‘Mum,’ he called. ‘Mum!’
He found her in the garden, hanging out a load of washing.
‘Have you seen my Book of Gotden Deeds?’ His breath pushed behind his words in clouds; there had been a heavy frost in the night and the grass was still white with it.
‘What book? What are you talking about?’ she mumbled, her mouth full of pegs. He was about to answer her. Then he saw the dress.
It hung on the line like a frozen flower. The skirt was stiff and cold, the folds set solid by frost, rows of lace encrusted with silver. It reminded Patrick of a cake his mother had once made: she had iced it to look like an ornate wedding dress, and in the middle she had positioned a kewpie doll which she’d covered with a modest icing bodice. Patrick didn’t recall what the occasion had been, but he remembered thinking that his mother’s creation was all out of proportion; the kewpie doll’s legs couldn’t possibly be long enough to reach to the bottom of the huge cake dress. He also remembered his mother cutting wedges out of it with a bone-handled knife, and seeing her afterwards in the kitchen, licking the bodice off the kewpie doll, whose legs, he was shocked to see, had been amputated for the occasion.
‘What book?’ she said again. She was pegging towels and sheets at the other end of the line, her movements sending shock-waves down the thin cord, making the dress shiver and glitter. Patrick touched it, lifted the icy hem. It was a party dress, he thought, a little girl’s dress, too young for Faye. The fabric was heavy and fragile at the same time, and for a moment he thought a piece might break off, just come away in his hands.
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’
‘She forgot to bring it in last night,’ said his mother through her mouthful of pegs. ‘Goodness knows how much it’ll cost to post to her at school.’
When Patrick came home that afternoon the dress was hanging in the scullery. It had thawed out and was almost dry, although on the floor there was a small patch of water. He decided not to ask his mother about his Book of Golden Deeds again. Perhaps it had been missing for a while and he had never noticed, or perhaps he had lent it to someone at school and they had both forgotten about it. It was so easy to mislay things if you weren’t careful.
He used the mermaid soap each time he had a bath. He kept her in a box under his bed, and every day she grew smaller and smaller, her scales rubbed smooth, her eyes disappearing. Soon she would break in two.
At the cemetery there were angels, anchors, stars. Colette weaved her way through the plots, Ethel Ruby, Doris Ada, We sleep into everlasting waking, Beloved husband. She didn’t stop to read any inscriptions in detail; she was looking for a place to sit. She could feel the letter in her jeans pocket, bending to the shape of her body, the sheets of paper slowly reaching blood temperature. Father in thy gracious keeping, George Arthur, How sweet to rest, Esteemed—beloved—lamented. She was in the old part of the cemetery, where hardly anyone came to visit, and many of the plots were in a state of neglect. Stone wreaths and urns and ornate crosses had been toppled from their bases by wind or gravity, lettering had been eaten by rain. A few graves were covered with black-and-white china tiles. They made Colette think of chessboards, and she imagined pieces assembled for a mossy game: pebbles, carved bone, perhaps tiny figures woven from grass. Winifred Myrtle, Whoso’ walketh uprightly, The deep blue sea hath won. Bees meandered from stone to stone, and high in the macrocarpas a tui preened its parson’s heart. The sun caught on something white nestled in the grass just ahead. When Colette got closer she saw it was a stone dove, marble probably, carrying a laurel wreath in its beak. She sat down.
It didn’t look as if the bird had fallen from any of the surrounding monuments; here there was only a cluster of dark obelisques, the occasional severe cross. Colette stroked the bird’s outstretched wings, its cold belly. Far too heavy to fly. The point at which it had broken off its marble base was rough, covered with tiny facets like the crystals she had grown when she was a child. She remembered stirring salt and water together in a jar, then lowering a string into the liquid and waiting. Every morning she checked it, and every afternoon when she came home from school. It was like magic when the crystals started to grow, even though, as her Hey Kids—Science is Fun! book explained, there was a perfectly good explanation for it.
