She looked closely at the small brush, blew on it and said, "Trish rang. She sounded so confident. If it was me, I"d be panicking by now."
"Trish is not one to panic."
"She"s amazing, isn"t she."
"Yes, I"m constantly amazed by Trish." He went to the door.
She made a tsking sound. "Oh, you. Are you ready? Leave the aquarium, we"ve got to go."
"I"m ready."
She turned, picked a hair off the tiny brush and said consideringly, "I"m surprised one"s died. The amount of time you spend on them. They"re the most looked after fish in the world."
She looked straight at him and he was surprised to see a flicker of cold laughter in her eyes. That his Karen should want to hurt him, yes, it was unexpected. Simon glanced away, wondering what he had done or not done to deserve the little barb, the coolly scathing tone, but perhaps she didn"t mean to prod him where he was tender, and of course it was ridiculous to care about the aquarium, to care so much, to feel a kind of mortification at the sight of the little corpse, as if it were one of his patients, dead on the table after some terrible botch. Perhaps too, she didn"t realise that her gentle ribbing about his devotion to the fish made it obscurely embarra.s.sing now that one of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had died on him so soon. He had never had a hobby, and here he was, already failing. For G.o.d"s sake, he thought. It"s a goldfish. He took his patients" lives in his hands every day, and didn"t fail - touch wood, G.o.d forbid.
He allowed a little silence to play out, to show that he"d registered her tone, and then left the room, for one last quick stocktake of the tank.
Before they left, Claire drew Simon to the window. "Look."
Out in the garden, with the rain falling in curtains around them, Elke and Marcus stood under umbrellas. Marcus shone a torch that lit up their dreamy, absorbed faces and Elke, the stalk of her umbrella held in the crook of her arm and resting on her shoulder, carried a small box in her hands. She was talking and Marcus was listening. The rain blew across the torchlight. Simon thought of the children"s secret lives. How Marcus punished Elke because she wouldn"t play games, how she had jilted him and how he tormented her, trying to win her back, and he wondered what it had meant for Marcus having this strange, compelling girl suddenly planted in his family life. It must have been as disturbing for him as it had been for all of them, but Marcus had never wished Elke gone as Claire had; instead he had followed her, yearned after her, and all their fights and teasing and childish violence was an intense battle that came close to being love.
Marcus was transfixed - what was she saying? She gestured, and he leaned in and laid his hand on the box. Elke had a flair for ritual and drama. She was not rational like Simon and Claire, not grounded like Karen; she was all instinct, secret, feral, self-contained.
"They"ll catch their deaths out there," Barbara said. Simon and Claire turned and looked at her in silence, and she withdrew with a sniff, sensing the rebuke that hung in the air, father and daughter turning up their noses - and what unfortunately similar noses they were, Simon thought. Worse luck Claire. Barbara was obviously wishing Simon and Karen would go, so she could bustle the difficult girl back to her homework and spend some cosy time with the younger ones.
There was something wistful and soft in Claire"s expression as she bent over her textbooks. She acknowledged Elke"s power and charisma; she always had. Marcus, and Karen of course, would always side with Elke against Claire. Claire could not alter this. Elke would always be more beautiful, and Claire couldn"t do anything about that either. But perhaps my love will keep her here, Simon thought. Otherwise she might fly away and never come back, his clever, angry girl. She knows I understand. That I see what she sees, and maybe that is enough.
six.
He stands at the window, looking down. She"s in the courtyard by the pool, dressed to go out, and he watches as she puts out her hand to steady herself, bends down and fixes a strap on her shoe. The pool water glows, bright chemical blue. He leans his face against the gla.s.s, thinking about his first wife. Becky was small and pretty and curvy, she was short-sighted and wore contact lenses she was always losing, she was never silent for long, not until she was dying, and then he sat with her for hours, just waiting, and the only sounds she made were sighs, a ragged drawing in of breath. There were no last words, just laboured breathing and at the end a strange noise that sounded like a laugh, and then the realisation that she"d died and the panic and confusion, the children brought in, tiny and stricken, and at that point something closed over in him, was sealed.
He did not look back. He surrounded himself with beautiful things. Freed from the upheaval and horror of the death, he threw himself into what he did best. By the end of a year of grieving he had more money than any of his circle, was on his way to political power, had never faltered, never stopped, never questioned or railed against fate, had just driven on through. The black s.p.a.ce stayed inside him, but he only looked forward, and survived and prospered. He met Roza.
