The Red Queen

by Gemma Bowker-Wright

  My sister lives in California now. She has an American husband and her accent has morphed into a slow drawl. Sometimes I wonder how she managed to get there. In appearance we are almost identical—pale skin, white-blond hair—and in pictures people often mistake the woman in the sundress for me. But my sister is halfway around the world while I’ve left the North Island only once.

  ‘I don’t think there was ever anything I wanted to be,’ I said.

  ‘There must have been something,’ said James. ‘You went to university.’

  James, who has never been to university, assumes people only go there for a set purpose. Or at least they come out with one.

  ‘All I did at university was sit around listening to people discuss Germaine Greer and how far they’d got through American Psycho before feeling sick.’

  ‘Surely you got something out of it,’ said James.

  ‘I got Richard,’ I said.

  We’d met at a party during my second year. He’d just begun his PhD. I sat with him on the steps of a grungy flat and he told me how ice corns were created—it took five days of the temperature being below negative five degrees. Then he told me about the Arctic and how fast it was losing ice in summer. I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees and listened. In a terrible way it seemed exciting—climate change: like an impending apocalypse that, no matter what anyone did between now and then, would happen anyway. Like a tsunami sent by God, rolling towards the shore.

  ‘Sylvia, is something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘sorry.’

  ‘Stop staying sorry—it’s demeaning. I hate it when women say sorry.’

  I could feel James looking at me in the dark. ‘Are you having second thoughts about this trip?’

  I adjusted my seatbelt; the strap was cutting into my skin. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Do you want to drive for a while?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I don’t know how to drive. When I was a teenager we didn’t have a car and at university I caught the train. Richard offered to teach me once—but I didn’t want to learn. There was nowhere I needed to go.

  The trip was my idea. I’ve never been skiing. Richard goes for two weeks every winter, but he goes to the South Island where the weather is more settled, not to Ruapehu which sticks up like a flashing beacon, attracting clouds like moths to a naked flame. He used to take Aimee with him when she was small, before she began threatening to turn into a woman and started to challenge him.

  I’ve actually never touched snow.

  ‘You haven’t even touched it?’ said James when I told him. ‘Surely you must have, as a kid or something. You’ve probably forgotten.’

  ‘Did you ever take your kids to the snow?’

  James has two grown sons—a surprise to me, when I found out. They’re both in the UK, where they’ve lived since they were small. James’s studio apartment with the attached workshop has no trace of them, no photos or postcards; instead the shelves are filled with books, paintings, a stag’s head left by the previous tenants, on which he hangs his tool belt.

  ‘I did,’ James had said. ‘We did—me and Lynda—when they were small. We took them up Whakapapa. Jacob was in the backpack, he can’t have been more than one. It was fantastic. I think it was one of the happiest times of my life—during my married phase that is.’

  And that was it, we decided to go. The opportunity opened up like a light at the end of a tunnel. It was school holidays and Aimee was off to my mother’s for three nights. Richard had a conference in Sydney. I was still in bed when he left. I hope the migraine doesn’t ruin your weekend, he said, threading the car keys through his fingers. He leant over to kiss me, one hand on the duvet cover, his dry lips brushing my forehead. He always kisses me this way—forehead rather than lips—as if I’m a child.

  We were approaching Taupo. Green signs had documented its looming presence—one hundred kilometres, fifty, twenty-five. If Richard were here he’d be calculating the amount of petrol used per kilometre. He likes to calculate things. I imitate his way of talking to James sometimes, his woody vowels, his self-satisfied tone, the way he lays down facts in a tidy row, like dominos.

  ‘I hope this trip lives up to the expectation.’

  James looked across at me blankly. ‘Expectation?’

  ‘Your happiest day.’

  ‘Oh that.’ He laughed. ‘I probably made it up—it was probably awful. Lynda and I probably fought the whole time. The boys probably got carsick. We probably all froze.’ He laughed again. ‘Happiness, I’ve always found, usually takes place in the sun.’ Reaching over he took my arm, holding below my wrist. ‘This trip is doomed.’

