by Steve Low
It was the summer of 1965/66, when the family made its first sojourn to the back country. Julia declined to be part of the exercise. The process of living seemed to consume all her spare energy. To deliberately burn off more calories, by walking for miles and miles up some valley, was clearly absurd in her case. None of us attempted to persuade her otherwise – her urbanisation was an accepted fact. It didn’t need further discussion.
Our arrival at the end of the lake, was somewhat later in the day compared with the trip Graham and I were to make twenty years later. The later arrival time was due to the fact that Graham and Richard had rowed the length of the lake to get us there. We had yet to purchase the smoky Seagull motor. Fortunately a moderate northerly wind had sprung up behind us, so that the dinghy was thrust forward by the chasing waves, a welcome addition to the combined thrust of the oars.
Isobel and I, occupying a cramped position in the bow, were both painfully stiff when it came time to climb out of the boat at journey‘s end. Graham was in a grouchy mood, tired from the hours of rowing, and worried by the pounding effects of the incoming waves. He yelled at Isobel and me to hurry out of the pitching craft. As he controlled the bow with the front rope, we scrambled awkwardly onto the rickety jetty, and then bolted for the gravel beach from which it protruded.
From shore we watched as Richard struck out into the throbbing lake, pulling mightily on the oars. He rowed around the end of the jetty and then pointed back into the shore, speeding inward amongst the whitecaps. “Come and help you two,” Graham shouted, as he and Richard sought to beach the hull. Waves were smacking into the stern, sending gallons of water over the stern gunwale, soaking the white interior. We heaved with all our might, which wasn’t much as far as Isobel and I were concerned. Graham’s temporal veins were bulging, his face darkened from valsalva and irritability as he struggled with most of the weight. When the stern came clear of the pounding waves, he scooped out the unwanted water from the floorboards with a sawn off plastic bleach bottle, which enabled us to lift the boat higher up the beach. He pulled out the rowlocks and put them into a pile, along with the two oars and the bailer. We tipped the boat upside down, thereby concealing the gear underneath.
With the boat secure, we slung on our backpacks. My pack was light, only containing my sleeping bag; It wasn’t long though before even that seemed like a dead weight.
There was a tramper’s hut quite close to the jetty. Isobel and I were both keen to look inside. Our father gazed across at the edifice considering the request. As we looked, there was movement at a window. “No . . . There’s someone in there,” Graham said. He turned away and set off along the track. The sibling Davenports followed the father en-mass. The hut people were left uninterrupted, their habits and speech not sampled, their views on life unknown.
After five hours of toil, I was craving the end of the day – to be rid of the chaffing shoulder straps and the warm wet area where the backpack contacted the skin of my back. Isobel and I had long since ceased our ribald banter. I had fallen back a respectful distance behind her, allowing both of us enough solitude in which to wrestle with the discomfort of the foot slog. Despite the heat in the day, we walked in a pleasant shadow. The valley had closed in and the afternoon sun was filtered by a steep canopy of foliage layered up the western mountainside. In this semidarkness, ground ferns were predominant, a profusion of greens and browns, studded across the raw umber of the earth.
In a moment the ferns were gone, it was brighter and the beech trunks were less dense. Looking ahead, I saw relief at last – sunlight on a grassy meadow. This slash of light, though divided by a lattice of foreground branches and trunks, almost hurt my eyes, accustomed as I was to the flat light of the forest floor. Bedazzled, I emerged triumphant into the warm rays of revealed light, scratching at the transient itch of tussock grasses against my legs.
Graham and Richard had chosen a tent site on an elevated plateau close to the river’s edge. They prepared to erect the tent while Isobel and I scurried off to find driftwood for a fire. Free of our backpacks, we raced across the tall grass like newborn lambs, dancing over the folds and corrugations of the field. Isobel dived down into a shallow gully and lay supine on the grass, chest heaving from the exertion. I fell down beside her, coming to rest my head across her outstretched arm. The grass at my elbows and backs of my legs, sharing its niche with a hydrophilic moss, was soft and slightly damp. Close to the ground, the air was heavy with a peaty, vegetable smell. We could hear the other two hammering in tent pegs. In my immediate view, her young breasts heaved beneath a crimson top. The angle of her neck was salty with sweat. Absently I sampled her skin with my tongue, at the same time draping an arm across her upper chest. Glancing up at her, I saw that her eyes were shut, the muscles in her face relaxed, the mouth closed but softly smiling. She opened an eye and laughed, rolling right on top of me, letting her hair fall about my face as she planted deft little kisses all over my young cheekbones. “Cheeky boy,” she said. Her breath was hot on my forehead as she brushed back my hair with her fingers. We lay in this embrace for ten seconds or so before there appeared a shadow above us.