Roza sometimes looks at him with a laughing expression. He knows what she"s doing: mentally correcting his grammar. Wincing humorously over some misused word. He never acknowledges this; he ignores the twinkle in her eye, just pays her back with silence, the cold shoulder; he keeps the balance, never talks about Becky with Roza, never lets her in. He holds the memory of Becky over her like a weapon, a secret bond he shares with the children. He keeps the barrier there; he has to. Because Roza is potentially unmanageable.
Becky used to look up to him. She cheered him on, was reverent about the party and his political ideas. Everyone remembers her fondly - such a good-natured and open woman, self-deprecating and charming, popular with men and women. She was gorgeous, his first love. He lets Roza know this and doesn"t let Roza know that he loves her far more than he ever loved Becky; that his love for Roza is sometimes mixed with fear, that he senses qualities in her that he can"t contain.
She"s still down there, sitting in a deckchair by the pool, as he limps through the quiet rooms. In the bedroom he checks his tie and combs his hair, then looks through her things. In a bottom drawer there"s a ma.n.u.script hidden under some clothes. The name on it makes him frown: Ray Marden. Going through her bottles of pills, he notes the labels, checks a pile of her printed emails alert to anything unusual, lifts a T-shirt and smells soap and fabric softener. He tidies as he goes, and in his mind"s eye he imagines Roza pregnant, carrying his child. Looking at himself in the mirror he smiles, the eyes hard.
Then the final smoothing down of her clothes, the closing of the drawers, the removal of all trace of his inspection. He loves things, to own them, to straighten and order them. When he was a child he spent years sleeping on a couch in a sunporch where there was barely room for anything. He was the add-on child, sent to Tokoroa, taken in by relatives he barely knew. He shared the sunporch with two cousins and they kept their few books, toys and treasures under the bed. They all wore one another"s clothes - it was first up best dressed. They hardly ever bathed and they all stank. His uncle used to chase the kids with a wooden spoon but could never catch them, he was so wheezy and broken down with heart disease. The day Uncle died they were all fetched out of school, David"s cousins wailing in the back of the van, their faces covered with snot and tears, some aunt or second cousin grimly piloting the old bomb along the back roads, and when his aunt ran out in the rain to meet them, red in the face, blinded with tears, he realised how alone he was, standing to one side, dry-eyed and silent, watching them in their grief.
He goes downstairs, pa.s.sing through the kitchen where Jung Ha is cooking and supervising homework and the dog is waiting for its dinner, through to his study where he shuts the door and rings Dianne, checking items from his mental list, putting things in order. He trusts Dianne with most things, but doesn"t mention Ray Marden; he will look into the question of the ma.n.u.script in Roza"s drawer himself.
She"s still sitting out in the courtyard, eyes closed, her face turned up to the sky, and he joins her out there, squinting into the watery rings of light. She opens her eyes, startled - no, he thinks, pretending to be startled - and studies his face and smiles, reaching for his hand.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks.
"Nothing," he says.
seven.
An enormous pale moon shone briefly through a break in the clouds, then disappeared. The sky was still stormy, and great black banks of vapour were stacked over the city. The stalk of the Sky Tower showed up white in the stormy light, its tip obscured by haze. The driveway and courtyard of the house were strewn with twigs, and leaves flapped about wetly under the feet of the crowd hurrying in. Karen paused and bent her head, making some adjustment to her skirt, calling for Simon to wait. He stood with his hands in his pockets. Once, at a party at this house, Graeme had drawn him aside, gestured at the crowd on the terrace and said, "Most of the wealth of this country is represented here." Someone had turned on an outside light, and all the women had put their hands up to their faces. He had seen teeth, eyes, teeth and eyes.
He thought about Mereana and imagined visiting her, taking some bit of equipment for her aquarium. In his mind he went back to that night, the weariness and fever, the freedom and strangeness. He had the superst.i.tious notion that Mereana was a clue, but to what? There was a hollow voice inside him that chimed, Something is coming. Something is out there. He wanted to go towards whatever was coming. He was uneasy.
Karen put her hand on his arm and he flinched; he"d been nervous since the altercation in the Civic car park. Karen had asked, as they crept through the streets on his first day back behind the wheel, "Why"re you driving so slowly?"