  I laughed. Under his touch my skin tingled. ‘That’s something my mother would say. Luckily I don’t believe in fate. Although—’ wriggling out of James’s grasp, I placed his hand back on the wheel ‘—the happiest day I ever had with Richard was sunny.’

  I could feel his gaze catch me in the dark. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We went out to Palliser and did that walk to the rock formations—you know the one?’

  ‘No.’

  I could see the edge of his smile. James likes to listen to me try to explain directions and places. Richard just gets annoyed.

  ‘Yes you do—you go around by those white cliffs with the sea on one side. There’s that DOC campsite about halfway around. At the end of the road there’s a walk that goes up a creek. The walk takes you to pillars made of stones clinging together. They look like deformed Roman columns or something from a Biblical disaster scene.’

  I remember the walk clearly, what had happened more than what was said. Richard had gone in front and I’d followed the solid shape of his back as he zigzagged across the stream, picking the driest routes across the water. Whenever he reached an island of rocks he would turn and offer his hand—he’s always been good at that, thinking about the person behind. It struck me, as I followed him along the stream, how little he’d changed over the last sixteen years, save for a slight filling out. His flesh had become condensed, denser. When he gave me his hand I could almost see the fine grains, like polished wood.

  ‘If the weather’s too bad for skiing we could do day walks on the plateau. There’s a nice waterfall.’ James encased my knee in his hand. ‘One day I’d love to take you on the Tongariro crossing—it’s like walking across the moon.’

  I laughed. ‘One day we could—but only if Richard’s picking up a fellow glaciologist in Sydney right now and they’re planning a happy life together in the sun.’ I wound down my window a fraction to feel the wind; it was icy, reassuring. ‘Perhaps right now they’re discussing igneous rocks and sitting on a beach.’

  James squeezed my knee and let go. ‘Don’t you ever wonder if he’s having an affair?’

  I let out a snort—the sound was surprisingly loud. ‘I wish he would.’

  ‘So you could stop feeling guilty?’

  ‘No.’ I wound up the window. ‘Because then he might leave me.’

  We reached the peak of a hill and the lights of Taupo appeared, clustered around the lakefront. The lake itself was a black hole, somewhere out there a deep, dark centre. James stopped for petrol and came back to the car with two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a Moro bar sticking out of his jeans pocket like an erection. He slid back into the seat and planted a kiss below my right ear. We merged back into the traffic, heading away from the town. Light from expensive motels and baches reflected off the water.

  ‘Why can’t you be the one to leave?’

  I took a sip of coffee. It was warm and bitter. ‘Because I’m a non-mover,’ I said. ‘Like lichen clinging to rock.’

  ‘How poetic.’

  ‘Don’t get me started on poetry,’ I said. ‘It’ll make me carsick.’

  ‘I thought you liked that stuff—moons, windows clouded with dew, skies of twinkling stars.’

  James is scathing of any artform that doesn’t depict what’s real. We went to see the European Masters exhibition at Te Papa onc
e and he hated it—the paintings of romanticised women lying on beds of velvet or stepping into tubs of water. The landscapes James paints are stark—the bare minimum. But the colours he uses are striking.

  ‘That wasn’t my experience of poetry,’ I said.

  I took poetry at university because everyone else did. It seemed like the thing to do. Everyone around me was writing poems, reciting poems, discussing poems. I found scribbled lines tucked into books. I am asexual, said a purple note that fell out of a book of James K. Baxter, like a tree. Desktops in the university library and the backs of toilet doors sprouted lines that grew by the day. Don’t eat anything you aren’t prepared to kill. Then, in green marker: Don’t kill anything you aren’t prepared to eat. Under that: Don’t eat. The next day, in black lettering: Fuck vegetarians, god is a carnivore.

  ‘Before you start to vomit,’ said James, ‘let’s get back to—’ he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel ‘—your happiest day.’

