Soon

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Simon daydreamed his way through the service, hearing very little of what was said. He’d wandered into the garden the previous evening and found Ed Miles at the outdoor table, typing Graeme’s eulogy on a laptop while David bounced Johnnie on his knee.

  David had told Ed, ‘It’ll be televised. Make it useful, mate.’

  Ed, sitting back, stretching, cracking his knuckles: ‘OK, King’s, blah blah, rowing. Graeme Ellison instilled his values etcetera in his children, and the scholarships he founded will ensure that young people absorb the principles he cherished. The principles he held dear. Cherished. Before he died I discussed Graeme’s work with him. And my pledge to him and to the country is that none of his work will be in vain.’

  ‘You’re my prince,’ said David, tickling the little boy. And Johnnie, who had his mother’s potent eyes, laughed and twisted away.

  When Ed had gone, Simon had said slowly, ‘There are words that get thrashed in eulogies and death notices. Instil. He instilled values in his children. And imbue. People always bandy that one around. They’re terrible clichés.’

  David was expressionless. He said, ‘In politics . . .’

  ‘I thought it was a eulogy.’

  ‘You know what Graeme’d say. It’s never just a eulogy.’

  During the funeral service he thought of the valley at Rotokauri. The little house, the white pony. The green field . . . The order of service lay on his lap, on its front cover a black-framed photograph of Graeme Ellison — old Graeme, with his avid, gap-toothed smile. Simon now entertained a mental picture of Graeme as Toad of Toad Hall (jacket, bow tie, skinny green legs) giving a last mad parp of his horn before motoring off the page into oblivion.

  Graeme’s wife Trish, wearing a giant black hat, sat between Karen and Roza, clasping their hands. Then there were pews-full of Ellisons: the beefy blond sons and their pale wives; the daughters who all resembled Graeme (dark, portly, solid); a trio of young pinstriped husbands; rows of fidgeting children and a thinly wailing baby in a pram.

  David had come in last with his two bodyguards, had spoken to Trish and then slid along the pew next to Simon, who was now registering, at close quarters, the Prime Minister’s inability to keep still. David’s right leg pumped up and down, he folded and unfolded the printed photo of Graeme until the image was streaked with lines. His phone vibrated in his pocket; he stealthily checked it and never stopped looking about.

  Long shafts of light slanted in through the windows. Simon suppressed yawns, his eyes watering. The dean lowered his voice. It was an honour to speak of Graeme Ellison. One of the richest men in Australasia, he lived his life for others. His record of service was second to none: to his many charities, to the National Party, to the Business Roundtable, to his alma mater King’s School (all Ellisons attended King’s School). To the sport of rowing, to rugby. Tireless champion. Life member. Founder. Campaigner.

  Schemer, Simon thought. Dark master. Perpetrator of subtle frauds. Sly joker. Happy cynic, cigar-smoking boozer. Gap-toothed gasper, sharp-eyed shyster. Old fraud, ogler. He’d been the National Party grandee who’d brought Hallwright into the fold: young Hallwright who was all talent and no privilege, who had ‘grown up poor ’.

  The Ellisons, Simon remembered, used to make their protégé nervous. How things had changed.

  Now David walked to the pulpit.

  ‘Graeme Ellison made a difference in this country. And he made a difference to me. He changed my life. He let me see what can be achieved. If we can open up this whole nation to opportunity, that will be Graeme’s legacy . . .’

  Simon’s attention wandered. He saw Roza turn and reach for Johnnie, who was suddenly standing up on the pew. A policeman passed the window, talking into his phone, and pigeons swirled up from the square.

  David paused and lowered his head. He cleared his throat and gripped the lectern. A ripple went through the crowd. There was a sob, Trish’s hat bobbed and the ladies leaned towards her. Men bowed their heads.

  Ed Miles looked at his watch.

  Now, in the hushed cathedral, David rested his palms on the lectern. ‘And I ask you to join me in a prayer.’

  Simon was an atheist, so he didn’t kneel. He didn’t bow his head. All along his pew they went down on creaking knees. He looked straight into David eyes, and David read the prayer to him.

