'Right. You wait here.'
'Where are you going?' I was concentrating on not being sick.
'I'm going to reconnoitre.'
I sat down with my arms around my knees. I looked through the wooden planks to the green water sluicing below. Nausea broke my thoughts into odd patterns. I thought: children think adults are a different species. But adults sometimes feel as if they are only ten years old. I sat there, hugging my bare legs. Once I'd stopped feeling sick, I decided, I would go behind a tree and relieve myself. I had been reduced to very simple things. I was soaking. I was sick. I was even hungry. My legs looked skinny, ridiculous, in their baggy shorts. My shoes were full of water. How had I let this happen? I could have been in an expensive hotel anywhere in the world. I had a moment of dismay, almost fear. I was letting everything fall away. I was lost. I didn't know the man I was with. Who was he?
Rob came back, crashing down through the pine needles and scrub, bullish, jolly and commanding, in control once more.
'I've got this client . . .' He looked sideways. I waited.
***
We were standing on the deck of a small house. There was a covered barbecue, a spa pool draped in canvas sheeting. The blinds and curtains were drawn. As he spoke, Rob was looking under plant pots, shifting a doormat, running his hand along the tops of ledges.
'He says to me, if you ever need it, the house is here. He knows I come sailing round Kawau all the time.'
We had hauled our belongings up from the jetty and piled them on the deck.
I said, 'Are you sure this is the right place?'
'Definitely.'
He went around the back of the house. I sat down. I looked at the orange pine needles, the tossing trees. I heard a tearing, wrenching sound, like old iron being ripped. There was a loud bang.
Rob appeared inside the French doors, unlocked them and stepped beaming out onto the deck.
'Madam! Your palace awaits!'
It was really very cosy. There was a double bed with a striped cover. There was linen in the cupboard. Everything worked, once Rob had figured out how to turn on the pump. The water came from a rainwater tank at the back of the house. We unloaded our food in the kitchen and I set about making breakfast. The cooking utensils were expensive, elaborate. Rob took the cover off the barbecue and fiddled with it. I had a sense of relief at the space. I hadn't liked being cramped into the yacht. I was glad to be off the water, too. To stop feeling sick.
The wind shifted the trees, rain drummed on the iron roof.
'So who's this client?'
'Longstanding one. A good guy. Obviously he's not going to turn up, what with the storm.'
'No.'
'But I'll tell him we've been here,' he said innocently.
I'd looked at the bathroom window where Rob had got in. The metal catch was broken off. The frame had been wrenched out.
I thought, with a kind of hilarity, a QC breaking in? There was a mirror over the kitchen sink. I looked at myself. I'd had a feeling, ever since Raymond had gone, that some outer layer had been peeled away. I was raw, open. I had attracted men — Rob. I had allowed him to take me away. I felt like a kid, limping and snivelling one minute, hilarious the next. And when Rob took over, when he finished his breakfast and grinned at me merrily and pulled me onto the bed, I had the sensual feeling of surrender, of allowing everything to fall away.
Rob went out. He said he was going to check on the dinghy. When the storm had died down, he said, we could go back to the wharf and work out what to do about the yacht.
Before he left he'd said, 'There's a shower.'
I lay on the bed. 'Let's not wash,' I said.
He looked shocked. 'Not wash?'
'Oh, all right.' I laughed.
He left. I had a short chilly shower — the water hadn't yet heated up. I lay on the bed. There was a shelf of old detective novels. I pulled up the duvet and lay luxuriously reading. The rain was loud on the roof. Out the window the forest swayed and heaved with the squalls. Sticks clattered onto the deck.
Later we put on the oilskins that were hanging in the laundry and went down to the jetty.
'There's no one in the houses round about,' he said. He held my hand. Our feet sank deep in the pine needles. The bay was wild, grey-green and running with currents. We walked along a path, past the other houses. Their windows were blank, curtained. We came to a point and looked out at the churning water. The trees were thrashing across on the far shore. It occurred to me that a branch might fall on us.