It was difficult to explain how he"d felt since he"d been injured. It was the new, acute awareness of his body - its softness, its proximity to the windscreen as he drove, and the hardness of the world rushing up to meet it. That first day back behind the wheel he"d ducked his head at every intersection and blind corner. Infuriated motorists had parped and gestured as he"d inched his way onto roundabouts. Karen had offered to drive but that was worse: he"d kept shouting hoa.r.s.e warnings and freaking her out. He"d been practically curled up in a ball by the time they"d got home, and she had been thoroughly rattled. He was better at driving now, but things still made him jump, and a couple of times he"d woken in the night shouting that he couldn"t breathe, Karen kneeling on the bed, repeating doggedly, "Yes you can, Simon. Yes you can."
Trish and Graeme"s house was built on a ridge with a view all the way to Rangitoto Island. It was as big as the Hallwrights" but much older, with a grand front courtyard and a series of terraces at the back, on which were s.p.a.ced the tennis court, its wire fence all hung with vines, the pool with domed pool house and vast, shrinelike barbecue, and the guest chalet, a miniature of the main house, beyond which the property ended in a maze of topiary and a mini olive grove. Graeme was too old and bloated and breathless to go far beyond the first terrace these days, but he and Trish had six adult children who kept moving back in with their boyfriends and girlfriends and friends home for the summer; the front courtyard was often crowded with cars, and over the years the property seemed to get more populated, so that Simon and Karen were always saying h.e.l.lo to some new, burnished girl panting off the tennis court or padding past in a tiny bikini as Graeme grinned lewdly from his deckchair, or pausing the conversation as a gaggle of young people loudly emerged from somewhere on a waft of wine fumes and f.a.g smoke to banter briefly with the olds before heading out for the night. Karen knew every possible detail about the family but Simon never really focused on which was which, beyond noting that the sons looked like Trish: they were round-faced with freckly skin, thick necks and blond hair, and were always rushing off to some elaborate and expensive activity - skiing or s...o...b..arding or waterskiing. They had Trish"s confident energy and braying, slightly crazed laugh. The daughters were dark and portly like Graeme, with s.p.a.ces between their teeth and their father"s air of sly mirth. Simon thought it was funny the way the genes had been distributed among Graeme and Trish"s children, as if nature had not dared to deny each power-crazed parent a trio of little clones, but had switched the s.e.xes, just for a joke.
A meek girl came near and gestured for their coats. Karen clutched Simon"s arm. Her neck had gone flushed but her face was pale under her make-up. He followed her through the hall and out into the back room where the crowd was gathered. The doors were open, big heaters glowed along the terrace, and the view stretched away across the suburb to the city, the Sky Tower topped by its mushroom cap of black storm cloud, a flicker of lightning off to the west and black smudges of rain trundling across the distant buildings like a line of carriages.
Trish advanced and she and Karen merged in a rustling embrace of black satin and frills. There was the usual exchange: "Gorgeous. Is it by Trelise? I know. I couldn"t resist." And then he was pressed against Trish"s smooth glazed cheek and she was looking him over, stern and brisk, before pushing him away. He glanced across the room, at the men in suits and the women in their yards of ruffle and flounce and skirt and boot, like a crew of pirates who"d plundered a giant treasure chest (all seemingly dressed by Trelise, the fantastically expensive local designer, who scorned the notion that less was more) and there was Graeme, looking like the captain of the brig, all ramshackle hilarity, rolling eye and fiery cheek, and lacking only a cutla.s.s and a wooden leg. Beside him was a young blonde woman on the arm of a middle-aged talkback radio host, who would be the lone celebrity, since celebrities, as a rule, seemed to favour the other side of the political fence. Simon made his way through the crowd. A youth approached bearing a tray of drinks on bunched fingers. The lights in the gas heaters danced and glowed, casting red light on the face of the radio man, who was tilting his gla.s.s and listening with dismay as Graeme chortled in his ear.
Simon watched the white light flickering on the hills in the western sky. The radio man looked prim; famously conservative and Christian, he was too prudish for Graeme"s ribald small talk, too respectful of his enormous wealth to back away.
Waiters threaded through the crowd with trays of food. Trish appeared and beckoned to Graeme, who roused himself with an amused croak: "Hey ho, duty calls." He followed her out of the room, then there was a hush and drawing apart of the crowd as he and Trish ushered in the Hallwrights, Trish piously beaming and modest, as though she"d invented them herself but would take no credit, and Graeme with a matey arm on Hallwright"s, whispering in his ear and shaking with his throaty laugh.