“Come on you two?” Graham said. He was laughing. “Get off your brother,” he continued, “There’s work to do. You’re supposed to be collecting wood.”
We took off in different directions, I to the riverbank, Isobel into the forest. I chose to entertain myself first, by racing twigs along the water’s edge. I was fascinated by the whirlpools, eddies and backwash of the tumbling water. Fearing Graham’s wrath, I began to hunt for firewood amongst the jumbled boulders and gravel of the river bank. It only took a few minutes to gather up enough for one load. I stumbled up the unstable bank to the edge of the meadow. The sun was dipping behind the western range and the air was suddenly full of marauding sand flies and flying beetles. I breathed through my nose for fear of inhaling one of the airborne beasts. I helped Richard build a roaring fire. The heat of the fire hurt my face, but it kept the bugs at a distance.
Graham, perched on a gnarly rotting log, was separating a line of sausages. He wondered where Isobel had got to. Darkness was seeping into the depth of the valley. He began to shout for her from where he sat. After five minutes with no result, he stood up, his knee joints cracking. “Hope she’s not gotten herself lost,” he said. He ordered a search party. Richard and I headed up river, while he strode off in the other direction.
After we’d gone a short distance, Richard stopped and pointed along the track. “You continue along here for a distance and I’ll scour the riverbank.” I carried along the dry narrow track. It was quite gloomy since the track had re-entered the bush and I felt a pulse of fear as I proceeded onward. Then there was a loud snap, like a gunshot in a dead still night. My body shocked to the jolt of adrenaline, my blood was firing along my veins. The figure of Isobel materialised from the darkness.
“It’s only me,” she laughed, stepping out onto the track. “Have you been sent to look for me?”
I scolded her for her intemperate actions. Graham would be wild with her. I pictured him slugging through the dank forest somewhere down-river.
“Well I needed some time alone,” she said, hands on hips. “One day I’ll be able to do what I like. He won’t be able to stop me.” She took my hand and we dawdled down the track back to the meadow. We sat down by the fire, poking at the embers with long sticks. Eventually Richard appeared beside us, having heard our voices through the trees. He volunteered to run down the track to inform Graham that Isobel had safely returned.
“That was bloody stupid,” Graham said to Isobel, as he strode up to the campsite with Richard in tow.
“I felt like getting away from people,” Isobel said. “Isn’t that why we came into the forest?”
Graham looked at her as if in a new light. “That’s very perceptive,” he said returning back to his gnarly log, to resume the meal preparation.
In the morning the ground was laden with dew. The tall grasses were bent over in their mornin
g pose, like the final bow at the ballet. Two paradise ducks swooped up the valley, their haunting cries quickly receding behind an intervening spur. The fire place was a dry black crater, a natural place to gravitate to, given the dampness elsewhere. I sat down on a smooth rock rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Above me a golden sheen was painting the eastern skyline. Mt Cotterel was up there somewhere, hidden behind a false ridge. I felt a yearning to run away up the valley, to live as a hermit, just myself and all the beauty around me. Maybe I could take Isobel with me. I thought of her warm salty sweat on the tip of my tongue, and the picture her breasts made, rising and falling after a sprint across the meadow. Behind me, I heard murmurings from the rest of the family as they awoke in the tent. My peaceful dream was over and it was time to prepare for our return down valley.
Back at the lake house, Julia was waiting. She seemed half drugged with sleep as Isobel and I clattered in through the heavy front door. We rushed to her, burying our faces into her jersey.
The summer proceeded in an amiable enough fashion. We stayed on at the lake-house for the rest of January. Graham helped me knock up a replica Star-boat on the big dinner table. We used pins and balsa-glue to bend the skin of the hull to its frame. As he worked with me, his breathing was heavy and sonorous through the flared nose. He had enormous hands and thickset fingers. Even so, he had a deft touch when working with the wood. His facility as a surgeon was revealed. We painted the yacht a bright red.
