by Else, Chris
'You okay?' My voice had a kind of echo. The screaming was still there but it was drowned now in the sound of the water.
Gith was staring at me with big scared eyes.
'What happened?' I asked.
'Dunno.' She pulled the starter. The motor turned but didn't fire.
'That stream over there . . .' I pointed. I didn't want to say what I thought.
She pulled the starter again. Still nothing happened.
'Flooded,' she said.
'Can't be.'
'Crathy.'
I shivered.
'Look,' she said, pointing ahead of the car.
The mist there was growing lighter. For a second I had the feeling that something real bad was coming towards us — some bright white power that would blow us away — but then the whiteness started to grow blue. The mist was peeling back, the road opening up in front of us in a burst of sunlight. Gith pulled the starter again and the engine fired. I ran round to the passenger side and clambered in. We were moving before I shut the door.
We didn't say much on the way home. I felt weird. We both did. It wasn't as if we were spooked. It was more the opposite, like a weight had been lifted. The sun was shining. The world felt good. We didn't go straight back to the house. We took a run out to Basingstoke and bought some honey and some apples. For a while, on the road, with the green of the fields and the blue of the sky, with the Riley purring along, it felt like we were running away together, leaving everything and everyone behind. Just the two of us. Free.
***
I DIDN'T LIKE letting Steve and Team Winston down but things worked out the way Michelle wanted in the end. Steve didn't mind that much. I think part of him wanted to flag the racing away and I gave him an out. We'd got the V8 going again, but somewhere between the machine and the driver it had lost its edge. Steve wasn't winning any more and he wasn't the sort of bloke to hang about if he couldn't be top dog.
It was in Wellington that I first met Gith — or Anna, as she was then. I guess Sophie made the first contact. Michelle had never got on that well with her sister but she would have been flattered to be asked into that part of the family. Plus, her plans were all working out so she would have a chance to show off a bit.
Anna was fifteen, a tall, lanky thing with a big smile and her parents' brains. She could spout French with the best of them, was a top maths student and had won prizes for things she'd written. I've no idea why but we hit it off from the start. I mean, it's clear enough why anyone would like her — she was so friendly and open to things — but I haven't a clue why she should take to me. One thing we did have in common, though, was the cars. Anna was learning to drive and, like everything she did, she was into it one hundred per cent — not just what pedals to push but also what was happening under the bonnet. I think Sophie liked the idea, maybe because it proved girls could do anything. Anyway, at that time Anna and her parents lived up on Seatoun Heights and I'd got a job at a little workshop down on the flats in Miramar. My boss wasn't round much and left most of the work to me. Once or twice a week Anna would drop by and watch what I was doing. It wasn't like Michelle and Julie- Anne had been in Palmy. Anna really wanted to know. In the end I let her do a few things, like changing sparkplugs. It didn't go down too well when she got grease on the school uniform.
I guess it might have all fizzled out if things had gone the usual way. She got her learner's licence and I had my eye out for a car for her — something like a Mitsubishi Mirage would suit her fine, I reckoned. I was pretty sure that once she was mobile she would stop caring about cars and go on to something new, leaving me trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. That January, though, she and her folks went on a trip to the South Island. They took the ferry to Picton and set out down the West Coast. The accident happened the second night out.
Soon as they could move her, they took Gith from Nelson to the neurological unit at Hutt Hospital. She was still completely out to it but the doctors thought there was a chance she would come round. They figured there would be brain damage, for sure. Nobody could say how much, though.
It was Michelle's idea that we keep an eye on her. I think she felt a bit pushed into it. Her mother was sixty-six and had to look after Michelle's Dad, who was ten years older and in dodgy health after forty-plus years of smoking. Anna's father, James, had been an only child. His mother was dead and his father was in a home with the early stages of Alzheimer's. That pretty much left Michelle and me as the only workable relatives around.
