Singularity

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Emily turned; her mother was standing in the doorway. Beth gave Per a steady, significant stare. Then she turned away and disappeared around the side of the bach, heading for the outside toilet.

  Per looked after her, scratching his chin. He glanced at Emily, and she knew, because she knew Per better than anyone, that he was checking to see whether she’d noticed the look — the kind of glare Beth gave Per when there’d been angry voices in the night, sudden eruptions of rage that were followed by cold silences, words heavy with hidden meaning.

  Emily looked up at Per with an open, innocent face, pretending she hadn’t noticed. But he knew she had — she could tell. He picked up the peeling knife, weighed it in his hand, and, with an antic flourish, hurled it away into the bush. Emily laughed. He made a comical face, and stuck a piece of orange peel on his nose.

  They went inside.

  Emily’s brother Larry had a map spread out on the table in front of him. He was explaining about tracks, and Beth was half-listening and grappling with their little sister Marie. Beth dumped Marie in Per’s lap and leaned over the map.

  ‘You come out at the beach,’ Larry was saying.

  ‘Would we meet you down there?’ Beth asked distractedly, taking a jar from Marie. She looked at Per, over Marie’s head. She was trying to think of a way to punish him. He had a will of iron. And he always thought he was right.

  ‘You can take Sam with you,’ she told Larry. Sam was a boy of five who was being dropped off with them that day, while his parents went back to town for supplies.

  Per gazed out the window, over the bush. His mouth was slightly open; he had a sudden, vacant look. He was thinking of his studio in town. They hadn’t yet run out of supplies, and there was no excuse for him to drive back to the city and spend some hours alone in the silence of the empty house. They had the whole six weeks at the bach, crowded in together with the noisy children. It was luxury to drive the hour back to the hot, musty closed-up house, to enter the quiet rooms where the sunlight shone dim and yellow through the curtains, to get on with some secret project, to drift about, make private phone calls, without some kid roaring in the background or Beth glaring because of last night’s argument. And then, after he’d done everything he wanted to do, he would go to the supermarket, and speed back to the bach in the evening. When could he make the next trip? In two days, he decided. But perhaps, today, he might slip away to the phone box at the beach, and put in a call to … He caught Beth’s eye. There was something bright, almost forensic in her stare.

  ‘Marie, no,’ Per said, snatching up the butter knife, and the little girl jumped and began to screech.

  Larry was measuring out distances on the map. ‘It’ll take a few hours,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking important.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Beth sighed to Marie. She took the little girl out of Per’s lap and set her down on the floor.

  Larry traced the track with his finger. ‘It’s called the Pararaha Gorge. The track takes you to the sea, then you walk around the rocks back to Karekare. Or over the Zion Ridge if the tide’s too far in.’

  ‘Good,’ Beth said. ‘Will you need lunch?’

  Larry was the eldest. He led and Emily followed. It was Larry who’d decided, that summer, that they would look for green geckoes up the Ahu Ahu Track, Larry who’d led the lizard expedition during which, to Beth’s surprise, they had actually found two of the bright green native geckoes in the ti-trees just off the track, and brought them triumphantly home in an ice-cream carton. He had designed a habitat and researched the geckoes’ diet; he’d shown Emily how to feed them mosquitoes and flies, and they’d thrived and eventually even bred. It was Larry who’d made and stocked the salt water aquarium that had kept him and Emily absorbed for weeks, hauling water up from the bay in buckets to keep the creatures alive. Larry who read geology books and took Emily (and Beth, lugging Marie) fossil hunting, who knew the names of different types of rocks, who made lists and told them the names of insects and birds. Last year, when Per had had a job in London, Larry had got hold of a map of historic ruins and had led them all over Cornwall, finding ancient sites and burial mounds, Emily absorbed, their parents good-naturedly tagging along, enjoying the project themselves.

