by Gee, Maurice
‘Athol,’ she said, ‘you’re looking tired.’
‘I don’t sleep very well – but I’m all right.’
‘Why don’t you sleep?’
‘My mind won’t let me. I lie awake thinking about things.’
‘What things?’
‘That boy who lived in my house. And his sister. Everything that goes on – down there.’
‘It’s nothing new, Athol. Why have you just discovered it?’
‘We don’t have to know about it, do we? Surely we’ve earned the right. I’ve worked hard. I haven’t touched it, why should it touch me?’
‘I thought you wanted to help the girl?’
‘I did. But why? I’m not the one responsible.’
And yet Brent Rosser and his sister, and Ulla too, had knocked all his faith in his houses out of him. The spade-murder was enough to knock one askew. But Athol had been so strong, so pure, a monk in his cell. He should have been able to hang on and not be forced out into the world, where he could only be confused. How pale he was, and lined, and hollow-chested, skinny in his wrists and throat; he was like an old man.
‘Athol,’ she said, and tried to take him in her arms, but he turned side on and sharpened his elbow.
‘Don’t, Mum. That’s not what I need.’
Oh yes it is, Gwen thought, rubbing herself. You need pulling back from far away, though I can’t be the one who does it. She wished that he would go away so she could cry for him.
‘It’s not fair to blame Ulla,’ she said.
‘I don’t blame her. But somehow she connects us all and I can’t stand that. I can’t stand seeing her or thinking about her, Mum.’
‘Then stay away. Just pay the bills.’
‘I will, you needn’t worry.’
‘The children. Do you blame them too?’
‘Of course not. I love them. But they seem … ’
‘Tainted?’
‘ … tainted with it.’
All she could do was send him away – through the hedge, back to his empty house – while crying silently, Athol, Athol, as though his name might save him. She did not know where he was or what he might go on to, just that he was lost, he was lost.
‘Athol,’ she said, the next time they met, ‘go and see Gordon. He’s only across in Mt Crawford. You can’t behave as though he doesn’t exist.’
‘I went yesterday.’
‘That’s wonderful. How did he seem?’
‘Happier than I thought he’d be. I’m not going again. We’ve got nothing to talk about.’
‘Is he tainted too?’
Athol stepped back. ‘If I say anything at all you turn it against me.’ He walked stooping through the hedge. Whenever he left her now Gwen thought it might be the last time they would meet. They could have talked from window to window if they’d wished, yet he seemed more distant than Gordon, who was locked away on a hill out beyond the airport. Athol lost, Gordon found again: would that be the way it would stay until the end? For so long it had been Gordon lost, in those secret places where boys went – biological swamps, psychic recesses. Athol had seemed neatly to avoid them, through speed and agility and his youthful glowingness. How insufficient they had proved, while Gordon’s painful sojourns had prepared him for survival. She was not any longer an expert on her sons but she thought she could identify Gordon as a survivor. Saw it in the way he had become practical. In the way he was present now and not always hoping and lip-chewing and getting his sideways look of bafflement and rage. He was no longer disappointed, not disappointed in himself.
‘It’s a great school, this’ – meaning Mount Crawford. ‘You should have sent me here when I was a boy. Look, cut my hand in the workshop. Four stitches’ – said with pride. ‘I’m going to do something with my hands when I come out. Be a gardener maybe. I’ll come and clip your hedges free, how’s that?’
That would be good. She would be glad to have him. She might even bring him in to smile at Olivia. There was an innocence in him that must be seen as hard-won after the muddy turnings, the ambitions, of his life. Olivia seemed open to plain ways. (Was even talking of leaving Marsden and going to Wellington High.) She might bring him in to visit Ulla.
‘When do you qualify for weekend leave?’
‘I’m not sure I want it. What you can do, Mum, is bring me some books. Gardening. I don’t mean vegetables though. Trees and shrubs. Get it okayed with the governor.’
‘Ulla’s coming down next week. I’ve hired a nurse.’
‘Maybe I should train for that. Be a nurse, maybe.’
