Jonathan Cape
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
— For my children —
This novel especially for Leo
Roza and Johnnie
The mother and son were upstairs, preparing. He was to go to afternoon kindergarten and she was to spend two and a half hours at home, working. They had passed a leisurely morning together, and now both were looking forward to the moment when he would sidestep her kiss and dodge off into the kindergarten yard that was reminiscent of a sympathetic habitat at the zoo, with its coloured climbing frames, its ropes and swings, its tender attendants.
She would look back twice to make sure he was playing, not rushing after her to stand with whitened fingers gripping the wire. He had done this when he’d first started, before he had understood that she would come back.
‘When are we going? When?’ he said. He was standing at the basin.
‘Soon. Wash your hands. They’re black.’
‘When?’
‘We’re going to have to cut your nails.’
He looked up at her: wide-spaced grey eyes, freckles on his nose. Now his eyes narrowed, calculating.
‘How much?’ he said.
‘I don’t still have to pay you?’
‘Five dollars,’ he said.
‘Five? For nails? It’s daylight robbery.’
‘Five.’
‘OK. OK. Five.’
They went into the bedroom and he sat on the edge of the bed, hunching his shoulders and squeezing his eyes shut, so tight his whole body quivered. He’d always been this way; the cutting of his nails horrified him.
She fetched the tiny scissors and picked up his balled fist. He made himself small, moaning as she gently straightened out his fingers and clipped off a tiny black strip.
‘What melodrama. You’d think I was sawing your hand off.’
He snatched his hand away.
‘Come on. Full access. Or no money.’
He extended his fingers. There was a silence as she worked. He winced, frowned. A tiny bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
‘There. Done.’ She took out her purse and solemnly paid him. He inspected the note, folded it and took it to his bedroom. Johnnie Hallwright was very interested in money. For his next birthday, he had requested a safe.
The housekeeper, Jung Ha, came upstairs and handed over his small bag, packed with hat, sweatshirt, afternoon tea.
They waited for the car to be brought around. He fidgeted. ‘When are we going? When?’
‘Soon.’
‘What’s soon?’
Roza yawned, looking out at the rooftops that sloped away across the suburb. Far away, the sea was a metallic blue strip. She said in an idle, distant voice, ‘Soon is a fierce dwarf who lives under the house.’
He raised his eyes.
It was a year since Roza had made the throwaway remark. Soon is a fierce dwarf who lives under the house. Johnnie Hallwright was now four. Roza was thirty-five. And Soon had been living with them ever since.
The Wedding Cake
For three days a tropical cyclone had kept people away from the beach. The wind sent waves sluicing so far up the shore that Simon Lampton, walking on the dunes in the dawn, turned and looked into the belly of an obese green wave, the water spreading out and swamping him, rising to his knees, his thighs, pushing him up the sand. He knelt down, and the warm sea rose to his shoulders. His shorts and T-shirt ballooned around him. Cool spikes of rain fell on his face. He let his head sink back into the water, and listened to the roar and shush of the agitated sea.
He plodded over the dunes, the marram grass whipping against his bare legs. The squalls crossed the dunes, combing the marram into silver waves. The sky was grey, smeared with black. It wasn’t fully light.
In the last week he had begun to wake early, at five or six, and had crept from the bedroom, leaving Karen to sleep. Sometimes he would greet a policeman as he passed the pool in the grey light, on his way to the path that led to the beach. He liked to walk all the way to the rocks at the northern end and watch the sun appear, a bronze haze amid all that churning black, later a white coin, riding behind the storm.
Ahead of him was the compound, which occupied a sizable stretch of beachfront. Years before, Simon had come on a trip to this place with friends; the bus had dropped them at the side of the road and they’d looked across the dunes to the extraordinary beauty of the empty beach, with its pohutukawa and bright white sand. The road was narrow then and pitted with holes, and the land on the edge of the dunes dotted with small fibrolite baches. Old people lived there, and alternative lifestylers. There was one shop, a converted garage with a corrugated iron roof. One shop and one bus stop, its sign swinging in the wind.
It was all changed. The road had been widened and upgraded, and a new marina built on the estuary. The beach had become fashionable, then seriously upmarket. There were a few hold-outs, elderly people stubbornly hanging on to a shack on a plot surrounded by mansions, but most of the old baches were gone. Now, monstrosities of glass and steel lined the shore. There were driveways, swimming pools, landscaped gardens and lawns. Only the beach was untouched by the development. It was the same long stretch of white sand coast, with a tidal estuary at one end and a steep, bush-clad hill at the other. Nothing had been built on it; it was clean and wild, still beautiful.