  Larry’s ideas usually turned out to be correct. He was only ten but clever and purposeful. And Beth, used to Larry being right, and distracted by vague thoughts of wifely revenge, only said, ‘I’ll make three lunches. You do your walk, and we’ll meet you at the end,’ and thought no more about it, but turned to fix her eye on Per, who didn’t look away this time but glared, and got up, and began to wash the dishes with terrible vigour, threatening to smash every plate to pieces.

  But it was while he was doing the dishes that he got his idea. It seemed so good that he stopped and stared into the soapy water. When Marie began to tug on his trouser leg he whipped around, picked her up, carried her out to Beth and put her down at his wife’s feet.

  ‘I’ve got to write something down. It won’t take long.’

  He went up the steps that led through the bush to his hut, a hundred metres above the bach. Up here he had his desk and a camp bed and some books. The bush had grown up around the hut, and possum droppings littered the path, and the wind sighed in the trees, sending twigs clattering onto the iron roof. Once when he was standing on the verandah a wild pig had crashed out of the bush and looked at Per with a hot, angry eye before crashing away over the hill.

  The room was hot and stuff y. He left the door open, took out the cigarettes hidden behind the copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and sat smoking at his desk, writing pages of notes. He had a horror of losing ideas. He had to get them down while they were fresh. Otherwise, with all the noise of the family, he might lose them for ever.

  He finished and sat back, relieved. His sudden clarity had to do with last night’s argument. Angry, unable to sleep, he had lain awake and the ideas had started whirling around in his mind, seeking their own form. Beside him, Beth was brooding, but he had floated away into his own secret territory. She’d sat up and delivered a fresh harangue and he’d felt as if she was calling to him from a long way off, through a locked gate. He saw a little figure calling in a tiny voice, through iron bars.

  He looked at his notes and felt happy. He thought of Beth tidying the bach, alone with Marie. He mustn’t let her grapple with that demanding kid on her own. He jumped up, locked the hut and jogged down through the bush to help.

  Up on Lone Kauri Road, the trampers reached the first track. Larry solemnly checked the map.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Emily said, and kicked him on the ankle.

  They entered the bush. The dirt track was narrow and deeply grooved; in winter it would turn into a slippery mudslide, but now it was dry, winding between spindly black trunks of the ti-tree that grew in a tunnel over it. It was downhill all the way and they ran it, hanging onto the trunks when they got up too much speed.

  Sam’s sandal came off. Emily held onto his tiny shin and fastened the strap. He was a quiet boy with small eyes set deep in a watchful, freckly face. He balanced himself, a hand on her shoulder.

  He said, ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Didn’t you have breakfast?’

  He shrugged.

  She gave him a packet of raisins

  When they caught up with Larry he was standing in front of a big green sign. PARARAHA GORGE, it said. WARNING. STEEP BLUFFS. FAST WATER. THIS TRACK IS FOR EXPERIENCED TRAMPERS ONLY.

  ‘Shit,’ Emily said.

  But Larry only said, ‘Right. On we go.’

  Emily followed him, anxious, protesting. But he was determined. ‘They always put signs like that,’ he said loftily. ‘It’s for fat old tourists.’

  The track levelled, the bush opened out, and soon they could hear water flowing. The sun beat down and Emily forgot about the sign as they joined the river and began walking on the grassy track alongside it. The river was broad and slow. She watched the insects zooming over the bus
h, the swirls and eddies in the clear water. The bush smelled spicy as the sun heated it.

  They came to a place where the river ran into a deep, dark pool. Sam shouted, ‘I saw an eel.’ They tried to find it, and bombed the pool with big rocks. They walked on and the gorge began to deepen, the hills rising high on either side. There were steep bluff s now, and the river was wider and faster, bordered by huge boulders that they had to clamber over, searching for the track on the other side. They came to waterfalls, where torrents of water smashed down into boiling pools and then rushed away over the rocks, the rapids whirling and roaring so that they had to shout to be heard. The spray rose and the drops of water hung sparkling in the bright light.

  They stopped on a clear bit of the riverbank and ate some sandwiches. Sam’s sandal kept slipping, and they tried to fix it, but he complained that it pinched his foot. Emily lay in the sun and felt it burning through her T-shirt. Her nose had begun to peel. They picked a target and idly threw stones at it, and they lift ed up rocks, trying to find freshwater crayfish.