We left our flat in Strathmore and moved to a rented house in Epuni, which was walking distance from the hospital. I quit the Miramar job, meaning to find something out in the Hutt Valley. While I looked, I took to visiting Anna. The doctors reckoned it might help if there was somebody there to talk to her. Maybe a word or two would get through and crank-start her brain. I didn't have anything smart to say so I just told her what we were up to or else I talked about the weather, which was warm and sunny right then, and about the results of the summer series that was running at Manfeild.
She lay there on her back with her eyes closed. Her lashes were long and dark brown, two fringes resting on the creamy-coloured skin. She looked peaceful, even with the huge bruise on the side of her face and the breathing thing over her mouth and nose and all the other gear hooked up to her. The dressings round her head made her look kind of like a nun.
Bit by bit, as the weeks went by, I spent less and less time looking for a job and more and more time sitting with Anna. I'm not sure why. Something about her had got to me. She just lay there, without moving, but you could see her getting better day by day. The bruise turned to yellow round the edges, and it started to shrink and fade. The bandages came off and there was brown spiky hair underneath and a shiny bald patch where they'd fixed her skull. The doctors gave her scans and said her insides were doing fine and her brain was working. There was an excellent chance she would wake up, and it might happen any time. I wanted to be there when it did. I wanted to see those long lashes flick open and the light come back into her eyes.
Michelle didn't say anything about the time I was spending at the hospital, which surprises me looking back. We were seriously short of money because she had signed up a deal on a salon in Lower Hutt and had taken out a loan to do some fitting out. Maybe she was just too busy or too into doing her own thing. Maybe she was just glad I was there to do the nursing bit instead of her. One of us had to. Or so we felt. I'm not sure we both had the same reasons, though.
Anna came into a tidy sum when it was all added up. The house in Seatoun Heights was worth $750,000 and the mortgage wasn't huge. James and Sophie each had a super plan with ten or more years of contributions. Plus there was some savings and insurance, a car, and the furniture and stuff. James's lawyer, Peter Vanray, took charge of all that, although he kept Michelle and me in the loop. James and Sophie hadn't said anything special in their wills about what to do if something like this happened. Because Anna was still only fifteen there had to be a legal guardian, and if we didn't do it, Child Youth and Family would take over and she'd be a ward of the state. Did we want the job? We talked about it.
From Michelle's point of view, the question had a lot of angles. On the one hand there was the money. Peter had said it could go into a trust with him and us as trustees. We could use it for Anna's care. Maybe we could even buy a house with it if she was living with us. And then, of course, if we adopted Anna and she died . . . It was awful to think like that but you had to be practical, didn't you? On the other hand, what would happen if Anna never came round? Or, worse still, if she did and turned into some semi-vegetable? Did we really want to saddle ourselves with that? But if we didn't, she might get shunted off into some warehouse for idiots, where God knows how they treated you. She was family, after all. If only we knew if she was going to wake up, and what she would be like if she did.
She did wake and I was there when it happened, but I missed what I wanted to see: her eyes opening.
I'd been sitting
with her for about half an hour, talking away as I usually did. I think I was telling her about a friend of mine who'd just bought an E-type Jag that he was planning to restore and how I'd like to do that some time. Maybe it was the day-dream that made me look out of the window at the sky, which was clear and blue. A brilliant summer day. I thought how sad it was that Anna was missing it. I looked back down at her. Her eyes were wide.
I couldn't move for a second or so. I just stared as she blinked a couple of times.
'Anna?'
Her head shifted. Her eyes swivelled over towards me. The skin round them crinkled in what might have been the start of a smile.
'Can you see me?' I said. 'It's Uncle Ken.'
She seemed like she was going to say something and then her face twisted into a frown.
I reached for the bell to call the nurse, kept my finger on it for a long blast. In a few seconds somebody was there, walking quickly into the room and up to the bed, stopping there, staring.
'Well,' she said. 'Hello, there.'
I started to laugh. I couldn't help myself.
Gith didn't hang round long that first time. After twenty minutes or so she drifted off again, and stayed that way for a couple more days. It worried me at first, this coming and going, even though the staff said it often happened in cases like this. Bit by bit, though, over about three weeks, the waking times grew longer and longer, until Gith was almost keeping normal hours. The mask came off too, and now and again she'd try to say something.
