by Gil Hogg
GIL HOGG
Copyright © 2012 Gil Hogg
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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Contents
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FICTION
A Smell of Fraud
The Predators
Caring for Cathy
Blue Lantern
Present Tense
NON-FICTION
Teaching Yourself Tranquillity
The Happy Humanist
1
He had a sense of ownership as he drove into Springvale town in South Canterbury; it was his town, known like a well-read book on his shelf, but a book that he hadn’t looked at in years.
The town was still rousing itself in the morning sun; it was 10am. He slowed the rental car in the deserted Seddon Street. The outline of the two- and three-storey shop buildings suggested a past he remembered as a kid; some corrugated iron awnings above the footpaths, with not quite vertical supporting poles; a few shop windows crammed with merchandise, never dusted by a shop assistant or touched by a customer; the faded advertising signs of The Smart Dry Cleaners and The Fresh Fish and Chip Parlour. But there was change too. More of the windows now confidently displayed a single stylish dress or lounge suite, and there was a newly tiled mall entrance. Light flashed on chrome chairs set outside an empty coffee shop. Springvale, population about three thousand, looked neater, brighter than he remembered it.
The Royal Hotel was a slightly buckled, two-storey wooden building with a red roof, at the end of Seddon Street, or rather where the shops ended and the car and tractor sales yards began; it had stood since the early part of the twentieth century, and now bore a fresh coat of cream paint. He parked the car in front of the hotel and walked up the wooden steps and across the creaking floor of the lobby to the reception.
He coughed and moved about, and a girl came from behind a curtain with a gummy smile. “I have a reservation, Tom Stavely.”
She looked down at a screen. “Oh yes, Mr Stavely. You’re early, but the room’s ready.” She paused, meeting his eyes and opening hers fully. “That’s a name around here… Robyn Stavely the actress, and Petra Stavely. I remember Petra at the Primary.”
He didn’t think the receptionist was being nosey. She was friendly and interested, the way people often are in small towns. He decided to share a harmless piece of information with her. “I’m Petra’s father.” He was uneasy as he said the words, not because of this girl, but because he was announcing a role he would have to play, one that he was not really used to.
“Oh, right. I see the booking was made from London. You’ve come from London for the wedding? Gee, I believe it’s going to be a really big shindig. Out at Tamaki Downs?”
He nodded. He wondered if the girl was asking herself why the father of the bride was staying here; it must seem un-family in this very family town.
“We’re fully booked for the wedding. I suppose every hotel between here and Christchurch is too. Do you - um - know the district?” She stumbled on the mismatch between a London father and a local daughter.
“I was born here. I went to Springvale Primary myself,” he quickly assured her.
“Oh, really? I only came back six months ago. It’s real peaceful. My boyfriend and I were in London. That’s a fun place.”
Real peaceful. She might have meant it wasn’t fun here. He looked down at her swollen belly. “But you came back.”
“Uh-huh.” She too looked down, her smile flecked by a grimace.
She gave him a sealed message and a key on a string with a large piece of numbered plywood. He got his case from the car and dragged it up the stairs - there was no lift. The room was at the back and looked over a wild garden, strewn with a rusty boiler, and a tractor without wheels resting on blocks; beyond were rows of cabbages and turnips, and then pastures. The room itself was comfortable enough; an old four-poster iron bed on bare boards, with a few mats, a giant mahogany wardrobe, and a dresser. He visited the bathroom down the hall. On the wall was a Pirelli calendar of 1985 which could probably pass as interesting memorabilia, rather than disregard of the passage of time.
He looked at the rust-stained bath. His mother used to work here as a maid; she had probably cleaned the bath before he was born. He tried to visualise what she might have looked like as she was scrubbing; slender, pale, earnest, her female attraction smothered by lumpy clothes; apprehensive, hoping she might be saved from drudgery by the arrival of a William Stavely or similar.
In his room he opened the message. It was from Petra’s mother, Robyn, his former wife; an invitation in her large, assertive handwriting to stay at the Downs, rather than ‘that dreadful place, the Royal Hotel’. He expected the invitation, although it was belated; the Downs was to be the centre of the celebrations. Later he would ring Alison, his present wife, in London, and tell her, and she would probably say, ‘I knew Robyn would try to drag you up there,’ as though Tamaki Downs was a wicked place, and perhaps to Alison it was. He would deny that he cared much where he stayed, but the truth was he wanted to be at the Downs; he expected to be there, and in a way he had a right to be there.
After a quick shower, he changed into casual slacks and a sweater and decided to go to Tamaki Downs now, leaving his luggage at the Royal for the moment.
He drove west at a brisk pace, passing the outlying farms, always climbing, with the Southern Alps sprawling in the sun before him. The farms looked, as ever, comfortable and withdrawn, hiding their prosperity.
