The Red Queen

by Gemma Bowker-Wright

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She smiled, as if they’d agreed on something. ‘No?’

  ‘Actually, I think you’ve got it wrong mate.’ Mike was standing behind Meiying, quite close. He demonstrated the signal back to Laura. ‘That’s not something you want to fuck up,’ he said, laughing loudly.

  ‘Sure,’ said Sebastian, attempting a smile. ‘Thanks, we’ve got it now.’

  But Mike stayed where he was. ‘So what’s the deal with you two?’ he said to Meiying, winking. ‘You with him for residency or the money?’

  Sebastian knew he should step in; tell Mike thanks, they’d got it, or piss off. But he didn’t, he watched Meiying, waiting to see what she’d do.

  Laura started to giggle and slapped Mike on the shoulder and they both laughed. Meiying looked from Sebastian to Mike and Laura, back to Sebastian. Her lips parted slightly as if she was grasping at something, a phrase just beyond reach.

  ‘If he’s rich you should marry him and bump him off,’ said Laura. She grinned. ‘Fiddle with his dive gear. No one would ever know.’

  Before Sebastian could say anything, Julie was motioning for them all to gather around. Stripping down to her togs she began putting on her diving equipment, strapping on the tank, fitting her mask, flippers. She took a few breaths through the mouthpiece to demonstrate—in, out, in, out. Suddenly, in a burst of noise, Mike and Laura were laughing again. Everyone turned to look at them. The attention, instead of stopping them, seemed to spur them on. Sebastian saw the Australian couple exchange a sideways look. Mike bent down by the side of the pool, hands on his knees, laughing and gulping for air.

  Julie took out the mouthpiece. ‘Guys, this is not a game,’ she said, looking at them one at a time. When she looked at Sebastian it felt like she was looking through him to the bench on the other side. He took a step closer to Meiying.

  ‘It doesn’t take much to screw things up. If you’re down there and you’ve missed something, or done something incorrectly, it could be too late. Does everyone understand?’

  The Australian couple murmured something.

  Sebastian and Meiying nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura. A red mark appeared at the base of her neck.

  Mike examined the back of his hand.

  ‘So who wants to go first?’ said Julie, smiling tightly. ‘Lucky first?’

  Six months before their relationship ended, Heather’s dog died. He had been sick for a long time, riddled with a cancer that quietly invaded his organs one by one.

  Heather was devastated. She’d had Aslan, a collie cross, since she was a kid. He had been with her through adolescence and leaving home. That was one of the reasons they’d had to flat so far from town, so they could get a place with a fenced backyard by the beach. Even then it wasn’t really big enough. Heather took Aslan for walks on the beach every day before classes, and later before work. In winter she brought his basket into the bedroom, wedging it between the wall and her side of the bed.

  The vet who came to put Aslan down was annoyed at Heather for not calling him earlier. Aslan should have been put down a year ago, if not before. It was cruel, he said, to have kept him alive in such a state. Heather sat down when he said that, in the place she’d been standing. It was as if her legs had stopped working, out of her control. She put her head in her hands and let out a quiet moan.

  Sebastian had dug a hole in the backyard. It was hard work getting through the layers of sand. Whenever he seemed to be getting somewhere the sides started caving in again. By the time he finished it was late afternoon. At the bottom, water was beginning to pool.

  Later, once it had all been filled in, Heather sat there, on the mound. Sebastian watched her through the kitchen window as it got dark. He should have done something, he realised now. Gone out there, sat by her—the small dark shape of her sitting outside, alone. He meant to. He even stood up. But his limbs, as he stood, felt strangely inert: it was as if he was still holding the weight of the dog in his arms, heavier dead than it had been alive.

  When Heather came in, much later, she went straight to the bathroom. From the lounge where he was watching TV, Sebastian heard the shower being turned on then off, the splash as she wrung water from her hair. He went to the bathroom door and tapped on it. No response from the other side. After a while he switched off the light and went to bed. He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he remembered was Heather standing there in her nightie, hair in wet coils around her head.

  ‘Help me undo it,’ she was saying. Sebastian sat up quickly, rubbing his eyes. The clasp of her necklace was caught in her hair. In the dark he could make out the glint of the silver chain around her neck.

