Sanctuary

by Kate de Goldi

  Chapter Five

  ‘You must have been very happy,’ said Miriam Wilkie.

  ‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was totally, absolutely, completely happy. For the first time in years. And I wasn’t happy because Stella was happy. Or anyone else. I was happy for myself.’

  ‘Why do you think you were so happy?’

  ‘Because I was in love, of course.’ I said.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said. Maddeningly.

  ‘Haven’t you ever been in love?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ll know what it’s like. You’re happy. Nothing else matters. End of story.’

  ‘Nothing else matters,’ she said, pursuing some obscure point.

  ‘Yes! Nothing else matters. Well, you know,’ I said, annoyed. ‘The good things matter — they seem even better, in fact — but nothing awful matters, it all goes away or seems less bad.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re trying to get me to say that I just fell for Jem to distract myself from all the bad memories. Well sorry, that doesn’t work because, as I’ve already painstakingly explained, I was actually feeling rather good at the time, for the first time in ages, so I didn’t really need a distraction, did I?’

  ‘It’s painful talking about Jem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it’s painful!’ I shouted, furious with her.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘Bet you don’t.’

  She won’t see me cry, I told myself, clenching my teeth.

  ‘It hurts to think of him as Jem, even,’ I said, regretting rudeness, wanting to give her something for her efforts.

  ‘I suppose he was an actual gem,’ said Miriam Wilkie, cleverly. ‘A jewel you’d come across unexpectedly?’

  Right on, Miriam. Horribly accurate. He was a jewel of great lustre, colourful and precious, eye-catching and multi-faceted, matchless, greatly prized and absolutely irreplaceable.

  ‘What next?’ said Miriam, gently.

  Next, the summer ended. Well, the holiday job ended, but that seemed to put paid to summer, though of course the heat and the long days carried on for weeks. But, as Penny said, summer is really a state of mind and once you’re back at school you’re in another state of mind, one that can’t entertain summer; you’re trapped in a school uniform and an airless classroom, so what use is a beautiful day?

  Normally the job finishing and the thought of school would have been enough to prostrate me with misery, but I was too happy about Jem to register change in the usual way. It made Penny very cross.

  ‘You’re not even sad,’ she said, accusingly, on the last day of work. We sat on the bench in the playground watching children, stretching our legs for a last shot at tanning.

  ‘I am sad,’ I said, not very convincingly, though I was sincerely sorry about the loss of my power biking and my daily swim in the sea. And of course I would miss Penny horribly. But I’d hardly given school a thought, it seemed so remote.

  ‘You’re not one of those types who ditches their girlfriends when they get a boyfriend, are you?’ said Penny.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, wounded.

  ‘Too bad if you are,’ she went on. ‘I’m not easy to chuck. I bounce back. I’m going to ring you and come round uninvited.’

  Good, I thought.

  ‘The truth is I haven’t really got any girlfriends to drop,’ I said.

  ‘Except me.’

  ‘Except you,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘And I am sad,’ I said again, ‘but I’m not colossally sad, because the best thing about this summer has been meeting you and Jem and I know those things will keep on going, all through the year and the year after. Hopefully.’ In my new dreamy happiness I found myself saying extraordinary things. Without a shadow of embarrassment.

  ‘Thanks, Cat,’ said Penny, squeezing my arm. She was very sentimental.

  ‘But school,’ she groaned a minute later. ‘How will we ever cope?’

  ‘Oh, school, schmule,’ I said. ‘It’ll hardly touch the sides.’

  School. In the mornings I put on my green cotton dress uniform, walked around the river, crossed the footbridge, went through the school gate, contributed in classes, ate lunch, contributed in more classes, walked home, dispatched my homework efficiently. That was it. I did what was required and left it behind. I knew the teachers found me baffling and the girls thought I was weird. But I didn’t care. The real point of every day was when Stella left for work, after I’d cooked her a square meal which she hardly touched. Then I phoned Jem.

  ‘I’ve got a proposition,’ Jem said one night.