We went back and spread out our clothes to dry. We lay on the striped duvet, listening to the gale.
I woke in the night. It was pitch black. The darkness was unnerving, so absolute that nothing showed. The wind was howling, lifting the iron on the roof. I moved closer to Rob.
A dream had woken me. It was about Raymond.
We got married when we were both twenty-eight. He was handsome. He was a filmmaker. He had directed successful New Zealand films. After we'd been married a couple of years he was invited to make his first film in America. He would go on making films. That wouldn't change.
In the last months of our marriage I'd thought about trying to get pregnant. I needed to get on with it, if I was ever going to. I stopped taking the Pill. I didn't tell him. I wondered if he knew. What with working so much we barely had time for each other. I didn't get pregnant.
I thought about sex. I forced myself to look back. Was I just thinking this way because of what had happened? What was I getting at? When we'd been in bed together and I was happy, had I sensed, once or twice, a kind of distance, almost malice, in his tone, as if he had performed a task, performed it well, and now could be released?
He was a polished performer. He kept some part of himself separate. It was that distance that made me yearn after him, as well as the moments when his vulnerability showed, and I was all the more smitten with him because he tried to keep his dignity, and to hide it. He was the fourth son of a solo mother. He knew what it was like to be talented and poor. That was why he did free film workshops for street kids. There were parts of himself over which he had grown a shell, in order to get on in the world. Old hurts, things he was ashamed of.
Chase Ihaka took away his dignity, and afterwards he couldn't face me, couldn't stand that I had seen him reduced.
He despised me for begging, for not being able to face the fact that everything had changed.
A voice came out of the blackness. 'What are you thinking about?'
'About Raymond,' I said.
He sat up. I couldn't see anything. He got off the bed.
'Where are you going?' I asked.
He didn't say anything.
'Where are you?'
There was no answer. There was only blackness. I heard a sound. He was standing in the room, near me.
'Where are you?'
Silence.
'Oh, turn on the light! Turn on the light! Turn on the light!'
He jumped and snapped it on. He leaned over me, gripping my wrists. 'What's the matter? What's wrong?'
I pulled away. 'You didn't answer. You didn't speak!'
'I was asleep,' he said, wondering. He held me tight. 'You've been dreaming. Just dreams.' He held me in his arms.
'There's no one I can trust.'
'I'm here. You can trust me. I'll turn off the light, shall I?'
The blackness came down. I was shaking. I couldn't get warm.
***
We stayed in the bach for three days. On the fourth day the wind dropped. There was stillness, quiet. The sky was low and black, shot through with sudden, surprising beams of sunlight. Rob went to the yacht, and came back with the news that a man who had been sheltering at the wharf in his own boat had helped him with the engine, that they had drained the boat as best they could. The man had given him a bit of fuel. If the engine failed we would have to get into the marina under sail. He thought we would make it. The storm had passed. People were leaving the island.
We packed
up and tidied the house. I didn't want to leave it. I had grown fond of it. Rob went into the bathroom and hammered the window frame back into place. I pretended not to hear.
'It's been an adventure,' he said.
'It's been great,' I said.
At the wharf the yachts were sailing out. The beach was strewn with branches; the trees hung with broken sticks, paper, plastic bags. The water was brown and churned up. I looked at the yacht. It was stained with oil, sodden, smelly. I was dreading the sail back. I felt nauseated already.
The engine started, and we headed towards the harbour mouth. Rob waved to other boats, whistled, busied himself with ropes and lines. Looking ahead anxiously I saw that the sea was still rough. When we hit the open water I was immediately doubled up with nausea, and the waves seemed to me terrifyingly high, although the wind was moderate. Soon I was lying along the rail, watching the green shoreline rise and fall. Sunbeams shone down on the sea. Rob shouted to point out dolphins. I watched them leaping through the waves. Foam blew in the air. I rested my cheek on the rail. Beyond Kawau the wind strengthened. The boat rose and plunged, hitting the water hard. I felt the sickness rising and rising. I leaned, heaved, and my breakfast hit the water and was whisked away, a curl of matter on the bubbled surface, like a question mark.