When we came to launch it, the Star boat sailed in a lovely straight line. I was consumed by its aesthetic appeal. It looked like the most beautiful thing on earth as it cut across the shimmering lake surface. At night I dreamed of having a fleet of replica Star-boats. I imagined a mass start from the side of the dinghy, white sails catching the wind – all heeling simultaneously in the gusts and accelerating away. And I, the master of ceremony, would race ahead in the dinghy to set a finish line half a lake width away. Heart in mouth, I would watch the frontrunners arrive, water sweeping over their decks as they powered into my waiting hands. I imagined all the beautiful hulls, lined up on stands on the floorboards of the dinghy - vermillion red, royal blue, racing green, brilliant orange, black . . . And all the white sails cracking in the summer wind.
In the last week of the school holiday, our mood began to alter. Apprehension began to seep insidiously into the family. For a start, Richard would soon have to leave, to attend the medical school in Otago. Julia was fretting about the imminent departure of her first boy, Already; she had broken down at the kitchen sink, becoming inconsolable as she worked her fears of loss into a fever. And Graham, the perennial novice at dealing with emotion, stood helplessly at the kitchen door, his voice high and incredulous as he absorbed her mind-state. Only Isobel seemed able to calm her down, standing behind her and rubbing the small of her back with delicate fingers.
For me, the end of the holiday meant the end of isolation. I would have to reacquaint myself with the vagaries of friendships – the imposition of peer-group. Used to solitude, or the comfortable presence of Isobel, the looming school days began to eat away inside.
Towards the end of our final week, we made our customary journey to a lonely lunch-spot, far along the eastern shore. The sky was a vivid blue, the brilliant light blinding in its intensity. The forest was limp in the fierce heat – the stony beach so hot that it couldn’t be traversed without footwear. To the south, the mountains were virtually bereft of snow, the slate grey peaks shimmering behind a heat haze. After lunch, a light breeze sprung out of the north corner, bringing some relief from the cruel sun, and providing power for the gorgeous Star-boat. I tracked behind it, sprawled across a green lilo. The wind gusts began to firm, heeling the Star boat dramatically, so that its mast almost dipped in the water. The small amount of lead tacked to the keel was proving ineffective in the stronger breeze. Thus I loaded the windward side with stones, providing additional counterbalance to the heeling moment of the sails. Released from the shore with its crew of stones, the Star-boat took off at tremendous speed and I had to paddle furiously to keep up. I was unable to make much headway, the gap increasing, and before my eyes a catastrophe unfolded. A wake, the trail of a passing motorboat, swept to the shore, destabilising my Star boat. The counterbalancing stones were swept across the deck, down into the leeward side of the cockpit. The little yacht staggered as the force of the wind on the sails and the errant stones upset its balance. I watched it capsize, the submerged mast skewing up to windward, revealing the bright red of its bottom. At first I was unconcerned and I paddled at moderate pace towards the beleaguered vessel. However, I became aware of a disturbing development. The red topside was slowly disappearing beneath the waves. Choking with consternation, I flailed at the water with both my arms, in a bid to rescue my craft. I looked up again and it was gone. Arriving at the scene, I peered into the depths. For a moment I could see it – a flash of red and white beneath the irregular surface. In that split second, if I had dived, I surely would have saved it. But I hesitated, and even to this day, I think about that hesitation. My lovely Star-boat was lost forever. I hovered over the spot for a while, trying to catch a glimpse of where the vessel might have come to rest on the lake floor. But it was clearly too deep, and the water surface too rough, to allow any view. I could see only the deep green of a bottomless shaft of light. Despondent, I began to paddle the hundred or so yards back to the shore. I began to anticipate an unburdening of my grief on the family. I needed words of sympathy – from Julia – from Isobel. I stepped out of the rippling lake, indignant, dripping water over the stones. I found that my story didn’t have the required listener. Julia turned her head towards me, but nothing seemed to register with her. She appeared to look right through me. And Graham was rolled away from her, his face buried in a book.
“There’s been an argument, “Isobel whispered in an ear.