  The water seemed to have a layer on its surface, as if coated in something oily.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ said Julie. Sebastian turned around and gave the signal for no. Then he took the mouthpiece out and said it: ‘No.’

  But it was too late; Julie was already coming closer, her sneakers scuffing on the wet tiles. All around them was the echo of the pool, each noise exaggerated, bouncing off the walls, the domed ceiling.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ she said again, close to him this time. Her lipstick had bled into the fine creases around her mouth.

  ‘Nah, I just need a moment.’

  Somewhere behind him he caught sight of a flash of red, a quick movement. Turning, he saw Mike and Laura. Further along, beside a pile of gear, the Australian couple. Where Meiying had been sitting was a discarded towel.

  ‘Okay,’ said Julie, ‘in your own time then.’ She turned and went back to the bench.

  Sebastian shuffled to the edge of the pool. There was a slight ripple now, reverberations from someone at the far end. He looked up; a boy and a girl were kicking about on a blow-up tyre. One of the lifeguards blew a whistle at them and they got out, heading in a walk-run for the shallow pool.

  He did it quickly in the end—a step and a jump. And then he was in, and under. All he could see was a mass of bubbles. When they cleared he looked up and saw the surface above him sealing over like a layer of skin. He felt a fist of panic clenching inside his chest. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated on blowing out through his nose and listening to the rush of sound as he sucked air through the mouthpiece. He stayed that way for what seemed a long time, breathing, getting used to being weightless. When he turned back around, the water was moving again—another person was there, underwater. The bubbles moved to the surface and Meiying was swimming towards him.

  MISSING

  There was one car in the car park. Nathan pulled up beside it. Ahead of him the Matukituki Valley, a vast, flat-bottomed glacial bowl. The river worked its way towards him in braids, weaving together then separating to opposite sides of the valley. A discarded walking stick was propped against the fence. Nathan picked it up as he passed, holding it upright and leaning his weight against it, testing for height and strength.

  The walk to Aspiring Hut took him three hours. The hut sat on a low plane of grass—glaringly manmade against the bush-clad peaks that rose on either side to impossible heights. Several hundred metres away under a grove of beech trees was a campground, roughly signposted with a yellow Department of Conservation sign. After setting up his tent, Nathan walked down the bank to find the stream. The water was icy, fast flowing. Crouching down he threw a few stones, watching them sink to the bottom, roll over, settling unsteadily in the current. Far away a glacier boomed.

  The sun had dropped below the peaks at the far side of the valley when Nathan got back to the campground. Another tent had been set up but the occupant wasn’t around. There was an empty picnic table nearby. Nathan filled up his pot from the tap by the hut and lit his gas cooker, watching the water blister and slowly boil. The occupant of the tent appeared as Nathan was eating. A tall man, nondescript.

  ‘Hiya.’ His accent was American. Or perhaps Canadian.

  Nathan nodded and edged further along the picnic table. He felt vaguely put out, crowded in. The s
ize of the landscape seemed to grant an entitlement to being alone.

  The man disappeared into his tent then emerged with a yellow pack liner and a pot. Walking over to the shelter he put it down on the opposite side of the bench from Nathan and began to remove cooking equipment, a bag of white bread, a jar of peanut butter.

  ‘You got matches?’

  Nathan opened the top pocket of his pack and fished around; his hands closed around an object the right size and shape. He threw the box to the man, watching him step forward to take the catch.

  ‘Thanks.’ The man leant over the bench to light his cooker. When it was lit he adjusted the knob, the flame lowering to a faint purple glow. The slow hiss of gas. ‘Where you heading?’

  ‘Cascade Saddle.’

  ‘To the other side?’

  ‘No, just for a look around. Then back to the car park and home.’

  The man nodded again and went back to his cooking, dipping a finger in the water and stirring it around. ‘I’m going up and over.’

  It was getting dark quickly. Purple-grey clouds converged above the peaks on the opposite side of the valley. Nathan squinted, his eyes wandering across the distant ridgelines, skipping the dips and hollows, tracing the highest places. The closest peaks were grey now, the next layer indigo and the farthest just silhouettes.