It did not surprise her that he was self-centred – self-fascinated. It was the likely consequence of so great a turning round in his life. She might smile and laugh with him, even embrace, but she doubted that they would now grow close. ‘Poor old Pop, eh. The poor old sod.’ That was all he could find to say about Howie. Still, his smile was natural and made her feel warm.
‘Goodbye, Gordon. I’ll come again soon.’
‘Bring those books.’
She went home and mowed her lawns and felt guilty about the dried grass pasted on the blades. Gordon would not be pleased with that. But Ulla’s room excited her – its apparatus suggesting there were things that one might do, and its varnished brightness, the clean timber, the books – selected books – in shelves low enough for Ulla to read the spines from her chair. If she sat in the window bay a view of the harbour and the mountains would open up.
The nurse, Lorraine Sealy, was businesslike and middle aged. She gave one confidence. Gwen described her so at the spinal unit and was encouraged by the approval everyone felt. Lorraine had nursed ‘quads’ before and would be happy to train Gwen on the job – Olivia too. ‘It’s largely a matter of being practical and positive and persistent. I call those my three Ps.’
‘Persistent?’ Gwen said.
‘I mean,’ Lorraine said, ‘that every part of a routine must be carried through. No matter how uncomfortable it may seem. If you neglect some little thing it will be the patient who suffers in the end. A day has to be very structured. Don’t worry, Mrs Peet, it’s not as heartless as it sounds. One must never lose sight of the person in there.’
‘The fourth P.’
‘Exactly.’
She might, Gwen thought, be very good. She might be horrible. In the meantime, one pretended confidence.
‘She will not want to be my friend, I hope,’ Ulla said.
‘I think she’s too professional for that.’ Another P. And didn’t ‘persistent’ imply that Lorraine Sealy expected Ulla not to cooperate? Things would be done to her for her own good.
By the time Ulla flew down, Gwen was nervous. A crane lowered her from the back door of the plane. The queen might travel so, enthroned. They kissed her on the tarmac, Gwen and Olivia, and the nurse who had travelled with her handed the case notes to Lorraine. An ambulance took Ulla home to the house that might be described now as a sjukhus. Gwen tried to see how it might look to Ulla as her home. How Lorraine Sealy might look, as her nurse. And she, Gwen, as friend. A sense of bleakness fell on her. Ulla’s smile, no more than a crooking at the corners of her mouth, said, This will do. It said, I’m not here anyway.
‘Now,’ Lorraine Sealy said, ‘we’ll try out this bed.’
They tried it out, using the sling to make the transfer. Then they stood around and looked at Ulla. So this is it, Gwen thought, this is what we do. She wheeled the chair into a corner of the room. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea. Can you drink tea?’ she asked Ulla.
‘Oh yes, I do all the usual things.’
Is it really going to be like this for the rest of our lives? She filled the kettle and put it on, wondering where to hide.
But as the days went by she found she was with Ulla more and more, reading to her, wheeling her about the ground floor and down the new ramp into the garden. She did much of her housework with Ulla sitting by. She learned to wash and massage her and search her body for places where pressure sores might start. She helped her on
and off the commode. Took her temperature, gave her pills. Fed her. Helped her swallow, helped her cough. Once or twice she cleared her bowel, using a rubber glove. It troubled her not to be troubled by it. She felt that she was losing sight of Ulla. Lorraine, who did most of it – and well and unobtrusively – seemed more alert to Ulla’s moods than she. Gwen was glad to see her go at the end of the day. She looked forward to the weekends, when Lorraine was off.
‘I’ll share the nights,’ Olivia said.
‘There’s nothing to share.’ She set her quiet alarm for half-past two and padded down and shifted Ulla – changed the pressure points with a heave. Olivia need not be troubled with it. Fifteen-year-olds needed their sleep. She gave Ulla a sip of water and went back to bed. It was not hard. She wished that Ulla would hold her sometimes, with a demand. Hold her with the turning of an eye. It was too easy. Did Ulla lie awake when she was gone, having a life in her head? This doing all the time, this turning, feeding, easing, made a surface they skated on. When was Ulla going to look at her and talk to her?