He knew some of the farmers around here; he had been to school and grown up with them. George Hedley was one. George had stayed with him in London a few years ago and announced proudly, ‘I’m a multimillionaire now, Tom, do you realise that?’ If Tom had replied candidly, he would have said, ‘I wouldn’t have been prepared to serve a twenty-year term of imprisonment on fifteen hundred acres for the money,’ but George wouldn’t have seen it that way. He had come as a youth to work the farm, married the farmer’s only child, served well and been compensated for his term of incarceration. He was a happy man. Unfortunately, he never lived to sell the farm, but his wife did. Tom reminded himself that he ought to telephone Patricia Hedley while he was in town.
The pastures of late summer were dry and yellow, the sky a vast pale blue bowl, with tumbling whi
te clouds; remoteness was a quality in the air. This was high country, undulating in hills and dales. The road unreeled before him, sometimes new tarmac but the same old curves, and after about two hours, a roadside notice said Tamaki Downs was a mile ahead.
The house came into view only after he had passed through the stone gateway and driven a further half mile; it was built in a wide valley, protected from the south. The two-storey grey limestone central block with two wings occupied the same site as Joe Ashton’s cabin in 1870. He knew the history. The high-ceilinged lower storey allowed rooms of grand proportions with tall windows. The roof was blue-grey slate, the window frames white, with a white conservatory and verandah across the front. The building sprawled comfortably amid lawns and walls of varying levels, with beds of wind-burned roses and a surrounding shelter belt of pines and gums. The Tamaki Downs homestead looked much the same as it always had.
A young woman was tending the potted geraniums on the front steps when he drove the car up to the entrance. She had bare feet. She could not have been much more than twenty-five. Her loose black hair hung down to the middle of her back. She wore a black dress. The wind blew the thin material of the dress against her body, which just escaped being thin. Her skin was golden. She greeted him casually and helped with his small gifts of choice liquor, chocolates and perfume.
“I’m Tia. And you’re Tom. Where are your bags?”
“At the Royal. I’m staying there.”
She looked puzzled. “I thought you were staying here, Tom. Your room is ready. Stuart has a problem with one of the contractors. He’s over on the west side.”
He stepped into the panelled hall, pleased that he was expected. The smell was familiar, but difficult to identify; dying blooms perhaps. He might even have detected a whiff of decay. A portrait in oils of Celia Ashton, Robyn’s mother, long dead, glinted in the gloom. Painted in her thirties, it depicted her as an imperious lady, but he remembered her as a mouse. He placed his jacket on the hall stand by a vase filled with yellow gladioli.
“Come and I’ll show you your room, Tom, or maybe you know it. I’m told you’re used to being here.” Tia picked up his jacket.
“Not in recent years.” He followed her to the familiar double bedroom upstairs. The paper on the walls and the bedcover had a faint pattern of green scrolls. “You’ve redecorated.”
“About time. Like it?” She dropped the jacket and the duty-free presents on the bed. “It’s a koru design.”
She disappeared before he could reply. He could see from the window that the trees in the garden were more profuse. He still had a sight across the downs to the Thums, and Mt Tasman, purple in the distance, with a smudge of snow. For a few seconds, he slipped back in time to himself at ten, twelve, fifteen. Mostly enjoyable times. Then he went downstairs. The house was quiet. He found Tia in the kitchen, occupied at the sink. Her bottom was outlined in the thin dress.
“Let me get you a drink, Tom. If you want a shower, there should be everything in your bathroom. I’ll send Ted to collect your stuff.”
“No thanks. Nothing to drink and I’m not sure if I’ll stay here. I’ll talk to Stuart. I don’t want to get in the way.” He wasn’t going to leap at the invitation.
“You’re Petra’s father. How could you be in the way?”
He countered with, “Where’s the new Mrs Ashton?”
She looked over her shoulder with a scratchy laugh. “I don’t work here, Tom. I’m Mrs Ashton.”
Stuart’s wife! How was he to know? “Well… he told me on the phone that he’d married. We didn’t get much further than that. I asked him to tell me about his wife, and he said she was a lovely girl.”
What he had actually asked Stuart Ashton, with a tinge of sarcasm, was ‘Who is she?’ expecting to hear a South Canterbury family name that he recognised, or at least a list of her academic accomplishments. Stuart had evaded the question with ‘a lovely girl’; on appearances, that much was true. But to him she had looked like a young woman helping in the kitchen. Stuart was in his forties after all.
“We didn’t have a big society wedding, like Petra is going to have. We had a hangi at the marae.”
“I wasn’t invited,” he tried to joke.
“You and a lot of other people. We just decided to do it.”
He felt foolish and defensive about his mistake. “I haven’t heard much from Stuart. Occasional, very occasional emails and phone calls don’t really bridge the gap to London, do they? For a writer he’s a lousy correspondent.”
