Daylight
Page 35
Gabrielle had spread herself out and had a stack of magazines on the empty seat beside her. She looked up at Bad, and her jaw dropped. Then she collected herself, gathered the magazines, and gave Bad room to sit down. She said, “I did wonder whether you might turn up and take your seat.”
“How are you?” he said.
“What do you care?”
Bad kicked his bag under the seat in front of him and clipped his belt closed. He raised his hands and surrendered himself to a flight attendant’s momentary inspection.
“But I suppose since we’ve a long journey, I should try to be civil,” Gabrielle conceded.
“I’d appreciate it,” Bad said. “Anyway—cheer up; at least you lose me at LAX, where I’m changing from Qantas to Air New Zealand.”
Gabrielle smirked as though consoled by some gaffe he’d made. “I wondered what you were going to do next. Now I know.”
“That’s what I’m doing first, Gabrielle. I’m going home. Next I’ll set up in Auckland, near home, but still an outpost of the world.”
“Set up what?”
“A business, I hope.”
“In Auckland?” Gabrielle clearly considered this some sort of defeat. Or she meant him to. She opened one of her magazines, cracked its gleaming pages over her lap. She asked him if he had something to read. “I don’t suppose you kept my book?”
Bad’s birthday present, the motivational book, was in Dawn’s bedroom in Menton, propping up one leg of Dawn’s bed. One night, when he and Dawn were tussling, a caster broke off a leg of the bed and Bad had produced the book to wedge beneath it and bring the bed back to level.
“Actually,” Gabrielle said, ingenuous, “I had a nice, long, enlightening talk with your grandfather—about you, and what you need. He told me things you should have, Brian. He told me about Dart Ridge. And do you know what? He thinks you should get over it.”
Bad didn’t reply to this and, after a moment, Gabrielle plugged in her headset and put it on.
Bad considered the obstacles in his life. Should he get over them? He thought that, at least, the obstacles gave his life a topography. They were like the mountains flanking the Roya River seen from the spur at Dardo, peaks that made it possible to measure distance, that sectioned the sky, differentiated space in a void, that invited any observer on a journey. If Bad imagined his obstacles—fearful loss, puzzling loss, sad loss—as mountains, then he could imagine a mountain path. A path like the Salt Route, that went by the cemetery gates, that passed through the darkness under the old cypress, that climbed on beyond Castel Abelio and its ghosts.
Bad was pressed into his seat. The jet tore upward, rocking slightly in the current of its climb. He shut his eyes and said a prayer. The jet banked, and he opened them again to look out the window on—to his eye immeasurable—sun-suffused blue air.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH KNOX
After Z-Hour
Treasure
Glamour and the Sea
The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood
Pomare
Paremata
Tawa
The Vintner’s Luck
Black Oxen
Billie’s Kiss
Copyright
I would like to thank
Sarah and Michael Brewer—
cavers and cave rescue volunteers.
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600 Wellington
Copyright © Elizabeth Knox 2003
ISBN 978-0-86-473449-5 (print)
ISBN 978-0-86-473726-7 (epub)
ISBN 978-0-86-473840-0 (mobi)
First published 2003
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publishers
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Knox, Elizabeth.
Daylight / Elizabeth Knox.
ISBN 9780864737267
I. Title.
NZ823.2–dc 21