‘Well!’ says Gran, as excited as the Japanese. ‘The heavens open.’
Heavens. God. Consolation and conscience.
‘Gran?’ I say, watching out the window, seeing the back carriages as the train curves around the gorge. I want to seem casual and uncaring, but I don’t know how. ‘Why would you worry about conscience?’
She’s staring at the rain. She looks at me, but shuts her mouth tight, lips pressed together.
Don’t button up, Gran. Please. Not now. I think I know. I’m sure I know. It fits. If you know the rest, it fits.
‘On your right,’ Duncan starts up, ‘the vast and fierce Taramakau, an alluvial gold-mining river. Known as the “Terrible Cow” by early Westland settlers. And you can see why today …’
The river’s vast all right, and ripping through the valley; tree trunks hurtle downstream; a sheep carcass sweeps past on the dirty water. The valley is under assault, sheep and cattle huddled, farmhouses curtained, no humans in sight.
Gran’s still looking at me. I smile, just a bit, and decide to take a risk — a calculated risk — because I can feel the certainty welling in me, ripe for confirmation.
‘Do you come over here a lot?’ I ask, looking away, making it unimportant.
‘On your left,’ says Duncan, at just the wrong moment, ‘the historic Jacksons Hotel, established 1870, scene of many a …’
‘How often do you come over here?’ I ask loudly, forgetting tactics. If she gets distracted she’ll go blank, I know it, or she’ll bring up Lenora, the war, a slight from last century; she’ll slide backwards into the senile bog.
‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,’ she says.
I think and think, try to remember the important events, try to reassemble the the chronology. Pops back from the war. Disaster. Pops breaks down. Sunnyside. Back home. Back to Sunnyside. Back home — yes, he’s in and out, he’s in and out during 1946—
‘Is there a Hillary Clinton on board, a Hillary Clinton?’ says Duncan.
What?
‘Your husband is on the phone for you, Hillary.’
‘Who’s Hillary?’ says Gran, looking round.
‘Just kidding, folks,’ croons Duncan.
‘Do you go when your husband is in the, um, the hospital?’ I ask Gran.
‘Go where?’ says Gran. ‘Husband?’
Try repetition. ‘You deserve a consolation,’ I say.
She stares at me, an idiot child. ‘Time for a nice cup of tea. They haven’t given us one cup of tea.’
The disappointment is like an ache. I hardly feel exasperated with her, just tired and hopeless and weepy. My eyes brim and I turn away, look out the window at the sodden landscape.
We’re heading north briefly, towards Moana, Lake Brunner, cold and inhospitable, and as I think of the lake, Sonny — banished briefly with the excitement of that intuitive leap — comes loping back into my thoughts. And suddenly the combination of Gran’s sealed-off mind and Sonny, also cloistered and unreachable but somehow right there, too, outside the train window in every part of the West Coast — bush, river, lake, flax, soggy paddock, bowed foxglove, red tin roof, barbed fence and single, forgotten, rusting piece of track — suddenly he’s too much and she’s too much, and the train trip’s a disaster and there’s worse to come, it’s all too much, and though I don’t wail or sob, a shudder goes through me and my lips quiver and, fingers pressed into eyes and knuckles hard against the window, I cry at the hopelessness of it all, the gone-to-ruin, the miscarriage of all my plans and dreams.
‘If you had to choose,’ Brenna said, ‘had to choose to be on a desert island with one of them, who would you choose: your Gran, your Da, or Sister Colleen?’ She was in my bed, blowing smoke rings and plotting the ruin of the educational establishment, Sister Colleen, in particular.
‘Death by disembowelment,’ I said. Sister Colleen had put us both on points notice for smoking in the senior commonroom toilets and had informed us that despite our academic records we had little chance of being considered for School Council.
‘Your sense of social responsibility is that of a pre-schooler, Miss Callaghan,’ said Brenna, her lips stretched thin like Sister Colleen’s.
‘And your insolence, Madam, is beyond belief, even allowing for the dismal example of your home environment.’ I tried to assume a pinched and pale aspect. ‘What does she know about your home environment?’
‘Bitch,’ said Brenna.