  It was the middle of March; the leaves of the maple trees in the gardens around the river had begun to turn. It was eleven weeks since I had spied Jem from behind the whale, eight weeks since our first kiss in front of the seahorses, seven weeks since the start of school.

  ‘First, tell me what everyone is doing,’ I asked Jem. I always got him to do this, talk about his family. I couldn’t get enough of it — the details of a normal family going about their business.

  ‘Of course, we’re not really normal,’ Jem said. ‘My father’s a charismatic preacher and healer, my brother’s a sociopath, my sister’s a prodigy, her twin is obsessed with making model aeroplanes, I’m a drop-out zoo keeper, my mother’s — well, I suppose she’s comparatively normal, but no, she can’t be, she chooses to live with us. That’s not normal.’

  ‘Yes, but she makes meals for you and you all eat them together and you have family jokes and photo albums.’

  ‘That’s normal?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘I prefer dinner at the Salters’.’

  ‘You’re a heartless, selfish ingrate,’ I said happily. We went on like this a lot, loving the sound of each other’s voice, reluctant to hang up, to slog through the twenty-four hours until the next phone call.

  ‘How come you don’t invite Jem over to your house?’ Penny asked me. She and I phoned each other a couple of times a week, now. Sometimes I got her to tell me what her family were doing. ‘No prying eyes?’

  ‘Stella might find out,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘She has phenomenal antennae,’ I said. It was true. Stella was very good at sniffing out atmospheres.

  ‘Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,’ said Penny, exasperated. ‘Why on earth don’t you tell her that you’ve met this gorgeous guy and you’re in love?’

  ‘Oh, that would play right into her hands,’ I said, only half joking.

  ‘But, Cat, she’s Stella Coles, she’s cool, surely she won’t give you a hard time.’

  ‘She’s very cool,’ I agreed. ‘She’d be hideously happy, she’d take me by the hand and arrange contraception, she’d shower me with advice and sisterly tips.’

  ‘There you are, you lucky brat.’

  ‘Sorry. Couldn’t take it.’

  ‘Now, run this past me again,’ said Jem. ‘Why exactly don’t you want your mother to know about us?’

  ‘Believe me, she’d be impossible,’ I said, ‘but not necessarily in the way you’d expect.’

  The truth was, I couldn’t bear to let Stella know about Jem, and I didn’t really understand why. I knew I couldn’t cope with her pleased looks and her intimate advice — but that was only part of it. It was very strange.

  She knew something was up, too. I didn’t nag her so much about smoking. I hardly complained when she left her dinner half eaten. I didn’t even make disparaging remarks about the men in her past.

  ‘You’re a happy little bird, then, aren’t you?’ she said more than once, pleased, I could tell, but puzzled. ‘That summer job did you the world of good.’

  ‘Christ, Stella, you sound like Nan.’

  ‘Genes will out,’ she said, batting her eyelids at me. She was applying mascara. ‘I’m glad you’ve got a close friend again,’ she said, trying another tack. She’d met Penny. ‘But you’re not telling me something, Cat, I kn
ow it. Why aren’t you talking to me?’ She sounded sad, which made me gruff.

  ‘Oh, bugger off, Stella. My life’s an open book. What you see is what you get.’

  ‘Huh, that’ll be the frosty Friday,’ she said, pulling on her leather jacket.

  ‘There you go again. More like Nan every day.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’

  And so on.

  Jem never nagged. What I loved about him was his complete acceptance of all the unexplained holes and corners of my life. He knew when I wasn’t giving him the whole picture but he never forced it. He was infinitely gentle and patient. In a way he reminded me of Freddy. I suppose the Freudians would say he was my substitute father. But I don’t think it was like that at all. I never felt anything other than absolutely filial love for Freddy. (Take note, Miriam?)

