Turbulence

by Maggie Rainey-Smith

  ‘Aa-dam, velkommen.’

  Nakita did bear hugs. They were reassuring, welcoming. And Hagen was doing his European thing, kissing the air beside Adam’s cheeks, shaking his hand and preparing for the next arrival with a gleam in his eye. Louise entered into the spirit of things. She made loud kissing noises to equal Hagen’s and allowed herself to be hugged (back-rubbed); after two air-kisses there was a loud and theatrical lip-kiss. Oh yes, Hagen was quite a lad.

  Nakita was working hard for hygge. The Danish word couldn’t be translated but according to Hagen it meant something like cosiness. She had that light in her eye that women got when they were hosting dinner parties: bordering on manic, but somehow enhancing the wearer of it. Even calm, cool, collected Louise could succumb to it, moments before guests arrived. Adam liked the look. Of course, you could overdo it.

  Another car pulled up outside. He could see headlights through the front window and then he heard a car door slam, murmurings. Adam hoped to be settled in, glass in hand, before he had to smile at Phillip. He didn’t have to wait long. Hagen flourished a glass of red before him.

  ‘A whisky or a whine?’ he exaggerated in an effort to avoid a v sound (normally he swallowed his consonants).

  Phillip was ushered in by Nakita, bearing a bouquet of flowers (Phillip knew the way to a woman’s heart).

  ‘Tak, tak, mange tak.’

  Nakita was beaming as if she’d just won Lotto.

  Judy was behind them both and all he could see was her elegant ankles, lightly tanned legs. He admired Judy now, with neither regret nor the unplanned physicality that used to accompany it. She was part of him, but in a diluted and manageable way now. He stood to greet Phillip and Judy, just as Hagen returned with a visky for him.

  ‘Vær så god.’ (The Danish version of there you go, according to Hagen.)

  He hadn’t actually decided, but Hagen had. Perhaps, he thought, a visky vould be good. He had to put the glass down for a moment so he could shake Phillip’s hand. Phillip did the pat-the-shoulder trick that politicians were good at. He was a fraction taller than Adam and so he almost looked down at him. Judy sidled up to Adam and put her hands on his waist and squeezed — the fat test — something only Judy could get away with. Yep, he had a spare tyre and it was growing — along with something else that was growing as a result of the squeeze (so much for admiration without physicality).

  They stood in the centre of the room, drinks in hand, moving towards and away from each other — a courtly dance honouring their hosts, giving common ground, at least for the moment. The house was open plan, painted white throughout with highly polished wooden floors and modern Scandinavian furniture (chrome, canvas, pine), brightly coloured curtains and cushions. It offered a mixture of style and simplicity, stark and yet homely. The silences echoed. Black and white portraits covered an entire wall: a photographic family tree (mostly of deceased Danish relatives) of which Hagen was hugely proud.

  Phillip admired the profile of an aunt and professed to see a likeness. Judy moved closer to check this out and agreed with Phillip; Hagen glowed as if all of this was somehow a very personal compliment. Nakita argued that the neighbouring photograph of a stern-looking uncle was more like Hagen (this caused him to look as dour as the uncle, and perhaps there was a similarity). A moment of tension between Nakita and Hagen (rare — so therefore savoured by Adam), and then Nakita disappeared to the kitchen, returning with a plateful of frikadeller (rissoles, just like his mother used to make), and Adam was seduced and happy to agree with Nakita that yes, Hagen looked remarkably like the dour uncle. Louise gave him one of her don’t eat too many of those before your dinner looks, so he helped himself to another two and Nakita flushed with joy; Louise shook her head as Nakita passed the plate to her, and turned to Phillip to compliment him loudly on his latest creative project — work he had been doing for one of Louise’s clients. She laid it on thick, and even Phillip wasn’t fooled, only amused, recognising that he was being praised to annoy Adam, and what could be funnier than that … ah, there was something — Adam taking another rissole, which meant Phillip could bask in at least another few minutes of glory.