“What about,” I hissed
“I don’t know – something that happened years ago.” She shrugged her shoulders and we wandered off along the stony beach, seeking better air.
A few days went by without incident. But on the second from last day of our holiday, it all happened again. It was shortly after lunch. The family members were sluggish, being as they were stricken with the task of digesting Julia’s sumptuous pasta meal. Graham and Isobel were recumbent on their beds, while Julia finished off the kitchen clean-up with deft movements of a cloth. Richard was sitting in an old armchair. Julia went through to the master bedroom and there was indistinct conversation. However within minutes there was an eruption
“Graham!” The strident tone of Julia’s call shook me. I was halfway up from the recumbent position when he burst out of the room. And she followed. A slanging match ensued. The names of Francis and Margot cropped up.
Isobel came across the room and grasped an elbow, propelling me outside with pressure from the other hand on the small of my back. We trekked down a narrow bush track to join the road to the lake-front. “Why do Mum and Dad argue like that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. We left the road and began crossing a field to the water’s edge.
“Is it to do with Margot?” I said.
“Maybe,” she said. “They always argue on holidays.”
I figured out that Isobel knew more than she was letting on. The sun emerged from behind a puffy afternoon cumulus. We lay back on the stony beach, the sun’s rays beating down on our faces. I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the warmth. I felt fingers entwining with mine. Gently we exchanged hand pressure, silent as the final hours of our vacation slid away.
Richard duly departed for Dunedin, to commence his tenure at medical school. On the day of his leaving, we all piled into the Vanguard six, and Graham drove us to the Newman’s Bus station. All the way there, Julia cried quietly, hanging her head in the front seat. Richard looked pale and uncomfortable. The time had come for farewell. Richard shook hands with Graham, Isobel and I. Julia dissolved into guttural sobs, as he held her awkwardly in emb
race. He made his escape onto the bus. Isobel crossed to hold Julia as the air breaks gasped and the door closed with a smooth hydraulic sigh. The bus lurched out of its shelter, the left indicator blinking. We were left to savour a plume of diesel, and the sudden quiet of an empty shed full of echoes.
A few weeks went by and we soon adapted to the new set up without Richard. I didn’t take much further interest in the lot of my parents, being absorbed by my re-acquaintance with school. When Richard did return, at the end of the first semester, it was all rather anticlimactic. I had been walking home from school, my shoes covered in the browns, reds and golds of decaying leaves. I walked into the kitchen to see Richard sitting on a chair. Home from University so soon? I was puzzled – and disappointed. I had hoped he would return as a clone of the fashion gurus of the day. That meant shoulder length hair and a Beatle fringe, tight jeans and winkle-pickers. Instead he was unchanged. I said hello awkwardly, grabbed a biscuit and trooped off to another room.
I remember well my first visit to the hospital. Graham’s Aunt Daisy was on her last legs and we all trooped in to see her. Our footfalls echoed along the silent interminable corridor. It was night-time. In the waxed floor, the reflections of fluorescent tubes drifted underfoot one by one, until we ascended a long ramp to some swing doors. Graham held them open so that Julia, Isobel and I could pass through. A coarse brown carpet stretched out along the ward corridor to a nurse’s station at the far end. A woman wearing a white uniform and veil arose and came to meet us.
“She’s just woken up doctor,” she said, “just this very minute.”
She led us to a room, about halfway along the corridor. She stood aside to let us enter. She smiled down at me, her large round face a picture of benevolence. I braced myself for the jolt of the room’s interior. A porcelain hand basin with a long swinging tap dominated one corner. A white set of draws, with quartz knobs and steel wheels, stood alongside the bed. On its formica top, there was a glass vase holding some yellow carnations. The iron bedstead itself was cantilevered in the middle, so that the top half of Daisy was elevated. Her blankets were thrown back so only her legs were covered. Her pyjama jacket was half open, revealing a large bra and rib anatomy like a zebra crossing down an emaciated torso. Julia went forward to kiss a cheek. The rest of us stood around the bed end, like freshman interns on a ward round.
“We’ve brought your niece and nephew to see you.” Graham said.
Daisy looked across at us, but said nothing. There was a loaded silence, broken only by the muffled sound of voices from further down the ward.
“Come up and see Daisy,” Julia said. “She wants to see you.”