One afternoon she answered the door and found Franklin, the police inspector, standing with his back to her, looking at the view.
‘A nice place you’ve got here, Mrs Peet. An outlook like that can’t be bought with money.’
In fact, it can, she wanted to say. ‘Do you want to come in?’
‘If you don’t mind. I won’t take much of your time.’ He had not been so friendly before.
‘Has something happened? Something new?’ She led him to the kitchen. He looked out the open door at Ulla’s ramp to the garden.
‘Changes here.’
‘Yes. Ulla’s been home from Auckland almost a month. We’ve turned the front room into her room.’
‘How is she?’
‘No different. Is it her or me you want to see?’
‘I’ve got something I’d like you to identify, Mrs Peet.’ He took an envelope from his pocket and tipped a ring on to his palm. She recognised it at once.
‘My wedding ring.’ Took it, turned it, slipped it on her finger. ‘Where did you find it?’
Franklin made a small forward movement of alarm.
‘You don’t want me to put it on?’ She grew alarmed herself and found the ring easy to pull off. Her fingers had lost flesh, perhaps from work.
‘Do I keep it? Do you want it back?’
‘You’re positive it’s yours? No mistake?’
‘Oh it’s mine all right. You can’t wear a ring for forty years. Where did you get it?’
He took it and dropped it back in the envelope. ‘From a man. The body of a man.’
‘Body?’
‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Peet. He was wearing it.’
‘My ring? Who was – how did he die?’
‘I don’t have a report yet. The truth is, he’s been dead for a long time.’
‘How long?’
‘About seven months. I’m sorry this is so unpleasant for you.’
Her sickness was more mental than physical, although she felt a burning in her throat.
‘Here, sit down,’ Franklin said.
‘I’m all right. Was it the man – was it Brent Rosser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Some movers found him. They were shifting some of the second-hand stuff in Mrs Ponder’s yard. One of them opened a freezer and there he was.’
‘Freezer?’
‘It wasn’t switched on. The body was badly decomposed, after so long.’
‘Wearing my ring? Did someone put him there?’
‘We don’t think so, Mrs Peet. He got in by himself.’
‘And got locked in? He suffocated?’
‘There were no marks as if he was trying to get out. We think he probably just went off to sleep.’
‘Why though? Why?’
‘He could have been hiding. We were getting close to him in your son’s house. Anyway, Mrs Peet, I guess it’s all over. We’re not looking for anyone now – ’
‘It’s not all over.’
‘I can see what you mean – ’
‘A dead man wearing my ring. How can it be all over for me?’
‘Well – ’
‘And Ulla lying there for the rest of her life?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Peet.’
‘Why would he go there after killing Mrs Ponder? Wouldn’t you have had policemen there?’
‘Yes, we did. We had a man. But we locked it up and sealed it probably just before he turned up. There wasn’t any need any more. And then no one took much notice of the stuff. It was basically a junk shop, Mrs Peet. And the estate took time, it wasn’t easy. In fact the business was legitimate. It was in her house out in the Hutt we found the stolen stuff.’
‘Was she as rich as everyone says?’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘All from stolen property?’
‘Most of it. But that doesn’t mean … Rosser doesn’t deserve any pity, Mrs Peet. It was the worst murder I’ve ever seen. As well as that, your daughter-in-law … ’ he gestured at Ulla’s room. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go. Do you want this ring back when we’ve finished with it?’
‘No. God no. Put it in the police museum or something.’
She showed him to the door. ‘My regards to the other Mrs Peet,’ Franklin said.
She watched him go down the path through the agapanthus; heard him open her gate and fiddle with the catch to make it shut. He drove away. Cold clouds locked in the city, but he seemed to have gone down into some sort of freedom, leaving her in the house that puffed its air out like a smell of decomposition. Thick air at her back and hot rooms and conversations tangled like wool and yet so simple – lying and simple – and in there now, and in her head, images that might become obsessive.