  ‘Do you know which one Aspiring is?’

  The man looked up, grinning. ‘I thought you were the local.’ Turning, he pointed at a peak far away, rising from behind a ridgeline that cut across the head of the valley. ‘Behind there. We’ll see it from the saddle I’m guessing.’ He stepped forward as he spoke and held out something to Nathan. Nathan couldn’t see what it was until the man got closer. A packet of chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Thanks.’ Nathan smiled and took one. ‘Thanks mate.’

  On Sunday morning Nathan was up by seven. Mist blanketed the valley. The man was packed already, his bag resting by the Department of Conservation sign that said Cascade Saddle. It pointed to a track winding through thick grass to the forest edge. The place where his tent had been was a rectangle of flattened grass.

  ‘Going already?’ Nathan pulled on his boots.

  ‘Yeah.’ The man was wearing a bright blue baseball cap. It was on backwards, shading the back of his neck from the invisible sun. In the morning mist it stuck out, glowing almost.

  Nathan walked over to him and they stood there, awkwardly, the thin thread of social contact from the night before overstretched, fraying at the edges. ‘Might see you up there?’

  ‘Might do.’ The man picked up a stick leaning against the signpost. Nathan realised it was his stick from the day before. He felt strangely bereft, as if something personal had been taken from him. He almost wanted to reach out and take it back. A few metres down the track the man turned. Nathan hovered for a moment, unsure if he was going to say something. Then, grinning, he was gone, vanishing into the edge of the forest where a rim of beech trees grappled with each other to get to the sunshine.

  Nathan got going an hour later. The mist had risen revealing ridges reaching up on either side, each peak concealing the one above it. The first part of the climb was steep, the track overgrown with roots twisting and turning in a maze of directions. Dark shadows converged under the cover of the trees, particles of light leaking through in places like expensive tears. Around ten, Nathan broke the bush-line and came out onto a grassy ridge. Below him the valley wound its way into the distance in both directions, the river braiding then merging, braiding then merging. Mount Aspiring was capped in mist. Nathan sat down on a rock and dug in his pack for a muesli bar. Behind him the saddle rose steeply, turning from tussock to grass to rock. Squinting, Nathan searched the upper face. A trail of red markers roughly outlined the track but the higher it got the harder it was to see the next marker. Nathan decided against going any further—he felt unexpectedly exposed being up this high, the sheer rock face on one side, the forest falling away on the other. Boulders were scattered along ridgelines far below like vertebrae in a long, cracked spine. He unwrapped his muesli bar and ate it quickly, then he stood up and took a few photographs. As he was putting on his pack he noticed something lying on the path almost obscured by a tussock branch. He bent down to pick it up. It was a matchbox, half opened. The matches inside were damp.

  Rachel was reading a magazine when the phone rang. The feature article was on Princess Diana, picture after picture of her standing, tall and demure, waving and smiling and waving. In each picture she was in front of a different crowd—a group of school children, a line of women cordoned off by a red rope, a crowd of refugees standing along a roadside somewhere in Africa. These were the things Rachel noticed about pictures, the people in the background, the little girl in the blue dress, the woman holding up her hand, the old man right at the back—the ones behind the one in focus.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Rachel’s father had a permanently worried voice, as if he was forever waiting for her to say something terrible—a car crash or an incurable disease.

  ‘I’m fine Dad.’ Rachel wandered over to the window, the phone cord trailing across the lounge floor behind her. Outside the flat light of an expired sunny day collapsed across the lawn.

  ‘I just talked to Nathan.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘He went on one of his tramps again.’ Rachel pictured her father as he spoke, sitting there on the other end of the line, slippers, a tartan dressing gown and a glass of something amber-coloured—miserable and handsome in an old-fashioned way.

  He coughed. ‘That was why he wasn’t answering all weekend when I tried to call.’ He coughed again. ‘He should have told me.’ And again. ‘It’s dangerous heading out there without telling someone.’

  Rachel picked up one of her paintings from the desk by the window, holding it away from her, then bringing it slowly towards her nose. It was a watercolour of a South Island lake, with lupins in the foreground. She had painted each lupin individually. Each one a slightly different blend of purple, mauve and red.