  I hit him on the shoulder then cleared my throat. ‘We decided to go together, the two of us, Aimee was at a friend’s or something. It was a crappy day in Wellington but the weather cleared when we got over the Rimutakas, it was like driving into another country, everything was bright. The sea at Palliser was stunning, so blue it hurt to look. Richard seemed happier the further we walked. I asked him something—the cause of the bushfires in Australia, or the cold snap in Europe. Anyway he was off, telling me about runaway climate change and environmental tipping points.’

  James gave an abrupt laugh, a sudden gush of noise. ‘That’s real romance—I love it.’

  James has only met Richard once—when he came to get the photo for the painting (the final product was delivered by post, bubble-wrapped, in a box). They sat across the dining table from each other as Richard went through his photo albums, pointing out the shots he liked best—snaps from ski trips and tramps I hadn’t been on. James sat, legs crossed, holding a photo to the light. I like this but I’m not sure how it’ll look as a painting—there’s not much depth. Richard looked at him blankly, his blue eyes fixed on a point above James’s forehead. But that’s the one I want, he said.

  ‘Go on,’ said James, smiling.

  ‘I played the good student. I asked questions a student would ask.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘I asked about ice ages, whether it meant the whole landscape was covered in ice and snow.’

  ‘Sweetheart.’ I could feel his smile, the impact of it. ‘You didn’t think that, literally—did you?’

  I looked down and brushed at something on my skirt—a speck of dust. The usual point of my stories was to betray Richard, not myself. I never told of his kindness or his intelligence; it was the unreasonable things I needed to pick at, like scabs. ‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘we got to the rock formations and he got all excited, we’d been there before of course, but he acted like it was the first time. He went up to each one and tapped the sides like he was listening for something. I’ve never seen him so animated.’

  A truck thundered towards us, waiting until the last minute to dip its lights. James slammed his foot on the brake. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s it—that’s the story.’

  I watched his featureless outline. The space between us seemed to expand then contract.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘was a non-story if ever I heard one.’

  Our plan was to stay on the mountain that night in a ski hut I’d booked online. But neither of us had thought through the practicalities of getting to an unfamiliar destination up a snowy mountain, and in the dark. If Richard had organised the trip, as he did all our holidays, there would be a spreadsheet of drive times, receipts of pre-paid motel bookings in a plastic wallet, notes on sights to see along the way.

  It was after eight by the time we reached Tūrangi. We found a cheap motel, the only place with a hint of life—a neon sign that said OPEN. The room had two single beds. We pushed them together and sat on the join in the middle to share the chocolate bar.

  ‘You’ve still got your coat on,’ said James. Reaching across he touched my hair, absentmindedly winding a strand around his finger as if it was his. He started to kiss the base of my neck. His lips felt like the feathers of a bird.

  That night I had a familiar dream—a nightmare I get when I go to bed cold. In the dream I am lying paralysed in a bed of snow, my feet frozen, knees drawn up, head sideways on an ice pillow. Suddenly the roof of the bedroom opens up and above me is an empty surface of sky. God is looking down, watching me as if I’m an experiment, a test animal in a cage, waiting to see what I’ll do. Next the snow bed falls away and the room has no floor; I become suspended in the air, about to plummet.

  ‘You said something in your sleep last night,’ said James the next morning. Cold white light was coming through the window—it was too bright. ‘Something about crying.’

  I sat up and reached for my hair, running my fingers through its familiar coil. ‘Was I crying?’

  ‘No, you just said it, the word—crying. Then something about a wedding.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  My mother was the only one who cried at my wedding. She made a performance of it, dabbing constantly at her face during the ceremony, hiccupping and clearing her throat with gravelly coughs. I could see her face over Richard’s shoulder, red and blotchy. It annoyed me—I thought she was putting it on as a display of my abandonment of her. Now I’m not so sure that was the reason.

  James wrapped his arms around me, pulling me towards him. ‘You look beautiful with your hair out like that.’ He kissed me on the mouth. His breath had a musty morning smell.