  Judy sat watching and listening, but seemed distracted, unable to enjoy the subtext which was, after all, half the fun of any get-together. Adam stopped eating, left part of the greedy last rissole on his plate and watched Judy watching. She was playing with her wine glass, not drinking, hadn’t touched a drop. He saw her place the full wine glass carefully on the windowsill behind her and then she rushed out to the kitchen to help Nakita, who was now preparing the main course.

  Hagen poured another round of drinks and joined in conversation with Louise and Phillip. Adam was obliged to participate or appear churlish and before long, as often happened when they were out, Louise was the eloquent centre of attention, informed, intelligent and irresistible, three men hanging on her every word (contracts, sponsorship, advertising) … while Nakita and Judy toiled in the kitchen.

  He’d taken up gardening when Michael was killed. He tried alcohol, he even tried depression, but his nature was too inconsistent for constant sorrow, so he began gardening as therapy. The soil was a source of comfort. Clay, loam, peat and worms … constantly changing. He’d chase oxalis (marvelling at the delicacy of the flowers) and he’d dig, appreciating the hacking sound as clods of earth succumbed to his will. The smell of freshly dug soil, the tenacity of couch grass. Grasping what seemed to be a root and tugging, only to see a fresh green blade in the distance responding … the underground mafia of couch in the garden.

  They’d all drunk too much last night — all of them except Judy. She’d remained sober, lucid throughout. Nakita’s dinner party had been even more than Nakita had planned for. Adam had spent the night replaying conversations, stunned by Judy’s revelations, startled to know she had kept this to herself for so long, shocked at his own feelings. This was how he’d ended up in the garden so early in the morning, even before the sun, leaving Louise asleep. She’d tossed and turned all night, finally succumbing to sleep as he crept from the bed.

  Ness joined him in the garden. She’d been driven from sleep by the chatter of Caitlin and Frankie in the room next to hers. In her hand was a book of poetry by some bloke he’d never heard of: Seamus Heaney. New Selected Poems 1966–1987 — it was a handsome yellow book with the author’s name in blue and the title in red. Ness read to him as he dug and weeded. The poem she read was called ‘Digging’ and he noticed with amazement how not only the words but also their sounds matched his mood. Ness explained to him how Heaney had used digging to describe writing. She seemed impressed and he didn’t often get her company like this, so he listened carefully as she read about turf and bog and potatoes.

  He weeded while Ness read, perched on rotting wooden slats that formed part of an old garden seat. She was kneeling, her arms resting on the wrought-iron back of the seat. Her face fell forward towards the book, towards the garden.

  ‘This poem,’ she said, turning to one called ‘Sunlight’, ‘is for the poet’s mother.’

  As she read he saw his own mother, stooped over the flour bin, scooping, measuring, and then shaking and sifting ready to make scones. Clouds of flour covered his view for a moment and then he found he had sliced a fat pink worm in two.

  The flour made his eyes water. Ness didn’t notice. She was absorbed by this Heaney fellow and on to the next poem — something about catpiss and pink blooms and a final refrain where Heaney spoke of staining, a sort of staining to perfection … something Adam understood, his own grief forever and perfectly stained.

  Jesus, what a mess. Nakita had wanted to mend bridges, and now it was as if she had drained a stagnant lake and found bodies of people she didn’t even know were missing. They all knew about Michael, of course. But not the how, the why, the what of it. And it seemed only Judy had really known all that.

  Christ. Louise’s face when Judy revealed that their affair (his and Louise’s) had started before Michael was killed. Even Ph
illip looked startled, and it took a lot to startle him. Nakita, who had encouraged Judy to do the Landmark course as part of her life-coaching programme, leapt to her feet. She didn’t want responsibility for this. Hagen was looking with astonishment, first at Louise, then at Adam and back again at Louise — this time less astonishment, more a kind of appraisal. Louise had sipped wine, not looking anywhere or at anyone. Under her breath (almost imperceptibly) she said, twice, ‘I wasn’t trying to end your marriage, I was trying to mend mine.’ Intended for him or for Judy? Sips became drinks and it was Nakita who, having leapt up to distract them, returned with more wine and refilled glasses, as if topping up the wine would improve things. Judy put a hand over her glass. She remained sober, while they all listened and drank.