‘You could still get a Scholarship,’ I said, wondering if I could too.
‘I might,’ said Brenna idly. ‘If I feel like it. This year I aim to please myself and no one—’
‘She’s all yours, lovey.’ Jess Morton’s head appeared round the door. ‘We’ve been good today,’ said Jess, effortlessly adopting the first-person-plural for her charge. ‘Busy packing, of course, but full of stories.’
‘Poor you,’ I said.
‘Not at all,’ said Jess, unbuttoning the pale-green work smock she insisted on wearing. ‘I love a good story, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. And getting paid for it.’ She folded the smock and put it in her woven carrier bag. ‘Tell your mother I’ve vacuumed and folded the washing and marinated that chicken.’
‘Thanks a bundle, Jess,’ I said.
‘And how’s your young man?’ said Jess, in no hurry to get home.
‘Oh, you know,’ I said, not looking at Brenna; not looking at the postcards on my desk which I’d stacked one behind the other so no one would notice there had been no additions for a while; not looking at the photo of Sonny on my shelf, his facial expression, once intriguingly unreadable, now capable of a dozen interpretations, all of them bad. ‘You know,’ I said to Jess Morton’s nosy face. ‘Coping.’
‘Perhaps you should quiz Jess at the end of every day,’ said Brenna, when Jess had finally gone. ‘Maybe your Gran’ll let out something to her.’
‘The Mission’s over,’ I said. I gave my bag a kick; it was packed to the gunnels with school books. ‘Too much work. Too little return. Too frustrating.’
‘Never say die,’ said Brenna, looking in the cigarette packet and finding it empty. ‘Shit.’
‘It was doomed,’ I said. ‘So we killed it.’ Finn had ceremoniously hung up his Jake hat the night before school. ‘Till further developments,’ he’d said. ‘Not that I’m holding my breath.’
‘You look pretty doomed yourself,’ she said, getting off the bed. ‘C’mon, we need some more ciggies.’
‘Look,’ she said as I trudged beside her, staring ground-ward, ‘we’ve done three weeks already, Ross gets back next Thursday, the lance-corporal’ll be here in eight weeks. So your family tree’s still got a massive question mark over it — so what? We’re young, sexy, and smart, which is more than you can say for Sister Colleen, the old harpy.’
‘I do like it when you talk dirty,’ I said, making her laugh. I looked around, at the willows in full late-summer leaf, at the rowers exercising over the other side of the river, at the shasta daisies, leggy and dishevelled, in the gardens along Locksley Ave, at the gauzy blue sky. I smiled at Brenna, quickened my step, tried hard to pull myself together.
It was fifty-four days since I’d heard from Sonny and I knew without doubt that something was wrong. I had no idea what. And a strange paralysis, half hope, half despair, stopped me from admitting it to anyone, or doing a single thing about it.
‘Jess’s turned out to be a stroke of genius, don’t you think?’ said Dad.
I was watching the late news. Bosnia was on, but there was nothing new or revealing. Just the usual blasted buildings, the stories of near-starvation and lack of water, the caved-in, haunted faces of Muslims, the wailing babies and desperate mothers, the guns and tanks and grubby-faced soldiers. And the catalogue of names, as familiar to us now as nursery rhymes: Karadzic, Mladic, Izetbegovic, Abdic. No sign of peace. Or peacekeepers.
‘No thanks to you,’ I said.
He was lying on the couch, one eye on the TV, but mostly on h
is new tennis book: Winning Ugly. There was a picture of a crazed, choleric player, his mouth stretched wide, his fist taut with tension. Mental warfare in tennis, said the subtitle.
‘What’s your problem, Buttercup?’ he said.
‘The tragic spectacle you offer.’
‘I thought you were giving up this baiting for the new year?’ Mum, with biscuits.
‘She started it,’ said Dad, very childish. He offered Mum his feet for massage.
‘You heard from Sonny this week, darling?’ she asked, after she’d watched the news for thirty seconds.
This week? They were so absorbed by their own tedious lives — all their counselling and draughting and money and friends and relatives and tennis and mothers-in-law and social life — that they hardly bothered to notice what was going on in my life. They were so wrapped up in themselves and each other they hadn’t even noticed I’d had no mail for fifty-six days. Not that I wanted them to.