She stepped on to the porch and closed the door. She went down the steps and up the side path – down, up, angle, turn, as though she might escape by geometry. She took her trowel from the bench in the glasshouse and crossed the lawn and started weeding the garden, although in mid-winter it made no sense. She was wearing her slippers too, how absurd. The damp grass made the soles spongy. She felt her socks grow wet, but she kept on, loosening weeds, knocking the soil from their roots and laying them on the edge of the lawn to pick up later. A fine drizzle wet her hair and shoulders. It would make a bride’s cap on her hair and she would be wed perhaps to that boy who had died in the freezer. In the freezer. She made a caw of horror and amazement. And here she was weeding over the dog, dead for the same number of months, and she must dig shallow so as not to disturb his bones. A bracelet of bright hair about the bone. Such lovely words, from where? Such comforting transcendence. They would not rid her of this latest death.
‘What are you doing, Gwen?’ Olivia cried. She stood on the back path in her Marsden green, looking grown-up. ‘You’ll get soaked. Come inside at once.’
Gwen did not want such adult language from the girl. How careless of her to provoke it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is a bit too wet. Another day,’ and she ran across the lawn and took her slippers off at the back steps. ‘These are ruined.’ She dropped them in the rubbish tin. ‘I’ll have to buy a new pair.’ She shook the drizzle from her hair. ‘Had a good day, love? Anything sensational at school?’
‘What were you doing out in the rain like that?’
‘It’s not really rain, is it? I got tired of the house. I should have put my gumboots and parka on.’
‘Is something wrong with Mum?’
‘No, dear, or else I wouldn’t be outside, would I? Come on, you need to change too. We can’t go getting colds, not with Ulla.’
She showered and put on dry clothes and a pair of soft shoes. When Lorraine had left she said, ‘Come in here, Olivia. I’ve got something to tell Ulla and you.’ She did not want them hearing it on the TV news.
‘Something new?’ Ulla said. ‘I don’t know if I can stand it.’
‘You’re as tough as old boots,’ Gwen said. But she breathed deep and stilled
her face. It was not for joking about.
‘Is it Grandpa?’ Olivia said.
‘No, not him. I had a visit from Inspector Franklin.’
‘I thought I heard his voice,’ Ulla said.
‘He brought my wedding ring for me to identify. Brent Rosser had it.’
‘Does that mean they’ve got him?’ Olivia said.
‘No, love, it means they found his body. Brent Rosser’s dead.’
She told them the facts of it, keeping her feelings under control. Olivia matched her for stillness.
‘So,’ she breathed, ‘all that time … ’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not going to say what I think.’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘Is that the end of it, though?’
It did not end as though it were a happening or event. ‘As far as it can be,’ Gwen said. Each of them would end it by a death, but it might be unimportant by that time, like a scar on the body, seen only when you twisted your head or looked at some odd angle in the mirror. Unimportant for Olivia. She had the time. It seemed that she had the toughness too. Not for Ulla though. Not for herself.
Ulla had closed her eyes. She did not open them until Olivia had gone.
‘He died from suffocation?’ she said.
‘Inspector Franklin said it looked as if he went to sleep. I don’t know. They can’t really tell. There mightn’t have been any … ’ Horror? Pain? There were no fingernail scratches on the inside of the lid.
Ulla closed her eyes again. ‘What a strange sad life.’
‘Do you want to talk about him?’
‘No.’
‘We can if you like.’
‘I want to think about him for a while.’
‘Yes. All right.’
Gwen helped Olivia make dinner, and could not understand, could not make her own mind work at all. The thinking that Ulla might do was unknowable – it was like a country locked in behind high mountains, it was Lapland or Tibet. I can never go there, Gwen thought. You need to lose your body, and then … The brain had a changing structure, wasn’t that the theory, the latest one? It laid down new pathways, neural pathways, in response to its own experience. And Ulla had that, her brain had that: new special private experience, and new mind pathways, along which Brent Rosser, it seemed, might find his way … Gwen understood the silliness of her Swedish studies. Mystic landscape, mystic north? Ulla had passed through and gone somewhere else.