'Gith.' Her mouth seemed to get tangled round the sound, the tip of her tongue poking out the right side like she couldn't work it right.
Staying awake was just the start of it though. In the beginning she was pretty close to helpless. She was partially paralysed down her right side and she couldn't do the simplest things, like feeding herself. Michelle came to see her and wasn't impressed.
'God,' she said when we got home. 'How can we possibly cope with that?'
'She'll get better. They say so.'
'What if she doesn't?'
'Well . . . I guess they give you help — carers and such.'
'Not twenty-four seven. Who's going to get up in the middle of the night to change her nappies?'
I wanted to say I'd do it but then I thought that wasn't such a good idea. Michelle was looking at me. She could see what I was thinking.
She said, 'You've got a bit weird about her, you know? Sitting with her all day when you ought to be looking for a job. What's happening?'
'Nothing.'
'What do you mean "nothing"?'
'Nothing.' I shrugged. I wanted to talk about something different.
'It can't go on like it's been. You've got to start pulling your weight again. I mean, you can't really imagine you're going to spend the rest of your life looking after a cot case. You're not a nurse, after all.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I might like to be a nurse.'
'What?' She stared at me.
Well, I guess I couldn't believe it either. There had to be some reason though.
'I just like her,' I said, but I knew that was wrong. Whatever I felt, it was more than like. I didn't get it at all.
***
THE COPS DID talk to Tom Kittering, and they took his wagon away too. They had it down in Palmy for a couple of days. He was seriously pissed off. I wasn't sure, though, if it was being a suspect that got to him, or the fact that he had to drive into town in his old Rover, which was more like a rolling scrapyard than a real vehicle. The bodywork was full of rust. The motor blew out big clouds of grey-black smoke and rattled like a chaff-cutter. It made Pansy Cleat's Honda look like Car of the Year.
'Timing's a bit off,' I said, winding him up. 'Rings need a look too.' I stuck the nozzle in the petrol tank and started the pump.
Tom stared at me. His jaw was tight. I could see the pressure building but it didn't stop me. 'How's the warrant?' I asked.
'Bloody . . . bloody . . . bloody . . .' It was like the words were just stuck in there. He shook his head, trying to get them out. 'Shit!'
I wiped the spit from my cheek. 'Bloody nuisance,' I said, taking him seriously now.
'Bloody cops! Any bloody cop gives me a ticket for not having a warrant . . .' He left it hanging like maybe he would do the same thing to the cop.
'Yeah,' I said.
The cops were pissing me off, too. They had set up shop in the back room of the community hall next to St Peter's. There always seemed to be half a dozen of them about the town now, working in twos: talking to people and checking on vehicles. I'm not sure why, but seeing them out there had started to wind me up big time. I guess I figured they should be talking to me — or to Gith — even though we had told them just about everything we knew already. Maybe it was just that they hadn't taken any bloody notice.
'They've got the wrong end of the stick, that's for sure,' I said.
'Bloody right. Bloody embarrassing, you know. And like you said, a bloody nuisance.'
'What did they ask you?'
'Oh, the usual stuff. Just like on TV, eh. What was I doing that day? Where was I? How's a bloke supposed to remember? It was just like any other Monday at that time of the year. I was probably out checking the fences. I sure as hell wasn't down here. Not before five o'clock, anyway. And I sure as hell didn't pick up any bloody hitch-hikers. That's the bloody trouble though, eh. They just don't listen to you.'
'No, they don't.' I hung up the nozzle, screwed his petrol cap back on. 'There you go. Ten bucks' worth.'
'Thanks. I'd fill the tank, you know me, but it's just a waste of money in this heap.'
'No problem. Take it easy though. The way that engine's running you might be empty again before you get to the pub.'
'Aw, Jeez!' He pulled a face.