They were headed Simon"s way, and beside him Les Dayton, the radio man, drew himself up to his full height, gripped his companion"s arm and whispered, "Come on, come on."
"Ow," the young woman said, shaking her arm free.
Trish surged along, waving for drinks while behind her the crowd folded in, sucked into the wake of the couple. There was some good-humoured jostling and surrept.i.tious positioning; every person glanced and looked away, and looked again.
It must be strange, Simon thought, strange for her, to feel the pressure of sly, excited eyes. She was looking at him, a half-smile on her face. Trish handed her a gla.s.s and he saw Roza"s lip tremble, as if she was straining to hold her expression. He was excited by this tiny sign of weakness in her; it gave him the confidence to angle past the small bouncing form of Les Dayton and place himself right in front of her. A tray went past and he grabbed a drink off it.
"h.e.l.lo again," he said.
She nodded. He thought she seemed different again tonight, not the coolly amused vamp. She was wearing a black dress, slim and belted at the waist, and her large eyes were shaded in dark make-up. Her hair stood out from her head, shining with points of light. He noticed the shadows painted on her eyelids, the violet smudges under her eyes. As she glanced around the room he caught that look he"d seen once before, something like panic and anarchic laughter combined, quickly suppressed. It gave him a sudden feeling of nerves, energy, irritation. There was a lock of hair falling into her eyes; he wanted to smooth it out of the way. He thought, what is it about her that I think I know?
She held her gla.s.s at an awkward angle and said something to Trish.
"Of course, very wise of you," Trish said, "I wish I had your sense," as she took Roza"s gla.s.s and beckoned imperiously to a waiter, who exchanged it for orange juice.
Graeme said, "Simon, David, you"ve met before."
Simon turned to Hallwright, who looked tense. He focused on Simon briefly but his gaze kept darting away; he shifted on his feet and smiled with mouth but not eyes as he shook Simon"s hand. "h.e.l.lo mate. Simon," he said and looked at a point over Simon"s shoulder. He blinked - was that recurring blink actually a tic? - waved his hand towards the terrace and said, "Great view."
They all turned and looked out. The storm was crouched blackly out to the west, casting a threatening light over the suburbs and they could see metallic curtains of rain moving along the horizon.
"All these storms. You wonder if it"s the new weather. You know, global warming," Simon said.
"Simon, you joy germ," Trish chortled, trying to angle him out of the group, shifting her body towards him and pushing him away from Roza. She would be remembering his talk of hyenas. Simon stood his ground.
"How are you getting on, Roza?" Trish said, elbowing Simon in the ribs. "Such a high-pressure time. We"re all excited, of course, now we"re getting so near. David"s amazingly calm, of course."
Roza said, "I wonder if it"s true. Bigger and bigger storms."
"It"ll dawn on us gradually," Simon said maliciously to Trish. "You know, millions flooded out in Bangladesh or whatever, more and more hurricanes. We"ll suddenly realise, this is it. They were right. I read somewhere that bees are dying out. The end of pollination - the end of plants I suppose that means."
"Really," Trish said.
Roza laughed, then fought down her smile. "It"s not funny," she said. "It"s so not funny that you can"t deal with it."
"I only ever think about it when I"ve been drinking," Simon said. "Other than that I screen it out. I mean, when you think of the children ..."
Roza parted her lips. Something swelled in her expression, rising in the clean whites of her eyes.
Simon wanted to take her by the arm, pull her out onto the terrace and ask her, urgently, what was agitating her and what was suddenly disturbing him, making everything around them seem meaningless and strange, as if they were on a stage filled with garish pantomime figures, all acting to another script. She smoothed herhair nervously and looked up, and when their eyes met an intense communication pa.s.sed between them. She was telling him that something had to be played out. A kind of exasperation settled on him; he needed to take action, immediately, but they were locked in a tight circle and couldn"t move, could barely look at each other without it being noticed.
Trish dabbed her forehead with a napkin. She said, "David. Bearing up there?"
"This is an amazing house, er, Trish," David said. "Roza and I would actually have liked to live over this side of town, but obviously there were other considerations. When we were looking for a big enough section and so on."
There was a pause. Hallwright daintily sipped his drink. "I mean obviously in a way this is simply the best suburb in Auckland, but things pan out the way they do in life, basically."