Isobel shot forward, kissed a cheek, and then bolted back to the bed-end. Julia looked at me expectantly. I dragged myself forward to the head of the bed. Close to Daisy, there was a rancid musty smell. I could see the outlines of mandible, maxilla and zygoma beneath the waxy pale skin. I stood staring, leaning against the mattress of his bed. Her eyes flicked over me transiently, before looking away into the distance, beyond the end of the bed. “Can you bring me in some lemonade Julia?” she asked.
We stayed for ten more minutes of stilted conversation. On the pretext that Daisy needed more rest, Graham ushered us out. Glancing back, I got my final view of her, her semi propped up figure immobile on the bed, the eyes transfixed onto the opposite wall, the face solemn and expressionless. If I try, I can all too easily recall that final vision - a snapshot of an eighty year old, alone inside the western wall of her nephew’s hospital, her body ravaged by leukaemia, her yearning merely for the familiar comfort of lemonade – an old woman, no longer capable of elevation – not able to wander out into the balm of a hot summer evening.
Graham said I didn’t have to go to the funeral. Julia looked doubtful but I was relieved. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience, so if I could get out of it, well and good. But when Aunt Victoria arrived, my directive was changed. “Of course he has to go,” I heard her say, her voice displaying incredulity at her brother’s logic.
Uncle Bob added his two penny’s worth. “You can’t hide the kid away in a glass jar forever you know,” he said.
But Graham won the day. I wasn’t to go. He hated confronting emotional scenes himself so I guess his actions represented some sort of love.
Sometimes Isobel could be really immature. At times I felt she was younger than me, that it was I who carried the mantle of responsibility. Hadn’t she had to use my shoulder to cry on when Aunt Daisy died? In this vein, I was quite irked one day, when she rolled up with Turn! Turn! Turn! the Byrds second LP release. Surely the Byrds were mine. It was indisputably obvious to anyone with half a neurone, that I, Gerry Davenport, was the greater Byrd’s fan. Isobel was dabbling in all sorts of bands; the Beatles, the Stones, the Small Faces, The Who, the Yardbirds . . . But I, while appreciative of other things going on, (especially the dulcet tones of Rubber Soul), had played Mr Tambourine Man relentlessly. I was more familiar with the sound-scape of that record, than with any other phenomenon in my life. Hence it was a shock to be summoned to Isobel’s room, to partake in the unveiling of the follow-up.
She had it lying out on her bed. “Look what I’ve got,” she said. I stared at the cover in disbelief. The front was an enchanting sky blue colour. The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn! the title read. I scooped up the cover, to absorb the new images of my heroes. The fringes were longer, the clothes more bizarre. McGuinn wore rectangular sunglasses. With consternation, I understood the magnitude of Isobel’s crime against me. I bared my teeth and went for her, scratching at her eyeballs with clawed fingers. Her face was flushed with righteousness, her lips full and pouting. With her height, she was easily able to fend me off. It was like Don Clarke against the college under-twelves.
“You don’t own the Byrds,” she sneered.
For a while, I pretended to be disinterested in Turn! Turn! Turn! If she knew I was in the vicinity, she would have the volume right up. I imagined her sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the black disc spinning on the turntable, her smug face watching the door expectantly, waiting for it to creak open. However, whenever she was out, I was into her room like a hungry dog, sliding Turn! Turn! Turn! on to the turntable, inhaling the glue-like smell of the cover, and staring enviously at the creators of the magical sound. I was in raptures with this new Byrdsian experience. It was a beautiful moment when the title track chimed into my head. Oh the magic of that formula – the twelve string guitar and the gorgeous harmonies. And then . . . It won’t be wrong. Although a very short song, it was drowned in electric twelve string, and thick with layers of voice – the voices laden with belief. Belief in love! And I already had an idea of what lay ahead from my encounters with Isobel. It was of great import. I played and played and played Turn! Turn! Turn! For me each exposure was ethereal, cosmic – a lovely delirium.
Eventually Isobel lost interest in Turn! Turn! Turn! She had being captured by the pounding beat of the Rolling Stones. Accordingly, I was able to sequester the disc away across the corridor. It came to rest against its forebear, Mr Tambourine Man, like a brand new and revered sibling. I would lie down prone, to gaze at the two covers, set down side by side on the carpet, my chest swollen with yearning. What was it all about? They were icons, but of what? Future love, or the promise of afterlife? I had no idea, but I knew it was real. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be a Byrd when I grew up.