‘Why does Colette get all the good presents?’ Dominic had whined when the book arrived. Aunt Pam had sent it from the United States, where she and her American husband and Nina ate out at restaurants and went skiing and took cruises. The gifts she sent Colette—gauzy scarves, earrings, beaded shoulder bags—suggested a magical, glamorous creature, someone Colette might turn into one day.
‘Your aunt’s sent you a parcel, has she,’ her mother had said. ‘I thought she was too busy buying new cars and having her hair coloured.’ She never called Pam by her name, and used a particular emphasis when talking about her: it was always your aunt, or my sister. ‘Doesn’t she know you’ve got piles of books you’ve never even opened?’
Inside the cover was written To darling Colette, with all our love, Pam, Rick and Nina. There were three kisses, and underneath, in different handwriting—Rick’s, presumably—were the words Have a wild one! Colette wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but she took to saying it whenever possible.
‘And not Aunty Pam and Uncle Rick,’ she pointed out at school. ‘They’re more like friends, really.’
The book described how to insert a boiled egg into a narrow-necked bottle, how to write letters in code and how to construct pinhole cameras that captured light in a box. Some of the activities called for equipment Colette had never heard of, like dimes or Pop-Tart boxes.
‘We can’t do those ones,’ her mother told her. ‘You can only get those in America.’ And the way she said America, it was as if she’d been asked to swallow vinegar.
The crystals were a great success. One of them was huge, as big as Colette’s thumbnail, and she made a ring out of it. She twisted an Easter-egg wrapper into a silvery rope, then glued the crystal to it. She wore it on the way to school, intending to show it to her classmates, perhaps hint at a boyfriend or a wealthy, offshore father, but it had started to rain and the crystal grew smaller and smaller and by the time she reached school it had melted away.
She slipped the letter out of her pocket.
31 March 2000
Dear Colette,
Patrick has been making excellent progress and the doctors are confident he will make a complete recovery. This does not mean, however, that he is any less in need of your visits, phone calls and letters. Perhaps now more than ever your support is vital, so we hope you will continue to help with his recovery in any way you can.
Patrick is learning to speak all over again, and is doing very well. Every day he rediscovers new words, which is exciting for all of us. ‘Extinguish’ is his favourite at the moment. We’re hoping it won’t be too long before he can write a note to you himself. The doctors think this should only be a matter of time.
At the bottom of the page there was a handwritten note. Just thought you would like to know he has been repeating your name quite frequently. He says ‘Colette’ almost every day. One of the Friends suggested it is simply a good name for practising consonants, but he said it before he came round, too. I’m aware that you and he were once close. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.
As Colette picked her way back down the path, a skateboarder whizzed by, nearly knocking her over.
‘Hey!’ she shouted, ‘don’t you know where you are?’
He didn’t say anything, or even look at her. His jeans were so baggy she wondered how they stayed up, and his striped shirt and hat suggested a make-believe creature, a pixie or a gnome. Patrick would not be a slave to such ridiculous fashions. Patrick would have a wardrobe full of sleek suits and immaculate shirts, pressed and ready for him to slide into again, still faintly scented, perhaps, with Fahrenheit or Boss. None of this CK1 rubbish. He would be tall, she decided, and on the weekends, when visiting his country ho
me, say, he would wear simple but elegant clothes: well-cut khaki trousers, black polo-neck jumpers. She fingered the envelope, ran her thumbnail under the stamp of the Queen in profile. Perhaps, she thought, she should visit him. See whether his face rang a bell, or whether hers did. She could afford to take some time off from her studies of New Zealand’s past in order to investigate her own, and she wanted to do some more travelling anyway. She’d been saving her money from minding Daniel and her father had sent his usual Christmas cheque, as well as a decent amount for her twenty-first birthday, so there was nearly enough for a ticket. And the letters did keep asking for visitors. She must have read them a dozen times by now, but still they made no sense. She’d searched every page for clues, for something that would tell her how he fitted into her life. She thought of the lemon-juice letters she and Nina had exchanged, of how simple it had been to decode them once she knew the trick.