‘What’s it to you?’ I said, knowing perfectly well I was being contrary and horrible.
‘Just inquiring.’
‘Newsflash,’ said Finn from the doorway. ‘I’ve decided to join the chess club and the computer club.’
‘What about sport, my boy?’ said Dad, faux-bass.
‘What else but?’ said Finn, bringing out his racquet from behind his back.
‘Yes!’ said Dad, smashing the air with his fist.
‘Crawler,’ I said to Finn, leaving. ‘Eager-beaver. Nerd.’
‘Yesterday,’ he sang softly.
I couldn’t stand sitting in there listening to their Happy Families banter. I couldn’t stand being alone in my bedroom either because I brooded on Sonny. I stood in the hall between my room and the living room and watched Gran come towards the front door with her suitcases. I couldn’t stand being in the hall, either.
I went upstairs and sat in the bay window of Mum and Dad’s room and looked out over Kerr’s Reach; at the seagulls thronging, diving at the water; at the wooden dinghy banging against the weed of the far bank; at the lights going off one by one in the rowing club.
I thought I’d resurrect my diary.
Dearest Sonny, I wrote, The more things change the more they stay the same. Our family may have been irrevocably changed by the hidden life of my grandparents, but you’d never know it. I’ve been irrevocably changed by falling in love with you — but, here I am, my life exactly the same as it was a year ago.
I’ve made a list, Sonny, of reasons why you’re not writing:
1. You’re dead
2. You’re lost and amnesiac
3. You’ve fallen out of love with me because:
a) I’m too young
b) you never saw our relationship as long term
c) my letters showed you a different me and you didn’t like it
d) the not being cousins did make a difference
e) you’ve fallen in love with someone else
It can’t be 1 or 2 because it’d be in the news. So it must be 3 and if it’s 3 then I don’t think I can bear it because I felt like the rest of my life was somehow entwined with yours. Maybe that shows I really am young. And dumb.
But I can’t believe you’d just fall out of love, Sonny, because I can remember everything we said and did and I can’t believe it would just evaporate.
Brenna’d believe it, but she’s cynical about love because of her parents. That’s why I’m not telling her because she’d just say, there’s blokes for you, girl, and then it really would seem true. And you’re not just a bloke.
I try to imagine you, Sonny, in Bosnia, not writing to me, and I think you’d feel bad about that. But then I think, maybe I don’t know you well after all. I’m confused, Sonny. And I miss you heaps. Love, Charlie Mike X
He’ll never read that, I thought, looking over the agitated words. No one would read it. But it made me feel the minutest bit better. Maybe he wasn’t going to send me any more letters. But I could still write to him. So what if the letters were unposted?
‘And have you been here long?’ Gran asked Dad, most amiably, at dinner the next night.
‘Ah … no,’ said Dad, taking a stab at it. ‘Just a few days, actually. What about you?’
‘I don’t stay here, dear,’ said Gran. ‘I’m just visiting, but I like to take a meal occasionally.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Dad. He looked questioningly at Mum. ‘Where are we exactly?’
‘Hotel, maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘Boarding house? Hospital?’
‘Nut house, I reckon,’ said Finn. ‘Visiting you-know-who.’
‘Christ, you’re probably right,’ said Dad. ‘Probably thinks I’m an inmate.’
‘Resident,’ said Mum.
‘She wouldn’t be far off,’ I said.
‘I don’t think much of the food, though,’ said Gran, pushing her plate away. ‘I’ll just have a nice cup of tea, thank you.’ She widened her eyes at Mum, then suddenly looked rather confused.
‘Cup of tea coming up,’ said Mum.
‘Look at the time,’ said Gran. ‘Must pack.’ She got up. ‘I suppose the taxi’ll come to the door.’
‘Don’t see why it would start now, since it hasn’t in the last three years,’ muttered Dad. ‘She seem more confused to you?’ he asked me.
‘Averagely bonkers,’ I said, sorry for him.
‘Do you think she’s lost condition lately?’ he asked Mum.
