Rain Fall

by Ella West

  Also by Ella West

  Night Vision

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Copyright © Ella West 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76029 6834

  eISBN 978 1 76063 388 2

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Joanna Hunt

  Cover photos by Shutterstock / Erik Kalibayev, Mark Nazh, Aze

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  www.ellawestbooks.com

  To Bob,

  who taught me how to ride a horse

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Okay, except for the penguin, and maybe some other stuff too.

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Westport, the town where I live, lies (mostly) between the banks of the Buller and Orowaiti rivers. The Buller flows fast and deep through bush and gorges. It finally emerges amid a narrow strip of farmland before being channelled to the sea at the south end of the town between two man-made tip heads. After running freely from wild mountains deep inland, I think it must be embarrassed when it becomes a river port and then, even worse, has its final send-off over the dredged river bar into the Tasman. It gets its revenge, however, because when it rains the Buller swells to be the largest river in New Zealand and then nothing stands in its way. It tears whole trees from its banks, will take farmland and close roads. Nothing survives if caught in its waters.

  The Orowaiti River, to the north, takes a much shorter trip to the sea, draining only some swamps and tidal zones before meandering through a muddy estuary, which they call a lagoon, before it splashes into the surf at Fairdown Beach. When in flood, the Buller pushes its way into the Orowaiti’s waters and surrounds Westport. Then both rivers are bank to bank, only centimetres from the bottom of their road and rail bridges. I’ve seen it like that several times.

  But there’s been no rain for weeks and today, Saturday morning, the Orowaiti is quiet, the tide flowing out far beneath the road bridge as I cycle over it on my way to basketball practice in town. I live on Utopia Road (and no it’s not, in case you’re wondering) and it’s only about a ten-minute bike ride through dairy farms and the cemetery, across the Orowaiti Bridge and past all the houses on Brougham Street to Domett Street and the indoor basketball courts next to the swimming pool.

  And today I’m not running late, like I usually am. Maybe that’s why I look in the river, see the grey sky reflected in the grey water. Maybe that’s why I stop, then ride over to the other side to watch it emerge again from under the bridge. It’s a coat. Floating. A dark-coloured coat, the sleeves spread wide, heading hood-first down the river.

  And then it starts to rain.

  In other languages there are a million zillion words for snow or ice or heat. In English it’s words for rain – drizzle, mist, trickle, sprinkle, fog, shower, cloudburst, downpour, deluge, torrent, storm, flood and a whole lot more that I can’t think of right now. And here, in Westport, we measure rain not in centimetres but in metres. Two, or maybe three. In a bad year we can have more. It can rain so much and for so long that the grass turns yellow, doors become swollen and then stick, paper won’t go through photocopiers or printers and people draw pictures of the sun and sticky-tape them to the windows at their workplaces and at school as a joke. Just so no one forgets what the sun looks like.

  Even if you wear a coat or use an umbrella it won’t stop you getting wet. This rain doesn’t just fall. It wraps itself around you, you breathe it in, the whole world becomes water, constant falling water. And we drag it inside with us. Small rivers run off our clothes and our shoes onto the floor as we sit in class, wet hair pushed behind ears, steam rising off our shoulders. A wet fug. At home the fire is always going – usually not because it’s cold, but to try to keep the house dry. No use having a dehumidifier. There’s no way to dry out the house and everything wet from outside as well. So our ceilings grow mould. Black patterns creep across them until Mum, grumbling, wipes them off with a cloth soaked in bleach.

  When it rains, the only difference between the days is the size of the drops and the time it takes for them to fall.

  And once it starts it doesn’t stop.

  When the fine drizzle suddenly becomes a cloudburst you can hear it coming. It reaches the bush first, the rain hitting each leaf before falling to the ground, the noise like a thousand deer racing towards you. And then there is the continuous sound of it on the windscreen when you’re in the car, on the school roof during the day, at home afterwards. You listen to it lying in bed at night when you’re trying to get to sleep, and it’s still there when you wake up in the morning. It drums on your head as you walk or run or bike. Each drop hitting you, splashing on you, the sound, the noise. Sometimes you just wish for quiet. For it to be quiet. For the rain to just shut up.

  But it won’t.

  It controls your life, what you do, how you do it. Outside sports are cancelled, Guy Fawkes and beach parties planned weeks in advance are washed out. And there’s nothing to do. There are no shopping malls, no places to go, no inside stuff. You just sit there by the window, watching the rain fall.