Another pause. Simon looked at Hallwright"s face. Various wits had called him The Man Who Wasn"t There. But there was something there: in the eyes. Hallwright"s combination of qualities was oddly attractive: verbal incompetence, inordinately cunning eyes. Something to do with struggle and potential. You couldn"t say he was glib, but he was sharp. Talking was something he did badly, but his speech was distracted and automatic, a device to mask his real thoughts. The blue-grey eyes were hard, hurt, penetrating, set deep in the angular face. He was, like Simon, all ambition and drive, always escaping from his past. He had lost his parents early on, and had been farmed out to poor relatives in small, scruffy North Island towns. He looked as if he would have long memory, and a powerful capacity for hurt and resentment, for revenge.
"Something to nibble?" Trish said.
A sleek young man in a black jacket angled in a tray. The awkwardness of grappling with napkins and tiny pastries increased Simon"s sense of pantomime. He looked at Roza"s hands but didn"t dare look at her face. Why this ... agitation?
But Graeme took Hallwright by the arm and they started muttering together about the campaign. Simon saw Hallwright stumble, somehow wrong-footed by his limp. He b.u.mped against Graeme, and for a moment the pair grappled with slopping drinks, before righting themselves. Trish managed to turn Roza away, introducing her to a group behind them, and Simon found himself on the outer. He saw Karen coming towards him and the tension ran out of him; his shoulders actually slumped.
"All right?" he said. The rain came down, drumming on the tables outside, making a noise like metal drums, and then, just as abruptly, it stopped.
"I"d like to talk to him."
"Him? Oh, him."
"Come with me."
He looked at the furious blush on her neck, and was touched. Leaning down to her he whispered, "Do you really think he"s as wonderful as you make out? He can"t talk very well."
"Shut up. I hope you"re behaving. Trish"ll be furious if you act up."
"I"m behaving. And I"ve given all this money to the p.r.i.c.k."
She laughed.
"I mentioned global warming, though. In front of Trish. And Mrs Hallwright."
"Oh G.o.d, Simon." She adjusted her dress and put her hands up to her hot cheeks. "I think he"s quite attractive actually."
Simon tipped back his gla.s.s. "Yeah. He"s a real dish."
"Come with me then," she urged.
He manoeuvred her into position next to Hallwright. Karen stood with her hands rigid at her sides, and Simon said, "David, my wife Karen," and Hallwright turned; for a second he was poised, the hard blue eyes taking her in and then he relaxed, the eyes went soft, he leaned so close to her that she had to draw slightly back or be pressed too near him. He said something that Simon didn"t catch, and she laughed, her eyes shining. Oh, nicely done, Simon thought. He saw how Hallwright could make his way without eloquence; he had other graces - that slightly menacing pause and then the relaxation, a kind of shake of the body, and the smooth invasion of her physical s.p.a.ce.
He turned away and came face to face with Trish. She pursed her lips, which made her look old and tired. "Is Graeme getting too loud?" she said.
"No. He"s been whispering actually. Cloak and dagger."
She drew him aside and he was surprised to see she was holding a pill box. "Could you, darling? I can"t get the b.l.o.o.d.y lid off."
He opened it for her. "What are these for?"
"Heart," she said, patting him absently on the shoulder and walking away.
He wandered out onto the terrace and stood near a group of smokers. A woman offered him a cigarette; he declined. Looking down the sloping section he saw two figures disappearing into the pool house. The air was mild, whirling with a fine mist. The big pale moon appeared between the black clouds, bone-coloured and round but for one side, where it was sheared off. He thought of a baby"s bald head, the dip of the fontanelle, and then the moon was gone, and he could sense the next wave of rain, hustling towards them out of the west.
Roza stood in the doorway. She hesitated, then joined the group of smokers, also turning down their offers of a cigarette. "But I used to smoke like a train," she said.
"How did you give up?" someone asked.
"All at once," she said. "I still like the smell, though."
The smokers finished and went inside, and Roza moved along the terrace. "It"s hot in there," she said. "Have you been smoking?"
"No. I don"t. Good you gave up. And you don"t drink either."
"No, I don"t drink."
"Out of necessity?"
She drew back. "What sort of question is that?"
"Sorry. But ... are you all right?"
She looked alarmed, as if she might retreat back inside, but hesitated.
He said urgently, "Mrs. Hallwright ..."
"Roza."