Where Simon stood at the southern end the land had been converted to a single large section. Inside the compound the main house faced the sea, its glassed-in living areas opening onto wooden decks, manicured lawns and flower beds, its grand verandas buttressed with white columns. There was even a flagpole, rising out of a rockery and cactus garden. The walled grounds were bordered on one side by the road; on the sea side they stretched to the dunes. A path ran from the security gate through grassy banks and dunes to the beach. The three-storey house, which was painted white, was affectionately known hereabouts, in the exclusive beach community of Rotokauri, as the Wedding Cake.
Grouped around the main house, al
so within the surrounding walls, was a series of smaller dwellings: the guesthouse, apartments for staff, garages and outbuildings. One sizable bunker stored equipment for adventurous guests: jet skis, surfboards, kayaks. There were even two Laser yachts. On the first day of their holiday a young man in a polo shirt had led Simon and Karen to this hoard. They were to use anything they liked. If they wanted they could even attach themselves to a parachute and have the staff tow them at great height behind a boat.
Simon couldn’t see the point. Nor could he imagine himself on anything so loud, so frankly moronic as a jet ski. He preferred to lie on the sand with a book. In some moods their host, David, liked to mount his jet ski and drive straight out to sea. As he roared away, the high, thin plume of water spraying out behind him seemed somehow comically insolent. It was a sight that caused his security men to gather anxiously near the boat, ready to go out after him.
Karen had waded out and messed around on a sailboard for a couple of mornings before settling on daily tennis lessons with David’s wife Roza and her friends: four burnished ladies and their coach, the muscular Garth.
The security gate opened. Watched by cameras, Simon passed through and walked slowly up the path. It was still so early he thought he might continue his walk, along the coast road, turning inland, past the Kauri Lake and into the valley. He had jogged out that way on a recent hot, blue afternoon, before the arrival of the storm. In the valley the sound of the sea receded and the wind died away and the lake was a shallow expanse of silver fringed by waving raupo stalks. That day he’d jogged past a house that lay in a fat ray of sun angling down from the top of the valley. The grass was so green it looked unnatural. A gaunt white pony, all angles, ambled towards the house, a window opened, and a hand reached out with an offering. The pony stretched out its neck and nibbled with its square teeth, and Simon had stopped on the road, watching. The white pony, the green grass. Silence in the valley. It had all seemed slightly unreal. It was a beautiful place and he wanted to go back there.
Now, at the roadside gate, the guard was waiting out the last of his shift. The chime at the pool house sounded its melancholy tinkle as Simon walked towards the guesthouse (known as the Little House) where he was staying with Karen and their two younger children, Elke and Marcus.
Others came and went from the compound during this summer break: friends, grown-up children of friends, a steady procession of David’s staff. There was tight security — cameras, a watch house at the front gate, a team of patrolling guards. David Hallwright was very rich. He was also the Prime Minister.
Simon was not the only one up. David was pacing behind the glass at the back of the main house. He beckoned.
Simon came slowly up the wooden steps and stood in the doorway. ‘I’ve been swimming, sort of. There was a huge wave.’
His phone to his ear, David said, ‘I wouldn’t recommend that, no.’
He reached out and touched Simon’s T-shirt. Bunching the wet material in his fist, he pulled him over the threshold.
‘You will not do that,’ he said. ‘Call Ed. Now.’
Simon, feeling an odd pleasure at being touched, stifled a grin. David put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him across the room to a wood-panelled bathroom (blonde pine, Nordic scents, gigantic jacuzzi).
‘Get yourself dry.’
Simon took a towel and caught sight of his expression in the mirror; he looked dreamy, foolish. He dried his hair, rubbed his cheeks until they stung, and stepped out.
David had put away the phone. He was leaning his forehead against the glass. Beyond, the sea endlessly rearranged itself. Zigzag currents crossed the waves; sudden drifts of foam broke from the grey crests and rose into the air.
‘Graeme’s dead,’ he said.
‘Oh, mate,’ Simon said.
He crossed the room. A gust of wind rippled its way across the grass and smacked against the window. Silence. The white sky. Seagulls out there, riding and riding against the air.
‘Old Graeme.’
David smiled. He drew in a long breath. ‘Old Graeme.’ For a moment he seemed stricken. Then he gave such a look of complicity that Simon went still.
‘It’s good you’re here,’ David said. ‘Before the others come.’
Instil and Imbue
The Lamptons were the Hallwrights’ summer guests, and they were more than that. They were, in one sense, part of the Prime Minister’s family. You could read about this. A small amount of media research would tell you that the Lamptons and the Hallwrights ‘shared a bond’. That they were ‘bound together by circumstance’. That they had ‘grown close in recent years’.