***
MICHELLE AND I took Gith home to the house in Epuni. She was doing okay by then. She could walk, although she still dragged one foot a bit, and she could eat and generally do the basics for herself. But she was still fragile mentally. The slightest thing would throw her into a screaming rage, like a little kid's tanty, or else she'd roll her eyes and curl up into a ball like a baby in the womb. The two biggest problems were that her short-term memory was pretty shot so she couldn't figure out where she was or what she'd been doing half the time — that and the fact that she couldn't say what she wanted. She had been a real outgoing kid before, chatting to everybody, and now all that was just gone. Talking was a minefield. It was okay if you were telling her something or just rabbiting on the way I'd done when she was in hospital, but soon as anything came up where she wanted to join in there was serious danger of a meltdown. It got so bad that Michelle refused to say anything to her, didn't even like to be in the same room as her. I felt sorry for them both. Being with Gith was real difficult, but I could also see how bad it was from her side. Her whole life had been destroyed, nearly. I mean, she'd lost both her parents and she couldn't even tell anyone about it. Sometimes she'd just sit there and cry, or stare at the wall for hours at a time. Michelle found that nearly as bad as the meltdowns, I reckon.
During the day there was somebody to look after her, a professional caregiver called Freda. She was about fifty and she had dealt with people with head injuries and brain damage before so I guess she knew what was what. I didn't like her much — I wasn't sure she was as nice as she seemed. How was she with Gith when nobody else was around? I had plans to rig up a closed-circuit TV to keep an eye on her but Michelle rubbished that idea pretty quick. I should leave Freda to do her job, she said, and I should go and find a job of my own.
In the end I did.
Finch Street Auto was a small place, with four staff, and it handled the usual range of repair and service work. I liked the blokes there, especially Scotty Freedman. Scotty was about the same age as me, a bit older than the youngest guy but younger than George, who was in his forties and the top mechanic. We were both married, too, although Scotty had a couple of kids under five. It was Scotty who found the Riley.
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br /> It was a 1955 RME and it had been sitting in a shed in Whitemans Valley for a good thirty years. The engine still turned over but it wouldn't start and the diff was shot. There were no spares either. Scotty reckoned we could get it for next to nothing and, if it was decently restored, it would be worth maybe fifteen grand. He'd seen the same model selling on the classic car websites for 6000 pounds or more. Michelle had her doubts about the whole thing but she figured if it was coming out of my money it would be okay. So Scotty and I borrowed a tow-truck from a mate of his and went up to the valley and brought it back. The tyres were stuffed but the bearings seemed to be all right and we managed to roll it into the garage at my place. We stood there looking at it, trying to figure out what the hell we'd got ourselves into.
The Riley turned Gith's life around. Mine too. I started working on it weekends and it wasn't long before she got to coming out and watching me. She must have remembered the Miramar days. At first she got in the way a fair bit, looking over my shoulder and making moves like she wanted me to show her things, but I didn't mind because there was such a change in her. The curling up and the meltdowns were gone when we were working on the car, and she started to smile for the first time. After a while she started to do a few things. The whole car had to be stripped down, cleaned and gone over to see what state it was in. She didn't have the strength for some of the work but she went nuts over the details, soaking and brushing and polishing something over and over again. Sometimes she'd just keep going like a crazy thing until I had to make her stop.
In the end it got so that Gith wanted to work on the Riley all the time. On weekdays, when I was at work, she would get more and more pissed off. I tried telling her how to do things while I was gone but this was tricky because she could only handle the simple stuff and the jobs soon ran out, leaving her more pissed off than ever. Freda didn't like it, anyway. She said it wasn't safe for Gith to be on her own and she didn't know anything about cars herself so she didn't know what was dangerous and what wasn't. It was winter and the garage was pretty cold and draughty. Keeping an eye on Gith out there was not a patch on doing it in the nice warm living room. According to Freda, Gith should stick to the easy kinds of occupational therapy — knitting or basket-weaving or whatever it was that they did in the classes Freda took her to once a week. Gith wouldn't have a bar of it. She was crazy about the car and would throw a fit if she couldn't get to it. From Freda's side, then, nothing had changed. In fact the curling up and the meltdowns were worse than ever when she was around.