It’s hard to believe, but a year later we had all but forgotten about the Byrds. Marcy had arrived on the scene. She was the daughter of a young widow on Collingwood Street. She had a flat face with a long thin nose, hazelnut Asian eyes and the straightest hair you could imagine. At first I resented her, taking as she did my Isobel’s attention. After a while though, I put aside the bad thoughts. Marcy had ingratiated her way into my heart as well. It helped that she was an only child. I became the brother she had never had. She was affectionate and adventurous. Also, she had a street credibility that Isobel and I could only aspire t
o.
By the summer of 1968, Isobel and Marcy were inseparable. The girls were now sixteen and very impressionable. And, they were out to make an impression themselves. Even Graham had come to accept Marcy’s almost daily presence in our house. That was until the night of the BMA dinner.
There was no inkling of the trouble to come as Graham in his tuxedo, and Julia wrapped in furs, disappeared behind the closing front door. Of course the expectation was for Isobel and Marcy to get me to bed by eight-thirty, and then to amuse themselves quietly, until the British Medical Association members had smoked their last cigars and drained the last bottle of port.
Things went to plan until a phone call at eight o’clock. At the time I was lying stomach first on the living room floor, trying to read, and half listening to Revolver on the big gramophone. From the kitchen I could hear Marcy’s voice, laughing and shrieking into the telephone receiver. The phone call was followed by furious whispering. Tentative footsteps had me on full alert as the two girls approached me. It was like a deputation. Isobel was coquettish, Marcy ingratiating. “There are two boys coming around to play some records,” Marcy said, exchanging glances with her friend.
“You don’t mind, do you Gerry?” Isobel said.
I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I hated having to meet new people.
They came with a stack of long-players and a crate of beer. Paul and Roger. Paul was the dominant one, short with prominent rubbery lips and greasy side burns. Rodger was tall and willowy and didn’t say much. He had long curly hair, thinning on top and a smile like George Harrison.
Paul opened four of the bottles by using another bottle to lever the caps off. I could tell he was well practiced at the art, since the four tops came off in rapid succession, each with an ominous popping sound. I didn’t need to be a genius to work out that trouble was afoot. Revolver was replaced with something called Disraeli Gears. The music was harsh and grungy. I didn’t like it much. It scared me. The behaviour of the teens became more and more loose. They began to dance, closing their eyes and flailing their way about the room. Except Roger. He stood as if in a trance. His feet stayed planted on the carpet. His hips swayed a little while his arms seemed to have minds of their own. His fingers were splayed wide as his hands glided in front of him like aerobatic magic carpets. Paul was more like a jumping-jack firecracker, an enclosed fist punching the air in front of half lidded eyes, as he bounced up and down, his movement about the floor quite unpredictable. I cowered into one corner of a couch, watching as the dishevelled lads dismembered the crate of beer. Bottles had their tops wrenched off, a quick swig taken and then put down on the carpet, sometimes to be forgotten about. One bottle was kicked over accidentally and its contents sprayed the carpet with an arc of froth.
Marcy drifted my way as if a cork bobbing on the swirl and surge of a tide. Her hair was matted into straight clumps, whiles her blouse, beer-soaked at the neck, was hanging out of her jeans. As she swept away from my immediate vicinity, she was replaced by a dreamy Isobel. My sister’s facial muscles were totally relaxed. Her expression said it all. She had arrived! However her demeanour changed when she noticed my worried face. “You’d better come with me,” she shouted above the din.
I took her hand and ran the gauntlet across a carpet strewn with debris – scattered bottles and artefacts brought down off tables and shelves. “Don’t worry.” Isobel said, as she pulled back my bed covers. I fell onto the bed, mentally and physically spent. She hugged and kissed me in the dark, as though it was our last day on earth. Or perhaps she was transmitting her elation to me. In any case she was soon gone, her hair flicking across my eyes as she left. Tired as I was, sleep didn’t even gain a toe hold as I lay and fretted about the uproar below. How did they know the time that Graham and Julia would arrive back home? Did Isobel have some kind of death-wish?