He would certainly report his gaffe to Alison in a tone of annoyance that he had to conceal now. ‘Wouldn’t you expect your close friend to tell you about his bride?’ he’d say. Alison was bound to reproach him for insensitivity in classifying the girl.
“I don’t know about the gap between here and London,” Tia said. “I’ve never been there. Stuart’s going to take me some time.”
“Do you… go with Stuart when he’s on his… projects?” He groped for words, wary of sensitivities.
“Oh, yes. He does a column in the national papers, and occasional nature television shows. We get around the country to film. We go to Erehwemos, the house in the Sounds. You know it?” She pronounced the name as though it was a Maori word instead of a snooty jibe at Samuel Butler.
“I’ve never been there,” he had to admit. Erehwemos was one of the houses and apartments that the wider Ashton family had scattered in various countries for their pleasure. And investment. What exasperated him about Erehwemos was that he had been hearing what an idyllic place it was for years without ever being invited there. Even during his marriage to Robyn, when the opportunity to go arose, Robyn found an excuse not to go, and it wasn’t particularly one of those Ashton advantages that he was going to beg for.
“It’s beautiful. Stuart likes to write there. He says the vibes are bad here. And another thing we do, whenever we’re in Christchurch to record a show or something, we go to see Len. Poor kid. It must cause you a lot of pain. What a waste.”
“I stayed over in Christchurch when I arrived and went to see him myself.”
“How is he? It’s a month since we were down there.”
“About the same. He can’t improve, I’m told.”
“Petra sees him. She loves her brother. And of course Robyn visits regularly. I guess he misses you.” She looked at him, her eyes like dark mirrors and hard to read.
He wasn’t sure Len missed anything or anyone, but it sounded callous to say it. He struggled to find an appropriate reply, but his long absences from the neurological care home where his son lived were an implicit indictment.
“What’s the matter, Tom? Are you surprised your friend’s married a Maori?”
This was a startling swipe. “Not at all! I was thinking of Len… And as for Stuart, I’m just surprised he’s married!” he said explosively.
She turned toward him, wiping her hands on a cloth. She had a brooding look, seeking offence, he thought, but then he had already offended. “Is your family… from this part of the island?” Again, he was treading carefully.
“We’ve been around here for hundreds of years,” she replied curtly.
This piqued him. “Actually, there weren’t any Maori families in the Springvale district thirty or forty years ago.”
“The only ones you’d remember are the itinerants who came to de-horn or castrate the cattle.” She spoke with a slight sneer.
“There weren’t many of them either.”
“We’re not all labourers, you know.”
“Are you still fighting the Maori Wars?” he asked, lightly.
She surprisingly returned a wide smile. “You bet. And we’re winning. You want to speak to Stuart?” She held up a mobile phone.
“Let’s wait until he gets here.”
“Why don’t you ride out to see him? I can tell you which way. I’ll come out to the stable with you. Hack or bike?”
“I haven’t been in either saddle… forever. I’ll wait until he comes in.
He works on the place now?”
“When it’s necessary.”
“What’s stopping him?”
“Don’t you know? The war. And he hates working here.”
“A feeling we share - about working here. I’ve done a spot of it myself.” He had expected to hear that Stuart was writing another book, or preparing for an adventurous expedition. “I know he served in Afghanistan.”
“Bloody Afghanistan!”
“He retired sick?” He had never been able to penetrate the fog around Stuart’s retirement from the army.
“He wasn’t actually wounded, not physically.”
“What happened?”
She tapped her forefinger on her temple. “Headaches and nightmares. He didn’t tell you?”
“No. He wouldn’t want to admit weakness to me.”
“You men… I’m a bit worried about him, Tom. He’s depressed. I don’t know why. It could be something about Mt Vogel, although that sounds silly.”
“Vogel is old history. What about it?” The mere mention of the mountain was enough to prick a nerve in him.
“Let him tell you. I’m not sure I understand. Maybe you can cheer him up. Robyn told me you were big mates.” The way that Tia crimped her mouth made this a criticism.
“Partying?”
“I think you’ve done a lot of yarning and boozing together, from what Stuart says.”
“Sure, and arguing. Don’t assume we’re all that compatible.”
“If you’re not going out to meet Stuart, are you going to look in on the old man then?”
“How is he?”
She frowned. “Without chemo, which he refuses, he has six months or a year. And he has a dicky heart. He says there’s no point in a bypass.” She was unemotional, her face stiff.
“His health seems to have collapsed, when you think he was once an athlete. You don’t get on with him, Tia?”
There was a silence and a sigh. “Right.”
“That makes two of us - well, three including Stuart. Are Stuart and Ernest still skirmishing?”
“Sure.” She seemed to relax. “Ernest’s much vaunted liberal views are bullshit, Tom. The only Maori you’ll find at dinner at Tamaki Downs, when he’s inviting, apart from me, is one who’s a Member of Parliament, or an All Black.”