Their story had been carefully disseminated by David Hallwright’s people. Although, behind the scenes, the connotations were almost impossibly complex, the basic facts were straightforward. When he’d married her, David’s second wife Roza had been keeping a secret. It was not a sensational one, as secrets go: aged sixteen, she had given birth to a baby and adopted her out. Eight years later, after the adoption and a number of foster placings had failed, the girl, Elke, had been adopted by Dr Simon Lampton and his wife Karen.
In the following years, the Lamptons had come to love Elke as their own. But just before David Hallwright had been elected Prime Minister, Roza had located the child, and had introduced herself to the Lamptons (and revealed herself to David) as the birth mother.
Very few people thought Roza’s secret was in any way shameful. It needn’t have been a secret at all, but it was understood that for Roza (the only daughter of cold, rich, fanatically strict Catholic parents), things had been emotionally complicated.
Elke had gone on living with the Lamptons, but she began to spend time with Roza and David. She said very little about this; she remained, in many respects, unknowable. It was Elke’s arcane quality, Simon thought, that kept the families together. Both families loved and wanted her, both feared losing her, so they hung together, watching her covertly. Each feared she would disappear into the other family, and never return.
She showed no sign of favour. Deeply attached to her, alert to her moods, Simon took note of changes, developments. This for example: in addition to David’s two children from a previous marriage, he and Roza now had a son together, the remarkable Johnnie. As Johnnie had grown from a baby to a toddler he had begun to resemble Elke, unsurprisingly, since they shared the same mother. Prompted by her resemblance to his own child, David had begun to treat Elke as his own.
Simon was disturbed by this. But there were other minefields. Roza and Karen, the birth mother and the adoptive mother, were now officially best friends. They played tennis and took holidays together. They lunched, swapped gossip, attended charity dinners. They were the best of friends . . .
From the top of the Harbour Bridge, Simon looked out and saw white caps on sun-struck green water. A wash of foam, driven by the storm, was churning in towards the docks. It was hot, the light was painfully bright, but the sky at the horizon was dark with raincloud.
The convoy began to descend the curve of the bridge. The sun turned the interior of the car photographic, furred with golden light. Karen snapped open a compact and lined her lips. Simon could see Roza in the car ahead, brushing her hair with quick shakes of the head. There were five cars, with police in front and behind.
He frowned. ‘I don’t see why so much security.’
Karen slid on a pair of sunglasses. She was dressed entirely in black, which seemed like overkill to Simon. She looked like a Mafia widow.
She said, husky, ‘Perhaps they’ve had threats. We’re at war in Afghanistan.’
‘Yeah. A Taliban ambush, on the Harbour Bridge. After they’ve flown down here with their rocket launchers. On Air New Zealand.’
‘You’re naïve.’
‘It’s like he thinks he’s the US President. Next he’ll be wanting a food taster.’
‘Roza says he started taking it seri
ously when Johnnie was born. He’s worried he’ll be kidnapped.’
‘Right. By the Taliban.’
‘Well, I’m glad he and Roza are properly looked after. For Elke’s sake.’
Simon looked away. Lately, he’d had the faint sense that Karen wasn’t real. She was a vamp in an airport thriller. She seemed to be getting sexier. There was a lot of cleavage and make-up and a new way of talking. She was always glancing at the help and whispering. These walls have ears. This was what it was doing to her, hanging out with the Hallwrights, travelling in convoys with the Hallwrights.
The driver touched his ear and talked into his sleeve.
‘They’ve got us coming in from St Stephens Ave,’ Karen said.
Simon shrugged, irritable. ‘Where else would we “come in” from?’
He wondered whether he should go in to work after the funeral. He had his medical practice covered and they were due to return to the beach, but there would be files waiting. He was a doctor; his files were actually patients, with their myriad human concerns, but there was a part of him that was all technocrat. In some moods he wished human complexities away.
David and Roza’s driver had gone a different way and would contrive, as usual, to deliver them to the cathedral last. Karen was sitting forward, her hand on the back of the driver’s seat. Simon looked narrowly at her; she would be calculating whether they could delay long enough to walk in with the Hallwrights. It was one of her favourite things: to feel the stilled conversations, the hundreds of eyes.
The driver moved the car into the cordoned park and Karen pretended to consult her watch. ‘Go around the block,’ she said.
The driver screwed around his head, looking affronted. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘It’s too early. Circle round.’
Simon said, ‘Let’s go, Karen.’ He reached across her and pulled the door handle.
The driver jumped out and went around. Karen gave her husband the sweet, mildly astonished smile that said, You’ll pay. With ironic courtliness he escorted her to the entrance, where the dean of the cathedral was waiting, robed, primped and wearing his most ingratiating smile.
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