  On the other hand there was nothing filial about the way I thought of Jem. Sometimes I just wanted to throw up everything and bury myself in a rabbit hole with him, tear at his clothes, cover him in kisses. Other times I felt almost reverently, peacefully, in love with him. I just wanted to feel my hand in his, feel his arm around my shoulder, his fingers softly on my neck. Some days I carried him round in my head with me, remembering things he had said, jokes he had made, feeling hot at the thought of his brown eyes on my face. Other days I was seized with anxiety at the thought of him being hurt or killed in an accident. Perhaps he would come off his bike. Perhaps an animal would maul him when he was cleaning its cage. Perhaps a lone gunman would unaccountably waste him and his family. Some nights my hand shook and my heart beat very fast when I picked up the phone and dialled his number; it was pure happiness just to hear his lovely voice.

  ‘So what are they all doing?’ I said in late March.

  ‘My mother is sewing a ballet costume for Hannah. Hannah is hassling her about sequins and ribbons for her ballet slippers. My father is visiting one of his flock. Simeon is out on one of his night errands, which I suspect involves checking out a massive dope crop somewhere around Horseshoe Lake, but forget I ever said that. Joshua is supposed to be doing his violin practice but it’s very silent up that end of the house so I guess he’s enamelling one of his planes. I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, wishing that I lived with them, in a corner of Jem’s bedroom, maybe, or underneath the dinner table.

  ‘My proposition,’ said Jem. ‘The Salters need an extra hand at the Sanctuary, two afternoons and Saturdays. I thought it should be you.’

  I had been back to see the Salters and the zoo several times in the last two months, staying for lunch or tea with Jem, leafing through the albums, parrying Old Man Salter’s heavy wit. Mrs Salter plied me with scones and countless stories of her children and the animals. Also the history of their intermittent difficulties with the Ministry of Ag and Fish over the years, their bewilderment whenever angry letters appeared in the paper about ‘conditions’ at Salter’s Sanctuary.

  ‘I’ve just never understood it, dear, I’ll tell you plain. Angus and I have loved those animals through thirty years, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. We’ve tended to their every need, watched their progress like any doting parent. It’s broken our hearts at times to read the papers or hear the complaints that are made to the Ministry.’ She was watering her cacti collection, measuring plant food with a spoon. Soon she began shining the leaves of one monstrous growth with a felt cloth and a dab of plant conditioner. ‘We nearly shut up shop twice,’ she said. ‘Once in the late seventies and then again in ’86. Angus was very downhearted. But the truth is there’s no place any of those animals could go now — that’s something people don’t realise. If we give up they’ll all meet the bullet — or the syringe, I believe it is these days. Imagine it, dear.’

  I couldn’t bear to think about it, frankly. As far as I could work out, the animals were caught between a rock and a hard place. Jeremiah had explained it all to me early on.

  ‘This is how I rationalise it,’ he said. ‘None of them are in pain. Far from it — they’re fed and attended to scrupulously. I should know, I do half of it. The Old Man loves them like crazy, he talks to them like kids. They’re all in good condition and if they get sick the vet’s on the end of the phone.’ He paused, thinking about the next bit. I could tell he’d been over this a thousand times. ‘It’s not that they’re obviously unhappy. It’s just that they’re bored and without purpose in life. They’re melancholic.’

  ‘Well, that’s the point,’ I jumped in. ‘They’re not obviously unhappy, but they’re not happy either; they’re not the animals they could or should be. And why? So that a few straggling Christchurch residents can come and stare at them every now and then and go away feeling shortchanged, if not appalled. Basically I’m against all zoos.’ This was a recent decision. ‘They’re outmoded, superseded by television. But at least other zoos have more space. And they try to recreate the animals’ natural environment. The Salters just haven’t got it. They’re prehistoric.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  I knew he knew. We went over and over and around and around the subject, getting nowhere but miserable and always coming back to how sweet and loving the Salters were.

  ‘And the real point is that now it’s too late, anyway. Those animals have nowhere to go, other zoos won’t have them, they can’t be kept as back-yard pets — anyway they’d be in the same boat. If they’re not here, they’re dead. And Angus and Jeannie’d be as good as dead, too.’