Half an hour must have past and then someone came. Marcy. Her top was off. I could see a streak of illumination running along the curve of a clavicle and the intersecting bra strap. She unbuttoned her jeans and let them slip to the floor. She climbed in beside me. “You don’t mind do you?” she laughed. Her breath reeked of beer. It wasn’t unpleasant though. It was earthy, organic, like a sunny vegetable patch. She put her arms around me. “You’re my little brother aren’t you?” she said. She propped herself up on one elbow and peered at me. “Do you think I’m beautiful?” she asked.
I nodded in the darkness. I really did.
She lay flat, right up against me. “I bet you’d love to see my breasts.” she said. She was right. I looked down. Her bra was loosened by her posture. I could see the two small mounds of white flesh with their pert nipples quite easily. I nodded again. “Hey! You’re only allowed a quick look” she said.
It wasn’t clear in my mind what ‘sexy’ meant, but I knew it was a word of the utmost cool. I felt sure it had something to do with breasts such as these. I lay with my face jammed into her neck, assailed by salty sweat and heat, my eyes peering down at the rise and fall of her chest. I felt her relaxing into the shape of the mattress and I did likewise, rearranging my limbs comfortably about her. It was all very pleasant and natural - and soporific.
When it all ended, I reacted slowly to the flood of light, clumsily adjusting to the rush of cold air as the blankets were whipped back. As consciousness returned, I noticed Marcy had been ejected and was scrambling into her clothes. Graham was lost for words, coughing and spluttering in his incredulity. When he’d given Marcy a lecture, I half rolled to watch him leave. Through watery eyes I saw another figure in the doorway. It was Julia, her face a mask, her lips a straight line. For a second our eyes met and a corner of her mouth betrayed a developing trace of amusement.
The likes of Paul and Roger never graced our doorstep again. And Marcy too was gone. I’d see her occasionally, waving to me from the pillion seat of a motorbike. Cloaked in a leather jacket, with ringlets in her wild hair, and dozens of shiny bangles jangling up her arms, she was lost to the realm of ‘the heavies.’ Within a few months she had left school. Education was distinctly uncool.
Isobel copped a curfew for a while. From that day on, she made sure her night time frolics were conducted elsewhere in the town, well out of Graham’s orbit. She accepted the loss of Marcy resolutely, as if it all went with the territory – part of the baggage that went with having a father who had failed to adjust to the times. As if to alleviate the boredom, she took to eating. Anything with cream was her speciality. Her skin took on a pasty hue, as her figure was slowly transformed. Saddled with unfashionable weight, she took refuge in her room, reading novels and playing records, emerging dreamily for meals. In the summer, she took a towel to a far corner of the garden, to bake under a punishing sun.
Entering adolescence, I was too wrapped up in my own disequilibrium to react much to Isobel’s decline. Occasionally though, I would regress to former times, and lie along her roasting back, silently luxuriating in a few stolen moments of human contact. She would ignore me, her denial of the contact perhaps recognition of its apparent impropriety.
When she departed for Otago University in 1971 I could sense that she thought her jail sentence was over and real life was about to begin. And maybe it did, for when she returned the following May, her figure was trim again, there was pink on her cheeks and a lustre in her hair. She walked with poise and spoke with authority.
She had news for me. It was about us, the Davenports. While walking down to a lecture one afternoon, there before her eyes was the immaculate coiffure, the neatly ironed pleats of Margo. Delighted to see Isobel after so many years, Margo had taken her out to dinner that very night. It was as though the old friends of yesteryear were back together again – Margo and Julia. Isobel made a good substitute for Julia since as had been the case before, cigarettes were alight and the air was resonant with confidences. And the confidence to beat them all – the one that had Isobel’s jaw in her lap, was this. In the early fifties, before I was born, Julia had had an affair with Fran
cis Urquhart. There had been drastic consequences – Graham and Julia’s marriage had only just survived, while Francis and Margo’s had dissolved permanently. Intriguingly, Francis had disappeared, never to be heard of again.
I was similarly dumbstruck as Isobel had been. My parents – suddenly they had a history – a huge and unexpected history. Some behaviour, some actions – there might now be an explanation for them . . .
Chapter 7