  Mum usually drives me to and from school on her way to work, especially when it’s raining. She runs the office at St Canice’s, the Catholic primary school, not that she’s Catholic. But then, nor are most of the kids who go there. Well, not churchgoing Catholics, obey the scriptures, do no evil and all that, or so she says to Dad. I went to North School, one of the other two primary schools in town (the third has the equally original name of South School) before going to Buller High where it doesn’t matter whether you’re Catholic or not. You’re all just the same. You are all just nobodies.

  But today I don’t want Mum to drive me. Today I am rebelling. After almost a week of rain I need some fresh air, even if it will be mostly wet fresh air. There’s a basketball game at lunchtime against Kaiapoi High. It’s a school interchange, the Canterbury high school playing us in everything both schools can put teams together for. And they’re better than us in most of them – except for basketball. We have to win, so I want to get my head straight, which means not having Mum talk to me about her problems all the way to school in the car in the hope that I will t
hen share all mine with her. Today I have one problem only: win the game for my team, for my school. And that is it.

  We should win okay. I’ve been dropping a few three-pointers lately, getting good at them. A few of those, and the scoreboard climbs. As long as I get fed the ball we can do it.

  I find my bike in the carport at the back of the house and start pedalling. Just out of the driveway the wind blows back my hood and it’s about then that I start to question my decision. I push the pedals harder and squint through the rivers of water already running off my hair and into my eyes. A grey car is parked on the side of the road, which is unusual. Cars don’t usually park along here. There’s no reason for them to park along here.

  The driver’s door opens and a man gets out. He holds up his hand to stop me as I approach. He’s got a black parka on, black pants, black leather shoes. His hair is getting wet. I put one foot on the ground, the other still on the pedal just in case.

  ‘You can’t pass through here,’ he says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ve got to get off the road now.’

  ‘I’ve got to get to school.’

  ‘Not today, you don’t. Where do you live?’

  I point out our driveway.

  ‘You bike back and I’ll follow. Quickly.’

  Some adults you don’t question. This guy seems to be one of them. I cycle back home and he follows me in his car, staying drier than I do.

  I leave my bike against the side of the house and climb the three steps to our porch and open the front door. The man is right behind me.

  ‘Mum, Dad, there’s someone here to see you,’ I call down the hallway. Dad has just come off shift. I don’t think he’ll have gone to bed yet.

  ‘What’s that, Annie? Why aren’t you on your way to school?’ Mum yells from the kitchen. ‘I thought you were biking. Have you changed your mind? Do you want a lift now?’

  Dad, still in his orange and blue overalls with their reflective stripes, pops his head and shoulders into the hallway from the living room. I can just hear Breakfast on the TV. Then Dad sees the man standing behind me, in the front doorway.

  ‘Sir,’ the mystery man says, stepping into the hallway and closing the door behind him, ‘I need you all to stay inside for the next few hours and keep away from your front windows.’

  ‘Why, what’s going on?’ Dad asks, walking down the hallway towards us. The TV suddenly goes quiet. Mum must have turned it off.

  ‘Detective Wilson, up from Greymouth.’

  They shake hands.

  ‘What’s going on? Has Annie done something?’

  ‘Dad, I need to get to school.’

  ‘Just a minute, pet.’

  ‘I’ve got basketball. Against Kaiapoi.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ Mum asks, drying her hands on a tea towel she has for some reason brought into the hallway with her to meet a stranger.

  ‘This man is a cop from Greymouth,’ Dad says.

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘There is an incident occurring across the road just along from here and your house is in line of sight, as is the road,’ the detective says.

  ‘You mean the O’Shea house?’ Mum asks.

  ‘A man known to police fired a gun in town last night and we believe he is now in the house across from you.’

  ‘It must be the O’Shea house, that’s the only one. The box-shaped house with no garden?’

  ‘You mean Pete did this?’ Dad asks, frowning.

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘His mum died a few months back. Pete wouldn’t do anything.’

  ‘Dad, tell him I need to get to school.’

  ‘So how long is this going to go on for?’

  ‘At least the morning. We think he’s sleeping it off for now.’

  ‘So we can’t go outside all morning, we can’t leave?’ Mum asks. ‘I’ve got to get to work.’

  ‘There will be nothing going along this road until this is over. We’re putting roadblocks in place at the moment. I need you all to stay inside, away from the windows. You’ll do that?’

  Dad nods.

  ‘I don’t want any of you becoming a target. I should evacuate you all.’

  ‘That’s not Pete,’ Mum says, shaking her head.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the Pete we know,’ Dad says.

  ‘He narrowly missed shooting someone through the window in the police station last night.’

  My parents exchange glances. In the silence Detective Wilson decides to leave, probably because he realises he’s in the middle of an argument he can’t win. He’s from Greymouth; my parents are Pete’s neighbours. Of course they know Pete better than he does. Dad shuts the door behind Detective Wilson, after taking a second to glance outside.