  ‘But, Cleo, Jem. She’s the very worst off, she feels it the worst. It’s so obvious.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Jem, taking my hand, stroking it, stroking my hair and my face, kissing me until all I could think about was him and his beauty and his smell and how happy I was when I was with him.

  And then, there I was, helping out — and being paid. It didn’t seem right, but the chance to be with Jem was irresistible. I couldn’t say no.

  ‘I think I’ve fatally compromised my principles,’ I said to him. ‘I want to see you, so I’m working in a place I’m morally opposed to.’

  ‘Where does that leave me?’ he asked. But he had long ago worked out a justification and I borrowed it to ease my own conscience.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said in his persuasive way. I loved the sound of him explaining, spinning logic out of mess. ‘The thing is, we can’t do anything about the Sanctuary, we can’t close it, we can’t hurt the Salters, we can’t leave them to cope because they wouldn’t. So isn’t it better if we look after the animals as well as is possible? It’s like Mother Teresa. She can’t change the structures that create Indian beggars, but she can ease their pain. Not that we’re quite at her level, but you get my thrust. We’re there for the animals, making a difference. If I wasn’t there they really would suffer, because the Old Man can’t do it all by himself any more, and he knows it. It’s better that we’re there than not there.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of getting your own pulpit?’ I asked.

  He jumped me.

  I told Stella about my job, but I don’t think it really reached the cerebral cortex. She’d started talking about someone called Paul and eating even less than usual. I recognised the signs; they were as familiar as old shoes. Pretty soon she’d bring him home for the mandatory inspection by the daughter and I would be rude about him and she’d get huffy. Some things never changed.

  On the other hand some things change a great deal. In the middle of April I took Freddy out for dinner. I wanted to explain to him about the new broom of love sweeping through my life. We went Italian, Freddy’s favourite.

  ‘You’re not riding on his bike, are you?’ he said.

  ‘He’s not a speed freak,’ I said.

  ‘All young men are speed freaks,’ said Freddy. ‘Believe me. I know.’

  ‘Well, he’s not with me,’ I said. ‘He’s very restrained. He’s gentle, really, but sort of smart and tough, too. Tough-minded, I mean. Like, his father’s a charismatic preacher but Jem has made it clear that he doesn�
��t believe any more, but that it’s not personal. I mean, they still get on pretty well, he still lives at home.’ I wanted Freddy to like Jem — even in the abstract. ‘He reads a lot too,’ I went on, ‘and he wants to go to university, but he thinks it’ll be better to work for a while first, do something real.’

  ‘Ah! The zoo.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s another thing — he’s so wonderful with the animals, a natural. I’ve learned a lot just watching him. He’s lovely to the Salters, too.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Freddy. ‘He loves his parents, and he’s nice to them. He loves his brothers and sister, animals, the Salters — and quite possibly you.’

  I laughed and blushed. ‘He’s not a saint or anything,’ I said. ‘He’s just incredibly nice — and interesting.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Freddy.

  ‘So I get to bike three times a week,’ I said. ‘I still love my bike.’

  ‘Glad to see you’re faithful,’ he said, gravely.

  Mentioning fidelity must have made him think of Stella because then he asked the question I’d been hoping to avoid. ‘So what does Stella think of your New Age man?’

  ‘Actually, he can cook and bake—’

  ‘So what does Stella think?’ said Freddy again.

  ‘I haven’t told her,’ I said, flatly.

  ‘Haven’t told her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why not? How come?’

  ‘I just don’t want to,’ I said.

  ‘But where does she think you’ve been going three times a week?’

  ‘She knows about the job, but not about Jem. Before the job, on the weekends and things, I just told her I was going to Penny’s or something.’

  ‘Cat.’ Freddy was very uncomfortable. ‘I’ve never known you to lie before. I’m shocked.’

  ‘First time for everything,’ I said, wishing I’d lied to Freddy. Impossible.

  ‘But why?’ he said.

  ‘I just don’t want to.’ I gulped some wine, wishing that Freddy wouldn’t look at me like that.