  She wasn’t finished. Judy seemed to check with Phillip and gain his tacit approval — then she told the whole goddamned story and no one dared interrupt or stop her. Should they have? It was too late now. The blood and pus of it all, erupting at Nakita’s dinner table.

  How had it happened?

  He recalled Nakita discussing people’s dreams, while they sawed their way through an entrée (that chaff-like black bread Europeans liked with smoked meat and thawed frozen vegetables in mayonnaise on top). When he first met Nakita and Hagen, he’d been fascinated by a taste of Europe, but more recently he felt they overdid their Danish selves and created a caricature.

  ‘Dreams …’ Hagen talked of his long-held dream of returning to Århus in an open convertible, with crowds from his hometown lining the streets and cheering. The dream seemed to play over and over, sometimes with a band and sometimes not. When there was no band, it was in slow motion as if he was moving backwards instead of forwards. And when there was a band, he sometimes found himself out of the convertible (actually, in front of it), suspended somehow above the ground and moving forward.

  ‘That’s about death: going home to die.’ Phillip was Mr Creative, so of course he’d have to say something like that.

  ‘Freud might have something to say.’ This was Louise, who was flirting with Hagen as she always did (with Nakita’s approval).

  All this prompted Adam to tell them about his dream of eating his mobile phone. Conversations were like that with wine to ease the flow.

  ‘Shitting by numbers,’ he finished off, feeling very witty.

  And then po-faced Phillip outdid him …

  ‘When you fart, we’ll ask Who’s calling?’

  Even Adam had laughed.

  Now he could hear Ness. She had moved from ‘Digging’ and ‘Sunlight’ to the unburying of an ancient ‘Bog Queen’.

  Last night, they had unburied Michael. All their previous alibis unravelled one by one, undone.

  Today he was dividing rengarenga lilies, wrenching them apart, shaking out the snails and watching them scatter, roll and rehouse their soft grey bodies in brittle brown shells. He yearned for that — to roll his vulnerable self back into its shell.

  Ness collected the snails, scolding him when he stepped back suddenly and squashed one underfoot. The crunch unnerved him but instead of Ness’s voice, he could hear Judy last night explaining.

  ‘I knew, you know.’

  Nakita had been carving the stuffed pork, Hagen accompanying with effusive praise and lip-smacking. They were each other’s favourite: Hagen and Nakita — a Danish double act. It either intrigued or annoyed, depending on your own relationship at the time.

  Hagen’s lip-smacking had appeared endearing and funny. Things were light-hearted. No one knew what Judy knew and even when she said she knew; they were still watching the pork fall and admiring the prune and apple centre of each slice of meat. It was when Judy repeated her assertion loudly over the top of Hagen’s sound effects … ‘I knew, you know …’ that Adam felt alarm, momentarily, not about anything in particular, just the tone of Judy’s voice. And he’d glanced over at Phillip, who was gratefully extending his dinner plate to Nakita, eager to secure one of the first pork slices.

  It was Louise who noticed first. And wasn’t that so like a woman? As if she’d been waiting all these years, not alert to what was coming, but somehow in tune and aware that she was implicated. Nakita, who normally monitored this sort of thing and had ready-made action plans (the first being empathy and the second, if the occasion required, distraction or, worse, advice), was caught unawares. She was revelling in girlish delight at being an accomplished hostess with perfectly stuffed pork (plus a handsome, devoted and darling Danish husband).

  ‘Is this personal?’

  Louise asked in a controlled and quiet voice, almost an aside, but not quite. She was wise enough not to ignore and clever enough not to distract, opting instead for a direct approach without drawing too much attention to herself or to Judy.

  ‘Personal … yes. To me though mostly — to me …’

  At that point, plonk: a slice of pork had fallen on to Judy’s plate (Phillip — kind, caring Phillip — was playing mother and serving Judy to assist Nakita).

  ‘Potatoes?’

  Phillip was brandishing a bowl of almost evenly sized jersey bennes wearing butter balls and chopped Italian parsley (Adam knew it was Italian because Nakita had pointed it out).

  ‘But it is about you, too …’

  Phillip, sensing something, wavered with the potatoes and then handed the bowl to Judy so he could scoop potatoes on to his plate. Without looking at anyone in particular, Judy held the bowl for longer — a lot longer … Nobody was game enough to suggest she put them down or mention they too might like a serving.