  We didn’t talk on the drive to Ruapehu. Morning light picked out strong colours—the yellow-brown of the dewy tussock, the slippery black of the rocks. As we got closer there was a scattering of snow, patches on flat surfaces exposed to the sky. James stopped the car on the side of the road and we got out. I picked up a handful—it was wet and cold. Inside each icicle, a speck of black stone.

  By the time we reached the Chateau at the base of the mountain, mist was rolling in, hiding the peaks. At the upper car park we stepped out into a cold, grey world. I thought about Richard in Sydney, three hours behind. It would be early morning there. For a moment I wished I was there too, in the warmth.

  ‘Can you give me a hand?’ James was bent over the boot, packing our odd assortment of stuff. Neither of us had given much thought to what to bring. I’d grabbed a selection of clothes from each drawer, some food from the cupboards—tins but no tin opener, dried fruit, a bottle of wine. James zipped up his pack and struggled to balance it on his back. He was tall and sinewy, the opposite build to Richard. I watched him hop from one foot to the other, trying to settle the weight.

  Getting to the ski hut was an exercise in balance, something I’ve never had much of. I slipped and slid down the steep slopes, my sneakers failing to grip the wet surface. It was like wading through a knee-deep muddy pool. Behind me James mumbled and swore. When we got to the ski hut the door was half-buried in snow and we had to dig our way in. When we finally got inside we were the only ones there.

  ‘The weather forecast must have put people off,’ said James, taking my hand and rubbing it between his. My fingers were numb.

  ‘Not us,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said James. His face was pale in the light from the ice-encrusted window. ‘Not us.’

  We walked to the waterfall in the afternoon. Although the sky had cleared, gale-force winds were keeping the ski lifts closed—we could see the inert structures high above us, like long metallic caterpillars, on the mountaintop. I would have been happy to stay in the hut but I didn’t tell James this. We had to drive back down the mountain to the track entrance. The sign was covered in ice. On either side of the track, mounds of gravel and snow. As we walked I watched James’s narrow shoulders ahead of me, the arch of his back, and tried to think about what life would be like with him. I pictured Aimee and me in his studio apartment
, standing in the centre of the concrete floor, the stag’s head on the far wall. As we stood there the apartment became smaller, imploding inwards and downwards, as if something heavy and silent were pushing against the roof, the walls, the door.

  James stopped at a turn in the track. The point overlooked a stream filled with shards of ice. Ahead of us the mist was rolling in again. James’s forehead furrowed. ‘I think we should go back.’

  He took a photograph before we turned around, holding the camera at an awkward angle to capture the two of us, together.

  A family had arrived in our absence and taken over the lounge of the ski hut. The two children, a boy and a girl, played Snakes and Ladders in the middle of the floor while the parents sat side by side on the couch, reading. James and I made a quick dinner—watery pasta and freeze-dried vegetables mixed together. We drank our wine from mugs. Above the dining table was a picture of the man who’d built the ski hut and his wife and small daughter. I stood up to read the plaque underneath.

  ‘What does it say?’ said James.

  The print was superimposed onto a metal plate. I had to squint to read the words. ‘They were in a plane crash. It landed in the sea.’

  I woke on Sunday with the ringing sound in my head. The room was light.

  ‘Today’s the day,’ said James.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. It was sore from where his arm had been all night, holding me close to him. ‘What for?’

  ‘Skiing,’ he grinned, ‘isn’t that the reason for coming here?’

  I wanted to curl over and go back to sleep, hide from the ringing sound and the light. Instead I got out of bed—the thin mattress with our sleeping bags spread across, zipped together at the seams.

  There was a hire shop near the car park. The assistant, a boy who looked about Aimee’s age, gave us fluorescent pants and jackets—mine in yellow and black, James in blue and green. Outside, we hobbled through the snow in our ski boots, like astronauts. On our way up in the chairlift we had an argument. It was my fault. I was fishing for it. I asked James why he’d abandoned his sons.