I imagined my own body, falling, hitting the surface, whirled away in the current. I looked across at waves, jumbled cloud, grey water lit up silver in the beams of light, birds riding on currents of air. To lie here like a limp rag, weak, sick, drenched, watching the currents, to yearn only to get from this moment to the next, to be reduced to simple things. Was this the way to confront what I shied away from most?
Raymond told me the truth just before he left me. He told me as a final, savage assertion of himself, as if I had forced him into a lie all these years. Afterwards, he despised me for pleading with him. For wanting to carry on as before, despite what he'd told me. It was our secret now. He told me what Chase Ihaka had done, and what he had done to him. The brown young man with the gap-toothed smile. His eager face, his shining eyes. The sort of youth the Francis Foundation wanted to help. He was poor. He may have been talented. It didn't matter now. Living on the streets, a thief and an alcoholic, he had started selling himself for sex. He had not broken into our house. Raymond had invited him in.
Had arranged to meet him secretly, at home, while I was at work. Had heard the knock, opened the door, ushered him inside. Made small talk, poured out wine. Drawn him down onto the couch. At what point the youth went crazy — before or after the sex — I do not know. Raymond wouldn't say. I don't know why he exploded in such violence. I know that he did it again, not long after coming out of jail for attacking Raymond, and that the second time, instead of clamming up, he told the police a version of the truth. He said the victim had made sexual advances to him. That he had recoiled and lashed out. He didn't say he went to men's houses all the time. That it was the way he made money, because he was drunk and drugged out and poor.
Raymond was right. We couldn't really have stayed married. In the end I would have had to face up to things.
It was when Chase Ihaka was arrested for murder that I came home to find Raymond waiting for me, drinking, a strange, heightened expression in his eyes.
He told me. In my distress I tried to make bargains. I thought it was something we could solve.
He looked at me with contempt.
'I thought you would guess,' he said.
I never would have guessed. I had faith in our marriage. I wanted children. I wanted to believe.
'You married me for my money,' I said.
I saw him flinch. He laughed scornfully. I looked at his pale, scarred face and saw that it was true. I felt a wave of pure sorrow for him, as well as for myself.
'What about the Foundation? The sheer hypocrisy of you . . .'
But I didn't go on. I had done my begging. He left the house. I watched him walk unsteadily away up the drive.
Perhaps he didn't think he and Chase Ihaka were all that different, in the end.
***
Rob shouted. He pointed at the land. We were on a tack, heading for the entrance to the harbour. He was going to lower the sail and hope the engine would restart. If it didn't, I couldn't see how we were going to get back in.
At the harbour mouth he tried the engine. It wouldn't start. He tried again. The boat was tossing badly. I staggered against the rail. He shouted some instructions I didn't understand. The current was pushing us towards the shoreline, where there were rocks. The engine made a moaning sound. It coughed. I could see the edge of the marina, the tops of the clinking masts. The boat turned and was hit side on by a wave. I crouched down by the railing. Rob swore and leaned down again, and the engine spluttered and turned over and started, and then he was steering the boat, heading us in through the channel, and as the sun broke out, casting a livid light through the black clouds, we sailed into the calm lanes of the marina.
***
I was sitting in the car. I was looking along the lane that runs off the main road. It was strewn with leaves, broken branches, bits of paper. The gutters were running with rain. Leaves swirled in the blocked drain. The footpath was flooded.
The dog, Robbie, was at the window, scrabbling, barking.
Rob got out and started unloading my things. He leaned in. 'Getting out?'
We carried my bags to the door.
'The bach. Did you really know who owned it?'
Rob tossed his keys from one hand to the other. 'Sure. He's a client of mine. Lovely bloke.'
There was a silence.
'Shall I come in?' he asked.
I looked at him. A sudden squall blew through the garden, flipping the leaves, driving rain onto the tiles. I looked up at the white sky.
'Yes.'
I unlocked the door. He picked up my bags, whistling, and followed me inside.
values
He said, 'You're fiery. Your whole family's fiery.'