  All This

  It was early evening in the garden at Rotokauri. Troy hovered diligently over the drinks table, with his ice tongs, his lemon slices.

  Simon was listening to an exchange between Karen and Juliet Miles.

  ‘Trish is coping amazingly well.’

  ‘Isn’t she amazing.’

  ‘It was an amazing service.’

  ‘Look, I was amazed by it, to be honest.’

  David leaned close to Simon. He was on his second gin and tonic. He was sunburnt, and his eyes had a varnish of weariness. ‘Instil and imbue,’ he said.

  Simon smiled and looked down.

  David gestured at Ed, who was now pretending to read Karen’s palm. ‘Ed’s speech for the funeral. I don’t usually get my Police Minister to write my speeches, obviously. But Ed and I and Graeme have been together from the beginning. Before we had writers, Ed used to do the speeches for both of us. He knows what works.’

  ‘I’m sure he does.’

  ‘He knows when to use instil and imbue to the nth degree.’

  Simon hesitated. ‘Yes. I understand. You don’t mind clichés. You have no need for verbal snobbery.’

  David laughed. ‘What I like about you . . .’

  ‘Roza!’ said the ladies, and moved their chairs to make room.

  Roza had wet hair, and was carrying Johnnie on her hip. The small boy, freshly bathed, presented his shining cheeks to be kissed by Karen, by Juliet.

  Watching his wife, David said, ‘What I like about you is that you’re not political. You’re like Roza, hopelessly apolitical. Your mind’s on other things. That’s so refreshing for me.’

  Simon said, ‘Whereas you have to consider the politics in every­thing.’ He broke off, suddenly bored and trapped. It was strange; in David’s presence he sometimes found himself floundering. One of these days he would hear himself say, ‘You’re amazing, David. You’re just amazing.’

  He wanted an excuse to get away for an hour. The evenings had settled into a pattern: drinks on the lawn followed by an elaborate dinner at the long table in the main house and afterwards, now the weather had settled, coffee and more drinks on the deck. David liked to stay up late, and none of them felt quite comfortable going to bed before him. Simon had begun to crave a quick, alcohol-free dinner, a book and an early night. He was short of exercise, too. David didn’t seem much interested in physical activity. He worked all day in his office at the main house, and after that he lay on the beach, or took one of his abrupt drives out to sea on the throbbing jet ski. He did have a treadmill in his office and sometimes stood on it when he was on the phone, but Simon had never seen it switched on.

  It would be nice to go down to the beach. It was a beautiful evening, the sky clear and faintly greenish over the calm sea. He wanted to swim a long way out and look back at the shore, the lights coming on in the houses and the stars appearing.

  He started to get up. But David leaned close and said, ‘Ed makes choices for me, and they work. Ed would know what you mean about instil and imbue. I don’t, necessarily. Not instinctively.’

  Sudden laughter from the ladies, who had drawn their chairs around Ed. ‘Ed. You’re terrible!’

  ‘I need Ed. Maybe I need you too.’

  They were looking at each other and Simon held his gaze; for a moment they were competing and then David dropped his eyes.

  David said, ‘Let me get you another drink. And I’ll have one too.’

  Simon leaned back in his chair. He was strangely thrilled.

  A nanny
arrived to take Johnnie to bed. They were summoned for dinner but David and Ed were called away to a phone conference. Now they dawdled through the garden paths towards the house, Simon and the women: Karen and Juliet and Roza.

  Simon was thinking about his staring competition with David. He had won it; he kept coming back to that. David made him feel he mattered. All his life he’d run from his shaming childhood and his father’s rejection; he had succeeded and yet . . . always the sense of impermanence, unease.

  He’d been wary of David at first, unlike Karen, who was em­barrassingly thrilled by the association, but he’d been drawn into the Hallwright circle to the point where he and David were regarded as close friends. Simon was acknowledged to have David’s ear even though he had nothing to do with politics. He thought of it as a weird twist of fate, a curiosity, but (admit it) he’d come to value the position, to flatter himself he’d earned it. The thing was . . . The thing was, he was straight with David, never asked for anything, had never pursued him. Which contrasted with the sycophantic treatment the PM received elsewhere.

