by Peter Walker
He called out to a little group of people away down the beach and Candy and Adam turned and waited for them. Candy looked at Race with her great eyes and said nothing and Griffin looked at him and said nothing either, his eyes red-rimmed and aggrieved. Then in the distance Race saw the girl he had seen helping Candy make a dress one day. ‘The famous Sandra Isbister,’ he thought. ‘She’s not as pretty as I remember.’
They walked down the beach away from the town. Race kept an eye on Sandra Isbister. ‘She’s quite ordinary looking really,’ he thought, ‘even quite plain.’ Her brown hair was in an urchin cut; she had no make-up. She was wearing a simple cotton green and white dress. She walked along looking rather solemn and unsure of herself as if she did not really think she belonged there. Far across the bay lay another country of folded hills and gullies, tiny roofs, patches of bush. Everything there looked infinitely peaceful and innocent there, as if nothing bad had ever happened, no law had ever been broken, no one had ever died. Then an onshore breeze sprang up and the waves came pouring into the bay, rushing forward like the winged sandals of the wind that was driving them on, and Race felt happiness sweep over him as if they had travelled hundreds of miles that day not because of Morgan and death but to meet by the shore – he noticed Sandra Isbister had a kind of gaiety to her walk, as if, although she felt the solemnity of the occasion, the way her foot fell, the way her calf turned, she could not help being light-hearted – as the waves came pouring landward, in the sun, in the spring.
They turned and walked back towards the town. At the town end of the beach was a long breakwater of black rocks. They climbed up and walked along beside a railway track that led out to sea. The rails were rusty but apparently still in use, for wagons stood along them. The deep green water was slapping at the rocks. FitzGerald stepped behind a wagon and took out some marijuana.
‘No!’ said Tolerton. ‘Not here. Not now.’
He spoke so sternly that FitzGerald grinned and looked unsure of himself which was rare for him.
‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Well, I can think of a dozen reasons,’ said Tolerton. ‘Not least there’s this: here we are in this one-horse town, bringing back a body, and you think everyone’s not watching us like hawks?’
‘But they can’t see through cast iron,’ said FitzGerald, and he rapped the rust-coloured side of the wagon.
‘Oh, you do whatever you like,’ said Tolerton, and he marched away on his long thin legs in the direction of the town. There was no one else in sight. Candy and Adam had come onto the breakwater and they sat on the rocks down by the slapping green sea. They were keeping to themselves. Candy put her arm over Adam’s shoulder and looked fully into his face. FitzGerald and Race and Sandra Isbister walked on. There were some Maoris fishing at the end of the breakwater: you could see the glint of their rod-tips in the sun before you saw them. A man of thirty-five or forty with a long, sparse, red moustache was standing on a pointed rock; an older couple wearing woollen jerseys were sitting below him. The woman’s feet were bare. Some newly caught fish were in a puddle of seawater. The older man, still sitting down, reeled his line in.
The hook was bare.
‘Might as well pack up and go and buy fish’n’chips,’ he said, stressing the word fish and looking shyly up at the visitors.
‘But you’ve got a good haul there,’ said FitzGerald, looking at the fish in the seawater puddle.
‘Oh, them,’ said the man disparagingly, as if it was only good form to say so. His wife smiled, but slowly one of her bare feet curled: she was embarrassed by the newcomers. The younger man did not once look at them. He baited his hooks with intense concentration and then climbed further up on the black honeycombed rock and, with a very grave expression, his mouth downturned under his moustache of sparse red hairs, he cast out. The line went sailing out far over the water and the sinker fell into the green sea with an audible ‘plop’.
6
That night, old Mrs Brisco insisted on strict segregation of the sexes. The boys were on the upper floor, in an attic dormitory. She herself stood guard on the landing below. The girls shared twin rooms on the second floor. Mrs Brisco demonstrated that all the locks and keys to the rooms worked and made the girls promise to lock their doors, but finally she had had to go downstairs and get some sleep and her guests then came and went as they pleased. Adam departed to Candy’s room for the night. And since Candy was sharing with Sandra, Sandra came up to sleep in Adam’s bed in the men’s attic dormitory where they talked and laughed until after midnight. FitzGerald gallantly attempted to join her but was refused permission. He pretended to be dismayed and complained a little, but it was a narrow bed in a dormitory, and he was not really sorry, and his honour was satisfied.
‘Where’s Rod Orr?’ said Race in the dark. He had suddenly noticed his absence.
‘Rod’s not coming,’ said FitzGerald.
‘I guess he never liked Morgan much,’ said Race.
‘It’s not that,’ said FitzGerald. ‘He probably feels guilty.’
‘Why should he feel guilty?’
‘Morgan wanted to stay the night – and he should have stayed the night – but Rod said no.’
‘Why did he say no?’ said Race.
‘Who knows? God knows. Something about a curtain,’ said FitzGerald. ‘But if he’d stayed on the sofa he wouldn’t have died, and I guess Rod feels guilty.’
‘Rod doesn’t feel guilty at all,’ said Sandra Isbister, from the dark. ‘He says Morgan committed suicide. He says he jumped.’