  ‘Anything?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Nothing. They’ve got him mixed up with someone else. Pete wouldn’t do anything that dumb.’ He yawns. ‘Anyway, I’m going to bed.’

  ‘I’d better ring work,’ Mum says to me. ‘And your school.’

  They both head back to the other end of the house leaving me standing there, still dripping on the floor from the rain, my schoolbag with my basketball shoes and shorts inside at my feet.

  I sit on the end of my bed and stare out across the room through the window at the O’Shea house. I can’t see a lot, in the rain. It’s steady at the moment, a curtain of grey. I can see our lawn and our low hedge, then across Utopia Road, and over to the far right I can just make out the corner of the O’Shea house in the gloom. It’s yellow. Not bright yellow but a dull, faded yellow, almost cream. Some of the boards look rotten and the roof has a tilt to one corner like it’s going to slide right off the house one day. This house is just a box, nothing likeable about it. In front of it, along the path, someone once placed grey bricks on an angle as a garden border, not that there are any plants. I’ve always thought the bricks look like jagged teeth.

  Nothing seems to be happening. There are no cars or trucks moving on the road, everything is quiet. Sitting on my bed I should be far enough away from the window that no one can see me. I can’t see anything through the O’Shea house’s windows. No Pete with a gun pointed at me, anyway. Not that he would do that. His mum, her name was Mary, used to come over and babysit me when I was little. Sometimes he would come as well, play with my toys with me. And he would always be waiting for the school bus when I used to take it before Mum got the job at St Canice’s, before I was big enough to bike into town. Most of the time he would talk to the other older guys but he always said hello, or smiled at me, acknowledged in some way that I was there. I remember him grabbing me once when I thought it was a good idea to run in front of the stopped bus to cross the road. There was a car coming and I hadn’t seen it because the bus was in the way. He probably saved my life that day. I don’t know. I was too young to understand, and too young to thank him. I just remember being angry because when he had grabbed me, he’d hurt my arm. He must have said something to his mum, and his mum had said something to my mum, because I got a telling-off that night. Afterwards, though, I always waited for the bus to go before crossing the road. And I never ran.

  But it was a long time ago now. I haven’t seen Pete for months, maybe a year. He would be eighteen or nineteen now. He’s left school, I know that – he’s not at Buller High anymore – but I don’t know what he does these days. He’s probably unemployed, like most people around here. Mary died a couple of months ago – heart attack, but she had been ill for ages. Mum used to take the odd meal over, to help out, but she hasn’t done it since the funeral. I suppose Pete inherited the house; it must be kind of weird, owning your own home when you’re not even twenty, being responsible. But then, where else would he go? He’s always lived there with his mum, just the two of them, and now there’ll be just him. There’s never been a dad, or brothers or sisters. I think they had a dog. I’ve sometimes heard a dog there, barking inside the house. But not lately. Maybe it’s died too.

  Sleeping it off, the detective said
. Sleeping off what, I wonder. Drugs? Booze? Both? If Pete’s asleep, why don’t they just go in and take him? I doubt he locks his doors. We don’t. The front door when we go out, but never the back door. No one does. This is Westport. And even if Pete has locked all the doors, there are windows and a million ways to get in – either quietly so as not to wake him or they could bash the door down, break a window, throw in tear gas. They are the police. Not that they need to do any of those things. It’s just Pete.

  Dad is snoring in his bedroom across the hallway. I can just hear him over the noise of the rain. He must think his bed is far enough away from the windows too, or he doesn’t care. Pete would never do something like that, he said. And he’s right.

  I check my phone again. Almost ten. Two and a half hours to the basketball game.

  I could sneak out, jump the fences in the paddocks behind our house before circling around onto the road. But then I wouldn’t have my bike and it would be a long walk to school. And my mum wouldn’t let me do it, and if I didn’t tell her she’d freak when she found out I was gone, and I’d never hear the end of it. I’m stuck here until it’s over.

  I should study or read or turn on my laptop or go see Blue, my horse, or something – but I keep sitting here, watching.

  ‘Hey, you, I thought you might like a hot chocolate.’

  Mum is at my bedroom doorway, holding out a mug. I reach to take it and she sits next to me on the end of the bed. She has a cup of coffee. She hasn’t changed out of her work clothes, just like I’m still in my school uniform. We both look out of the window.

  ‘When is the basketball game?’

  ‘Lunchtime.’

  ‘Twelve-thirty?’

  I nod and take a sip from the mug. My mum knows what a good hot chocolate is. We’ve got one of those machines with the capsules. She says it makes a good coffee too.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing much,’ I say, my face still over my mug.