  The sun made everything shine. The bush stretched away in all directions, tangled and dense. Emily watched a hawk floating high above the hills. Sam stood in the shallows on his spindly legs, poking in the water with a stick, hunting for creatures.

  Larry took up his map again, studying it in the important way that made Emily want to kick him. They packed up their things and went on.

  The track led them away from the river sometimes but always joined it again. They were right in the gorge now, the hills rising above them. They came to a place where the track narrowed and became a thin, sodden ledge.

  They hesitated. ‘Is there any other way?’ Emily asked. But there wasn’t. They didn’t want to leave the track. Soon they were walking beside a steep drop, and the track almost petered out. The river ran down a series of rapids and waterfalls, edged by boulders that progressed down the gorge like a giant staircase. They had to climb down the rocks, sitting down and slipping onto the next huge step, the enormous river rushing beside them, soaking their clothes. They had to guide Sam’s legs.

  It was slow going. Halfway down Emily looked back and saw the stone pathway rising behind them, the high bluff s looming against the blue sky and the water roaring over the lip of the waterfall, seeming to hang and drift in the air before it plunged down to the next level, exploding against the rocks below. She felt how tiny they were, just ants. She wished she hadn’t looked back.

  They were helping Sam down the last of the giant boulders when he slipped. He let out a howl of terror as he felt himself falling. Emily and Larry lunged at the same time, pulling him away from the edge. They steadied him and looked down into the foaming cauldron below. Emily closed her eyes and saw two tiny legs disappearing into the green water. Sam sat hunched on the rock, shivering.

  Emily grabbed Larry’s arm and shouted over the roar of the water, ‘It’s your fault. The sign. We shouldn’t’ve. He’s too small. It’s too big.’ Jabbing her finger at the river of boulders.

  Larry hesitated. He looked at where they’d come from and then looked downstream to where the river raced away around a bend in the gorge. She could see what he was thinking. They couldn’t go back. They couldn’t pull Sam all the way up that jumble of boulders again; he was too small. It was too dangerous.

  But what would they find if they went on?

  Beth lay in the warm water of the lagoon. The cliff rose above her and ripples of heat danced along the black sand. From a distance Per and Marie could see her figure in its pink bathing suit, lolling in the dark water that reflected the cliff.

  The tide was in and the surf crashed onto the beach in even, rolling breakers. It was a perfect day. The lifeguards’ red and yellow flags hung limp in the still air. All over the beach, bodies lay inert on coloured towels.

  ‘There’s Mummy,’ Per said, pointing. How strange and surreal it looked, the bright, synthetic colour of Beth’s bathing suit in the middle of that hot, iron, ancient landscape.

  He buried his nose in Marie’s hair. A warm, salty, foody smell. She really was cute when you looked at her properly, with her blonde hair and round blue eyes. She tipped a mound of sand onto his knee, moulding it gently with her spade. Per patted her head. He was charmed.

  Beth listened to the roar of the surf echoing up the cliff. She lay and dreamed, her hair spreading on the surface of the water. The lagoon was shallow; the sun heated it up like a bath. When she raised her head she could see two little blobs wavering in the heat haze, Marie waving her red plastic spade and Per diligently making sandcastles.

  She sighed, patting the water with her hands. It didn’t please her when Per was being good. When he tried to make amends by minding Marie, hovering attentively, making impractical suggestions. One part of him was sincere, she thought, but another part, the ungovernable Per, was busy elsewhere, in a secret compartment of his mind. If she accused him, the sincere Per would be affronted, puzzled, hurt; he would hotly defend himself, even though the other, secret Per was hiding somewhere, slyly dreaming — laughing even. He was infuriating.

  But it was good to have him on duty with Marie, and the other children off on their walk, and to lie here and think. Her head was full of the dreamy roar of the sea.

  Beth looked up and saw a dark space in the cliff, dense black shadow. A gull floating near it turned and turned, bright white against the black.