She must have met Patrick when she was travelling. It was a long time ago, long enough to forget people she’d met along the way. She counted back in her mind, and realised it was two years since she’d been overseas. Two years since she’d left Justin, whom she barely thought about now.
‘I speak French,’ he said, ‘we’ll be fine.’
Colette studied the phrasebook anyway, practising her questions during the bus ride from Frankfurt. Across the aisle from them sat a very fat girl of about twenty.
‘I learn too,’ she said, holding up a German/French phrasebook. ‘Do you know the word for fax machine? I must fax my mother when I arrive.’
Colette shook her head. She didn’t want to encourage a conversation, and the girl seemed eager. Her fat face puckered when she smiled, and there was a thick black hair growing from a mole on her chin. Her ugliness offended Colette. Had she been feeling less tired, she told herself, she might have made an effort with the girl. But she muttered, I don’t know,’ and turned back to Justin. ‘Will we arrive on time?’ she asked him in French. ‘Do I have to change?’
‘For someone with a French name,’ said Justin, ‘your accent is hopeless.’
‘It’s not my fault they called me Colette. My mother just liked the name, she said.’
‘You have to exaggerate your vowels more,’ said Justin. ‘Use your cheek muscles.’ He pinched at Colette’s face.
‘The engine is overheating,’ she said. ‘What time do you close?’
‘Colette. Is your jaw wired together?’
‘NO.’
‘Move it, then. Pretend you’re singing.’
‘I can’t sing, I’ve got a terrible voice. You told me so.’
Justin sighed. ‘You don’t actually have to sing, just move your face as if you are. Here, look.’ He flipped through the phrasebook. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he said. ‘It is nothing serious.’
‘I thought you spoke French.’
‘I do.’
‘Why do you need the phrasebook, then?’
Justin dropped it back in Colette’s lap. ‘Fine. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine. We’ll just see how you get on when you have to ask for directions.’ And he closed his eyes, reclined his seat.
‘We have reservations,’ said Colette.
She flipped to the list of useful words: post office, exchange rate, doctor, chemist. Chemist. Her pill. She’d forgotten to take her pill the previous night. She’d had too much to drink—it’s our last night in Germany, Justin had said—and they’d stumbled back to the hotel and had quick, slurred sex without even thinking about it. She yanked her day pack from beneath Justin’s feet and rummaged through it, shaking out brochures, riffling the pages of her address book, unzipping every hidden pocket. Then she remembered. She’d put her pills in her sponge bag, and her sponge bag was in her full-sized pack, and that was in the luggage hold.
‘Justin,’ she whispered, ‘my pills are in my other bag. I forgot to take one yesterday.’
He opened his eyes and stared blankly at her. Across the aisle she could see the fat German girl cocking her head, listening.
‘My pills. You know.’
‘Just take it when we get there. It’ll be fine.’
He closed his eyes again. The fat German girl grinned at Colette. Colette closed her eyes too, and leaned against Justin. The fibres of his jersey scratched her cheek.
She couldn’t sleep on the bus, even when they put the lights out. By the time they were in Paris, she calculated, she’d have missed two pills. She imagined a tiny creature forming inside her, its cells replicating and dividing and grouping themselves into a human shape as she and Justin climbed the Eiffel Tower, strolled along the Champs-Elysées. It would be minuscule, no bigger than the forgotten pill itself, so small it couldn’t be felt, but growing. Justin leaned against her in his sleep, heavy, possessive.
It was early when they reached Paris, about seven a.m. Colette must have fallen asleep after all, because she jolted awake at the sound of the crackling microphone.
‘We can’t check into the hotel until nine,’ said the guide, ‘so you can either do the special orientation tour with us, or take the chance to look around on your own.’