He walked ahead of me through the hall, up the stairs, into the bedroom. I wondered whether he was looking for something or just getting away from me.
He took off his glasses. 'My eyes are killing me,' he said.
I followed him. I should have left him alone, but I had the bad anxiety of the morning after. Last night's dinner party had turned into a row. One of the guests had taken everyone on.
I said, 'Didn't it make you annoyed, the things he was saying? About Palestinians. Calling them terrorists. Refusing to admit that they might have one tiny little grievance. And the way you can't just come out and say, "The security wall is a crime".'
Scott looked at me. 'You did say it.'
'What?'
'You said you can't say it. But you did say it.'
'Oh. Well.' I shrugged.
'Just before you told him to leave and never come back.'
'So, do you think he'll be offended?'
'I'd have thought he'd be pretty annoyed.'
'But he's so unreasonable!' I wrung my hands. Oh, these hungover post-mortems. 'Isn't he? Didn't you feel rage when he said those things?'
'I don't feel the need to be enraged. I might argue with him. Rationally.'
'Are you saying I wasn't being rational? I was completely lucid. So was Rachel. You don't care about these things. You don't say anything.'
He said primly, 'I'm quite happy to say things, I just don't feel the need to run the guy out of my house. Throwing things and shouting "Murderer!"'
'You're exaggerating. Why do you take that censorious tone? Because you don't care, or because you're "diplomatic"? Since you're a public figure. Do you think it's corrupting you, all this celebrity? You can't be seen to have opinions any more.'
He said, 'I'm trying to find my wallet. So I can go to work. So I can earn some money.' When he was angry he got quieter, and he smiled. I looked at his smile.
'You're a slave to your image,' I said.
But I'd behaved badly last night, going on arguing. I was being a sh
rew. 'So, you think he'll be quite annoyed then?'
'I haven't got time to go on and on!' He slammed the door.
'Oh, shit,' I sighed.
We tended to be vehement in my family. My father never backed away from an argument. You could call my mother 'opinionated'. My sister was fiercely political. They were a lot for Scott to deal with. His family were quieter; his father was a retired manager, a reformed alcoholic whose tastes were simple. Having lived through troubled times, he was grateful for a cosy, uneventful life. He and Scott's mother didn't look beyond their routine; they were happy with a DVD of a rubbish blockbuster and an undemanding chat about trivial things. They were proud of Scott, now he was on television. They enjoyed the attention he got. Scott handled the publicity all right. There were a few changes when he switched from radio. He got his hair done at the studio, in a new style. He took more care with his clothes. He was less spontaneous. He thought before he acted.
I walked the kids to kindergarten and school. I said hello to one of the fathers. He was an American. Recently, the preschool children had made flags. Sophie came out with a New Zealand flag. The American boy had made the Stars and Stripes. He said to Sophie, 'My flag's bigger than yours.' His was on a bigger bit of paper. He meant the size. But his father had said, glancing at me, 'Hey, they're all big.' He meant all flags, all countries, were important.
The Iraq war had just started. I didn't like what I thought of as his patronising, world-conqueror's tone. I said, 'Oh, we had one of yours at home. But we've just recently burned it!'
He looked shocked, then let out a single, cynical bark of laughter — 'Ha!' — and walked away, and I laughed and felt oddly melancholy watching him cross the playground, and wished I were a different woman: silent, mysterious, cool.
***
My father is an architect. He designed our house. We bought it when he and my mother decided to build themselves a new place. It was beautiful. We were lucky, privileged. I thought of it as my fortress. It was built down a hillside, with a walled courtyard at the top to screen out noise from the road. There were three levels, the lowest a big sitting room and kitchen opening onto a garden. Down there, below the road, it was sunny and quiet, the light broken up by mature olive trees. You could see the harbour from the back deck. I had my workroom upstairs, looking over the suburbs, down to the bay. Below and to the right was the deep, cool green space of the neighbours' tennis court, its wire fence overgrown with vines. Women met and played there in the mornings.
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