  It would hurt if he lost Hallwright’s favour. David could withdraw and become inexplicably cold, but Simon had discovered that if he politely ignored the coldness, David would come back all smiles, almost as if he’d been teasing. If David played games, Simon was a match for him, although it cost him effort. He puzzled over conversations, trying to understand nuances, and there were still the bad dreams: his father Aaron checking in to remind him he was worthless.

  Juliet was saying, ‘It was when I injured my hand. I was pregnant, and had the two other children, so we got her in. She came from ACC, a sort of nurse aide. Anyway, as soon as she arrived she said she was used to caring for people in not-so-nice suburbs, and she was thrilled to be in such a lovely big house. She was an amazing housekeeper. So after my hand was out of the cast and the baby was born we kept her on. And now, it’s just getting weird.’

  ‘Does she steal things?’

  ‘Go through your drawers?’

  ‘Try on your clothes?’

  ‘She’s just sort of turned. She’s quite sharp with the cleaner and the gardener’s scared of her, and she completely freaks out the au pair. The other day she locked me out of the house. I had the baby and all his things and I was calling through the letterbox. I was furious, I remonstrated with her and she opened the door and gave me this look, I can’t describe it. And now she’s . . . changed. She looks at me strangely. And there’s a tattooed man, some sort of friend of hers, who waits for her outside the house in the afternoons. Peering in. Sort of glaring in at the gate.’

  ‘Ed’ll find you gone and her dressed as you.’

  ‘She was telling me she’d lost weight and that she felt really “light” and she lifted her foot and stuck it right near the baby’s face.’

  ‘That’s symbolic. A foot in the face.’

  ‘Ed’s never home. And he doesn’t listen. It’s all, Don’t be so imaginative, and, She seems perfectly normal to me.’

  Roza said intently, ‘They work for you and you think you get on. But you can’t tell. Sometimes you find out that they hate you. They really hate you.’

  They reached a wooden gate. Simon held it open as they passed through. Roza and Karen were minimally dressed in the hot weather; Juliet, who had ginger hair and freckles and pale blue eyes, was swathed as usual, in a kaftan, floaty scarf and a hat. The sun was Juliet’s enemy. It pursued her, tricked her, never left her alone. She would take shelter in the shade only to find that reflected glare had got in under the canvas and left her pink and peeling, like a cooked prawn.

  Roza never burned but only got browner. Like all the men in the compound, Simon spent a lot of time either trying not to stare at her, or placing himself where he could look without being noticed. And now Garth the personal trainer had arrived, with his weights and diets and workout programmes, and she’d been playing all that tennis . . .

  Since she’d had Johnnie, Roza seemed stronger and less fragile, Simon thought, and yet somehow just as frightening. She was still ungovernable, but her power was turned outwards, and he no longer worried she might damage herself, as he’d feared during their negotiations over Elke.

  Karen had initially tried to keep Roza at bay. It was Roza, he thought, who’d recovered herself first. He had watched her taking Karen in hand — that was the only way to describe it. Roza had seen to it that Karen wouldn’t stand in her way.

  Karen loved Elke even more than she loved her own — her biological — daughter, Claire. She wasn’t giving Elke up. In order to gain access to the girl, Roza had turned herself into Karen’s best friend. And so a new world had opened up to Karen; she was photographed, noticed, mentioned in social diaries. She rode in convoys with the Hallwrights. Simon knew that if Roza had not had a great deal to trade, Karen would have kept her away. She would have been implacable.

  They didn’t talk about it. Karen would only say, ‘It’s lucky we get on so well.’ He didn’t discuss it with Roza, either, but his conversations with her were always charged with covert understanding. I know that you know that I know.

  He latched the gate and came towards her, saying, ‘I’ve got to pick up Marcus after dinner.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I dropped him this afternoon at a house on the other side.’ He meant the other side of the peninsula, where there was a settlement as ostentatious as Rotokauri, but bigger and less exclusive. ‘This huge house on the marina, with a pool party going on.’