  ‘He probably told someone else. A friend—’ She left the words hanging, like a question.

  Rachel began dinner when she was off the phone, chopping vegetables into piles and lining them up—a stir-fry for one. Her place was half a house; a dividing wall had been put through an old villa, making it into two flats. ‘A bereaved house’ was the term for it, according to Scott. The place had half a porch, half a section, half of everything. The kitchen was tiny; the other flat must have got the real kitchen and Rachel a quick mock-up joined onto the lounge. She had got the real bathroom through.

  After dinner Rachel sat on the edge of the enamel bathtub, a facemask slowly drying on her face and neck. She did this every second night. ‘The pretty part doesn’t last,’ her mother had told her once.

  One of Rachel’s first clear memories was of watching her mother put on makeup. She could remember sitting on the bathroom floor, the feeling of the cool bathroom tiles underneath her nightie, and behind her back the bathtub rising up and over. Her mother was standing by the sink smearing white cream across her cheeks, down her nose, along her forehead. She eyed Rachel in the mirror as she rubbed it in, her eyes glancing across and down and up again. Rachel sat up straighter. Turning around, her mother leant down and dabbed a blob of the cream onto Rachel’s nose. It felt cold and smelt of nothing. Rachel left it there until her mother had turned back around. Then she rubbed it off.

  Next, taking a brush shaped like a mushroom, her mother began to dust her face with a fine beige powder, keeping her eyes closed as if she were at the beach on a windy day. Rachel crawled a little way from the bath and lay down on the floor, looking up. From that angle she could see the underside of her mother’s chin. There was a pale vein just visible, creeping from the base of her throat upwards. The vein was a faint lilac colour.

  Then Rachel’s mother took a black pencil from the top drawer beside the sink and leant close to the mirror, her nose almost touching it. A small patch of fo
g appeared on the mirror level with her mouth. Holding her eyes open she drew a line through her eyelashes—the whites of her eyes large and jelly-like. As Rachel watched, a tear formed in the corner of her mother’s eye.

  ‘That’s my face done,’ said her mother when she was finished. Then she made a small sighing sound, her shoulders rising and falling and her throat moving up and down. ‘I’ve got my daytime face on.’

  Rachel had lingered in the bathroom after her mother shut the door. She sat very still, holding her knees. Something shiny caught her eye, over by the sink. Rachel scooted over on her knees and picked it up. A silver hoop earring, as big as her wrist. Squashing her fingers together she managed to slip in onto her arm. It sat there snugly. But when she moved her wrist it tightened uncomfortably, pinching her skin.

  The phone began to ring again. Rachel tied her dressing gown around her. The hallway was chilly.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine Dad.’

  Rachel could hear him yawn, the slow outward breath.

  ‘I was just checking. You didn’t answer before.’

  ‘Did you ring?’ Rachel moved to stand by the mirror on the wall, the phone cord snaking behind. ‘I didn’t hear the phone.’ She watched her reflection; the mask was a pale green but in the dark it looked white, as if her face had been dipped in milk.

  ‘I’ll let you go to bed.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rachel. ‘Goodnight Dad. Love you.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said her father.

  Nathan sat on his bed cleaning his camera. It was almost ten. His room was a mess of tramping gear: a tent rolled up in the corner; pack against the door; a shopping bag of uneaten muesli bars and crackers on the desk. He stood and crossed the room to get a packet of cotton swabs from his desk drawer, navigating around a pile of clothes. The camera was in pieces on his duvet. He sat down again, carefully, so as not to move anything. He didn’t want to lose any of the parts.

  Photography was Nathan’s latest hobby. Above his bed was a montage of previous tramping trips from the year—all outdoor sequences, panorama shots capturing whole landscapes, each photograph aligned to the next with Sellotape. He liked to look up at them when he was drifting off to sleep, each an uncontained, limitless space. Rachel often complained that he didn’t take enough shots of people. ‘I want to see someone in the background,’ she told him. ‘I want to see a person to give it perspective.’ But Nathan liked landscapes as they were, uninhabited.