Most of the travellers, too tired to get out of the bus, agreed by default to do the tour—which, the guide added with a smile, cost thirty francs.
‘Come on,’ said Justin, ‘they’ve got enough out of us already’
Outside the snow crunched underfoot, and the air was icy.
‘I should see if I can get to my pack,’ said Colette, but the bus had already started its engine, and the doors were hissing shut, and Justin was taking her arm and saying look, there’s Sacré-Coeur.
The steps were wide, and so shallow Colette hardly realised she was climbing at all until she turned and there was the city stretching out at her feet. Justin put his arm around her, and for a moment everything was all right.
In the cramped hotel foyer, roorn keys were distributed. One by one groups of two and three, sometimes four, hauled luggage up the narrow staircase. Justin was leaning against the counter, flicking through some sightseeing leaflets, unworried. They were distributing the keys alphabetically, Colette realised, and Justin had booked the tour under his name. Warwick. She glared at him. She was being unreasonable, she knew. This was not a good way to start a holiday in Paris. She yanked open her pack. Clothes burst from it: jeans, sweatshirts, her slinky cream nightdress. It had straps that cut into her shoulders and made her feel cold, but Justin had insisted she bring it along. He would, he said, buy her another one in Paris that was even better. Her hand closed around the sheet of pills. The metallic covering was cold from its journey in the belly of the bus. She split open the foil, swallowed one pill and then another without water. The fat German girl watched her.
‘This is going to be great,’ said Justin, and took her hand and led her underground. There are entrances to the catacombs all over Paris, but most of them are sealed and you can’t even tell where they are. If you know the right people, though, you can get into the illegal New Year’s parties they have down here.’ He did a Dracula laugh.
That’s Transylvania, thought Colette, but she didn’t say anything.
They passed under an archway carved with a French inscription.
‘You are now entering the realm of death,’ read Justin. ‘Take a photo of me.’
There was a line of people behind them and Colette fumbled for her camera.
‘Okay, now one of you,’ said Justin, but Colette said no, there were people waiting to get through, and she could get one on the way back.
‘We won’t be coming through that door again,’ said Justin, and although Colette knew there was no reason to be frightened, she pulled her coat tighter around her.
Along the passageways, dozens of skulls were set into the walls, formed into patterns which reminded Colette of weaving. Every now and then there was a cross made of skulls. They looked artificial, she thought, like something off a film set.
‘Get a shot of this,’ said Justin, and squatted in front of a cross. As Co
lette clicked the camera the film began to rewind. The sound was huge against the stone walls. It echoed off the bones, was amplified inside each hollow skull and thrown back louder than ever.
‘I need some fresh air,’ she said. She rushed on ahead, bending and curling through bone-lined passages that seemed to become tighter and tighter. She could hear laughter echoing through the tangle of pathways, snatches of many foreign tongues. Somewhere behind her was Justin, trying to keep up, pushing past tourists and woven bones. She didn’t wait for him. When she reached the exit she ran up the steps, hungry for daylight.
‘But this isn’t where we came in,’ she said, looking round at a street she’d never seen before. ‘Where’s the ticket office gone? Where’s the Metro station?’ ‘I told you we wouldn’t be coming through the entrance-way again,’ said Justin.
‘I think I need to sit down,’ she said. She felt dizzy, as if she’d just climbed off a merry-go-round and her mother wasn’t standing where she should be. She leaned against a building and closed her eyes.
Are you okay?’
‘I just wish you’d told me. I don’t like surprises. You should have told me.’
‘But it said in the guide book. You read the guide book, didn’t you? Justin rummaged in his bag, anxious to locate the relevant material, to prove himself right.
‘I have no idea where we are,’ said Colette quietly, but Justin said, ‘It’s all under control,’ and unfolded the flimsy map. It rippled and snapped like a flag and Colette thought for a moment the wind would snatch it away and they would never find their way back.
‘You won’t be able to fold that away again properly,’ she said.
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