  ‘We can’t go back,’ Larry said.

  Emily hauled Sam to his feet. He stood before them, small and desolate. Larry took off his glasses and wiped them, squinting at the blurred world. His peering made Emily furious. ‘Idiot,’ she snapped. He ducked nimbly away.

  Ahead of them, the river cut a deep cleft through the rock. There were big branches caught against the boulders, protruding at odd angles where they’d wedged, the water spraying out around them. Careful not to slip, they climbed around an ancient fallen tree, its roots still clinging to the bank. They made their way slowly down towards the bend. There was a haze of spray over the water, catching the light and making rainbows between the bluff s. The roar of the water beat in their heads; the light was painfully bright, the sun struck up off the rocks and burned their faces. They rounded a jutting boulder and now they could see beyond the bend to where the stream widened, the fast water sluicing out in white jets of foam over the surface. Floating, turning in the green water, was a great mass of logs.

  The logs were green and mossy and rolled slowly in the water, bumping against one another in the current. Emily imagined running on them, faster and faster as they rolled. If you fell off they would close over your head and you would drown. There was a hollow woody sound as they bumped against one another.

  ‘They used to transport timber on this river,’ Larry said flatly. Normally Emily would have asked him who ‘they’ were and why they put logs in the river, and where the logs had been supposed to be going, but she only looked and said nothing.

  The track resumed, flattening out again, shrouded over with ferns. It was like walking in a green tunnel. Emily saw an eel rise from the depths and put its broad nose just out of the water, the tiny horns dimpling the surface. The grey cliffs loomed oppressively close, sometimes so close that they shut out the sun. Sounds reverberated between the bluff s; their voices came back at them, and when they dislodged stones the echoes cracked like gunfire.

  They dreaded what they would find around the next bend. Emily tried to bargain: ‘If we see the sea round the next turn I promise I’ll …’ But she couldn’t think of what to promise, nor could she think to whom she was making promises. And there was no welcome sight of the sea, only the endless gorge. There were thick puriri and nikau glades, forests of toetoe where the white plumes rained down tiny fibres that made them sneeze and the cutty grass caught their legs and scratched their arms.

  They’d been walking for ever. Sam kept up, stumping silently along on his thin legs. The sun had moved right across the sky. They were hungry again, and stopped, but this time they didn�
��t laze in the sun and look for crayfish, they sat quietly, each perched on a grey rock, not saying much. Then Larry picked up his map and they went on.

  They had been crossing a long, spongy stretch of tussock when the bank, which had been getting boggier, suddenly heaved. They shouted and grabbed one another for balance. Larry poked the ground with a stick. Brown water welled up and they saw that they were walking on a floating carpet of weeds and grass. The boggy strip seemed to support their weight and they carried on. Then Emily bumped into Larry’s back, and behind her, Sam overbalanced and grabbed the back of her shirt. There was no more track.

  They were looking at a wall of tangled bush, the kind of terrain where, if you entered it, you could be lost within minutes. They went along the edge, trying to find the way, but there was nothing except the river and the bush, and beyond, the great outcrops of rock rising up to the sky.

  It was a bad feeling. The bush seemed to crowd closely around them and they had no idea which way to go. Emily and Sam sat down. Larry ranged away from them, and after a long, leaden silence they heard him shout, ‘I’ve found something.’

  They scrambled up. The track was tiny and faint, and it led them away from the river, zigzagging up the side of the bluff.

  They set off. Sometimes the track disappeared then resumed again, sometimes it doubled back on itself; it wasn’t much more than a sheep trail. They climbed higher and higher, and Emily was glad to get away from the river. They would walk over the crest of the hill, she thought, and the bush would give way to open ground and at last there would be the sea.

  But after they’d been climbing steadily for a long time, Emily hauling Sam and Larry leading the way, she heard Larry shout out.

  Sam sat down with a bump. Emily went on.

  Larry was leaning against a manuka trunk. He held out his arm and wordlessly pushed her back.