‘Jess gives her a cooked lunch. Don’t worry.’
He looked unconvinced. ‘But if she becomes incontinent, Cush, that’s it, we draw the line, okay? That’d be just too much.’
‘Hello Nurse Maude,’ I said.
‘Don’t be callous,’ said Mum.
‘Don’t worry, Ma.’ Finn put his arm round Mum. ‘I’ll marry someone caring and good to her mother-in-law, like you, and we’ll have you when you’re old.’
‘Finn,’ I said, kindly. ‘Don’t get your hopes up about marriage. I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.’
He smiled, thoroughly fetching, thoroughly convinced of his own attractions.
I looked at him standing with his arm around Mum’s waist and thought, as I had numerous times before, how strange it was that Dad almost never touched Gran. No hugs, no arms round the shoulders, no pecks on Gran’s cheek. Once or twice I could remember him taking her arm to help her up or down a step. She didn’t like it.
What a pair. I began clearing the table.
Poor old Dad; he had his hand on the cover of Winning Ugly, ready to read but temporarily preoccupied.
‘She’ll be right, Dad,’ I said, resting my fingers briefly, an almost-caress, on his shoulder as I went past.
Dearest Sonny, I wrote in my diary, To make myself feel better today I told Brenna about our times at the motel. It sort of worked but then, later, I felt bereft all over again. It’s sixty days since I heard from you and three weeks since I wrote you, which you must have noticed by now. Are you glad my letters have dried up? Or relieved? Or guilty? Or sorry? I try to imagine what could have happened in your head to make you just stop, but I can’t.
Yesterday I convinced myself that someone had sabotaged your mail and it’s only now you’ve realised I’m not getting it and any day now you’ll phone. But you’re not a phoning person.
Tonight I found myself saying silently: Bloody God, why did you promise me so much pleasure and possibility, then take it away? What sort of power trip is that?
On a more prosaic level, Sonny, school is all right. Sister Colleen is under control. I’m trying to work, despite my heavy heart. Excuse the melodrama. 99 Locksley Ave is still a home for the terminally confused, but now there are three of us. I miss you more than you’ll ever know. Love, Charlie Mike X
I sat at my desk, not studying, staring at the pile of Bosnian postcards but thinking about Gran during the war, writing to Somewhere in Europe, telling Pops about her tedious days and solitary nights, telling him how much she missed him, how she hoped he was safe and well, how everything woul
d be all right when the war was over and he was home. Life would begin again.
I thought about Gran, shattered but stoical in her own pursed-lip way. I thought about her daring (probably desperate) infidelity and her determined secret. I thought about her mostly lonely parenting, the old puffed-up pride in her boy, her puzzlement or disapproval now when confronted with that same son. I thought about her distracted, compulsive rituals, her reduced capacity and lost dignity, her random, garbled life.
I left my desk and hurried down the hall, through the kitchen to her bedroom. The television was on but she wasn’t watching it. She was on her knees, back to the door, beside the open suitcases, sorting the clothes.
‘Gran?’ I said, kneeling beside her.
‘Hello, dear. I’m hurrying.’ She wrapped a pair of shoes in a much-creased brown paper bag.
‘You know me, don’t you, Gran?’
‘No silly games, please.’
I wanted to tell her something; something that had meaning, something that would stay with her, that might compensate for all my ill-will, my unloving jokes and mutterings …
‘Gran?’
‘What is it, girl?’ Her hands were busy, pushing socks, hankies, underwear into the corner of the suitcase, smoothing the fronts of folded jerseys, old knitted skirts.
I put my hand over one of her hands, held it, high-veined and spotted, tried to say what I wanted to say.
‘It’s the taxi, is it?’ she said. ‘No need to say goodbye, dear. I won’t be away for ever.’ She shook my hand off.
I sort of love you, Gran, I said to myself, kissing her quickly on the inward curve of her left cheek.
‘You should read this,’ said Finn, throwing a paperback towards me. I was lying on my bed, not reading any Anne books. ‘It’s a chess thriller.’
‘Not into reading at the moment. And I’m never into chess. As you well know.’
Love, Charlie Mike Page 14