  ‘Of course it’s about you, too, and Adam — but mostly, it’s about Michael.’

  A snail approached Ness’s poetry book. It was heading for a poem called ‘A Kite for Michael and Christopher’.

  Death was forbidden at dinner parties. Everyone knew that, Judy most of all. She’d never crossed this line before. Their grief about Michael had been private and terrible; it had ended their marriage. There was a pact entered into by the three of them — Adam, Judy and Louise — not spoken but understood. And now the rules had changed. Perhaps the rules had never been fully understood.

  Looking up at Ness as she read, Adam recognised his love for his stepdaughter. They’d got off to a rocky start. Ness had been old enough to mourn her father’s absence and old enough to know Adam had something to do with it. Frankie, on the other hand, adored her Dam because he was there when her dad was not. Adam admired Ness for the way she had negotiated their relationship without influencing Frankie’s feelings. He knew she was in contact with her father, and he was glad.

  Ness noticed him looking at her. She plucked the snail from her book.

  ‘You were going to drown these, remember?’

  Every year he talked about placing tubs of beer in the garden to eradicate the snails. Evidently they liked beer and would drink and drown. Drunken drowned snails sounded simple but somehow, whenever he remembered this, he drank the beer himself, instead.

  Perhaps he wasn’t up to death by drowning, even for snails. Perhaps, Adam thought, one death was enough for any man to have on his conscience. Ness plopped the snail back in the garden, right side up, still sheltering in its brittle, brindled home. There was silent agreement that this snail could have a second chance. Ness resumed reading and, although she knew nothing about the previous night, Adam felt comforted. The snail wasn’t the only one to be given a second chance.

  The sun crept into the garden, caressing the back of his neck, kissing his freckled hands, insulating his heart. Ness kept reading and that bloody Heaney bloke and his bloody poems were both music and mayhem and this time grief was a lost kite, the tail of which hovered forever just out of his reach. Sensing his sorrow, but not knowing why, Ness plucked half-ripe blackberries from a small wild bush on the boundary. In her outstretched hand lay three tight little furry fruits, not even really black yet. Persephone, offering him new life.

  ‘Bonjour Monsieur, French toast …’

  Frankie had her head out the wind
ow and Caitlin was at her shoulder (Caitlin was a leader or a follower, whatever it took to be in the picture). They were both still in night attire in their unwashed morning innocence.

  How had he ended up here, in Louise’s garden, fathering two fatherless young women and minus Michael? To understand this, he would need to dig deep. Like pulling oxalis — a pretty flower in the morning sunlight. But you had to dig and dig and the white bulbs scattered and hid and you never got rid of the weed until you found them … every single one of them.

  The French toast was soggy. The bacon curled beside it. Louise was wrapped in terry towelling, inscrutable apart from her left eye. It was almost bloodshot — she’d certainly been crying — but only her left eye; her right eye was holding up, so that viewing both eyes (if you didn’t know) you would just think she was tired after a really great night out.

  Judy’s revelation at dinner might have made her feel better, but had she thought about him? And implicating Louise in front of Nakita and Hagen, only to offer a sort of absolution … what was that about? Nakita’s life coaching had given them all much more than they had bargained for, even Nakita.

  Oh how they’d laughed when Nakita told them about her act of reparation through her Landmark course. (And to her credit, so had Nakita.) She explained how she had written to a former lover in Odense, on the Danish island of Funen; a lover she’d abandoned when she married Hagen on a romantic whim and disappeared forever to the Antipodes. To move forward with a clear heart, she was (according to Landmark) required to write and explain her heartless action. This was supposed to heal both his heart and hers … except that the former lover had recently died and his wife received the letter. Unfortunately, the former lover had been two-timing this poor woman while he was romancing Nakita. And thus, instead of making reparation for a broken heart, Nakita had broken a new heart. It wasn’t funny, they knew. But with wine and good company (and before the potatoes with Italian parsley), they laughed wholeheartedly at the distress of the unsuspecting wife in Odense. Made wisecracks about good intentions and the road to hell, not realising they were all about to turn a corner.