  Marcus had been invited by a school friend. When they’d got there a woman in a silver bikini had ushered them in, grinned and vanished. Marcus had gone ahead to the pool, where a group of teenagers was lounging by the thumping stereo, and Simon had wandered alone through rooms like glasshouses, full of refracted light.

  ‘It was one of the new houses at the marina — enormous, all glass and granite and steel. White leather sofas. And a gigantic gin palace parked outside.’

  He’d found a group of middle-aged people drinking and sunbathing on an upper veranda. The host, Marcus’s friend’s father, offered him a cocktail.

  ‘They were all completely drunk. The father’s got a new girlfriend, Marcus says, who likes to have sex in the spa pool on the deck. Doesn’t care who happens to stroll past. And he says she flirts with the sons. The father did have his hand clamped on a woman’s arse the whole time I was talking to him.’

  He thought of the grey-haired, handsome man with his boiled face and blue eyes and the woman in a leopard-print bikini and, behind them, over the steel rail, the gigantic boat.

  Roza said, ‘Ugh. Drinking in the day. Was it Gibson, the booze tycoon? He’s got the biggest house on the other side. He’s a good friend of the Cahanes. He comes over here and we have to be nice to him.’

  ‘That’s it. Peter Gibson. His son’s called Harry.’

  ‘He’s got some terrible new slag. She’s all Botox and mini-dresses and “signature handbags”. Unbelievably tacky.’

  ‘Roza!’

  She grinned, showing her pretty teeth.

  Simon said, ‘Anyway, Marcus is fifteen. I suppose he’ll be fine.’

  ‘Gibson’s house, the local den of vice — he’ll have the time of his life,’ Roza said.

  The path wound through lavender and rosemary bushes and led to the main house, where David and Ed were talking on the veranda. Across the lawn some young people were good-humouredly disputing over a tennis match, and others were splashing in the pool.

  Juliet picked a piece of lavender and held it to her nose. She said, ‘I mean, Karen, what can you actually do if you start being stalked by the help?’

  They were joined at the house by Claire and Elke. The small Miles children had been rounded up by a nanny and carried off to bed in the apartment next to the Little House.

  With kisses and in her usual manner (affectionate, sweet, vague), Elke greeted her two m
others, her two fathers. Claire, who was nineteen now, a university student and only here for two nights, kept back. She disliked physical contact. She seemed to Simon, who was vague about clothes, to be dressed as a soldier, in a grimy khaki shirt, jeans and boots. Her face was set in an expression that Simon recognised; anticipated hurt and defensiveness made her look myopic, as if the mere act of seeing were effortful. Karen always expected trouble from Claire and tried to patronise her, which made Claire boil with fury. Simon took his daughter’s arm, feeling how tense she was. He made sure she was seated next to him.

  Claire was training to be a doctor. She wanted to work as a paediatrician and had once, to Karen’s horror, bailed up David and asked him why children in South Auckland were so poor and neglected they suffered from diseases eliminated from most first-world countries. David had smiled tenderly and thanked her for the question; he’d told her how much his government was doing in this important area, ‘although the recession ties our hands, of course’. After that he’d not only avoided her but no longer enquired after her, never mentioned her at all.

  They gathered around the table. Roza laughed lightly and said, ‘No, hang on. Karen, you sit over there next to Ed. Then we’ve got the mix right.’

  Karen had been about to sit down between David and his chief of staff, Rick Short. A mottled blush rose to her cheeks as she moved down to the end of the table and took her place between Ed and someone’s teenage son.

  Roza said, ‘Ed, you can read Karen’s palm.’ Then she leaned across to Elke and put her hand on the girl’s wrist. She said, ‘I’ve just remembered. I’ve got something to show you. After dinner.’

  David’s gaze slid across Claire to linger on Elke. And Simon felt a sudden compression in his chest. One Lampton daughter had ceased to exist for David, but the other had come sharply into focus, and Simon had brooded over the new phenomenon: David being aware of Elke. There was a series of photos in the office at the main house: Elke and little Johnnie, hand in hand on the beach, building sand castles, jumping through waves. Roza’s children. They both had freckly noses and deep, watchful eyes.