‘Jumped!’ said Race.
‘Or he was pushed,’ said Sandra. ‘He says there was a lovers’ quarrel and he jumped or he was pushed.’
‘A lovers’ quarrel?’ said FitzGerald. ‘With Human Sanity!’
‘Rod Orr would say that,’ said Race. ‘Rod has sex on the brain.’
‘Everyone has sex on the brain, to some degree,’ said Tolerton.
‘That’s not where I have it,’ said FitzGerald.
‘You,’ said Tolerton. ‘You’d have sex anywhere. At bus stops. In shop windows. In the forks of trees.’
‘Sex in the forks of trees!’ said Sandra Isbister, but this time she spoke rather sleepily, which made the others laugh, as if she had sped away into the borderlands of sleep but then, hearing the phrase from afar, had to come all the way back. And even when they all began to drop off, there was a ripple of laughter still in the room, but they were really only happy at being there together in the Brisco Family Hotel, under the sloping attic roof, and there was an odd sense of safety and contentment, and sadness as well, as if the final night, the last hours, of childhood were just then coming to their end.
And in the morning the mood was quite different. Everything was hurried and urgent; no one spoke much and they did everything quietly as if not to disturb other guests, yet there was no one else in the place except for Mrs Brisco who was downstairs making breakfast. You could smell bacon and toast to the very top of the house. It was still dark outside. Then the sky began to colour, but the lights stayed on inside all the same. There was a sense of getting ready to go on parade. They had to be at the church by six-thirty. The boys, the young men, were to be pall-bearers, and as pall-bearers they would be the guests of honour. They were bringing Morgan home. But Morgan was dead. They were bringing back a dead body. And were they not the culprits? They felt important and guilty and yet innocent at the same time, and about to undergo rigorous inspection.
Apart from Lane Tolerton, who had just started working as a law-clerk, none of the males had worn a suit and tie or formal black shoes, it seemed, for ages.
‘Fitzy, have you got any—?’
‘What?’
‘I can’t think of its name,’ said Race.
‘Whisky?’
‘No.’
‘Personal magnetism?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Nugget. Shoe polish.’
‘I thought you were going to say Nugg
et.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘I couldn’t think of the name.’
‘Have you got any?’
‘No.’
‘I have,’ said Tolerton.
On the second floor, the girls were dressing soberly. There was only one mirror in the shared bathroom and they put on their lipstick together without smiling or even imagining a smile. When they went downstairs they ate hardly any of the scrambled eggs and burnt bacon and burnt toast Mrs Brisco had prepared. Outside, it was startlingly cold. Mrs Brisco put the hall light on and the veranda light as well as they went out in the half-light to the taxis. At the church a crowd was waiting even though there was to be no ceremony, merely lifting and carrying the coffin out to the hearse before departure. This was done. The pall-bearers were watched intently – Morgan’s friends, all white, all six of them – as they came out of the little weatherboard church and carried the coffin down a concrete ramp and across to the verge. Then suddenly the sun was up and shot its beams on the frosty grass and on the puffing exhausts of the cars and the chrome door-handles of the hearse and on the flowers inside on the coffin-lid, and then off they went, the whole cortege, heading out of town. Candy and Griffin were in the first car behind the hearse. In the absence, as yet, of any family members, they had the role of chief mourners. In the car behind were Race, FitzGerald, Tolerton and Sandra Isbister. They were being driven by one of Morgan’s cousins – a distant cousin, he admitted, even very distant – ‘I wouldn’t have known him if I saw him in the street.’ His name was Gideon. He was wearing a rumpled grey suit, and a red sweater under his jacket because of the frost, but soon, when the sun was up, the car became too warm.
Gideon began to mop his brow. He wanted to take off his jacket but that, it turned out, was not possible.
‘I can’t stop the car,’ said Gideon.
‘Why not?’ said FitzGerald.
‘Those other buggers will pass me,’ he said.
He hadn’t meant it as a joke but everyone laughed and the mood, once again, became quite ordinary and cheerful. They had left the town behind and were on the coast, passing hoardings with pictures of beach property for sale, and then the real beaches themselves, cold breakers purling on the clean sand. Gideon was a wool-classer, he said. He was thirty-five, separated, father of two – he declared his whole station in life in a minute. He liked to go fishing, he said. He had been fishing everywhere along this coast – there off the rocks, and away out there, and just around that point – although whenever he could he went out by boat.
‘My great-grandfather used to fish off this coast,’ said Tolerton. ‘One year he lost his signet ring overboard. It was a very valuable ring. But he came back the next summer and caught a big snapper at exactly the same spot and took it back to the hotel. Well – you can imagine everyone’s amazement when the cook cut the fish open and the ring wasn’t inside.’
Everyone laughed at this, except Gideon who shook his head and said: ‘You students!’ He had a plump, round face with numerous black dots like pebbles dashed over it. A few miles on he glanced out the corner of his eye at Sandra who was in the front seat beside him. He asked if she would mind if he smoked.
‘Of course not,’ said Sandra. ‘I might have one too.’
‘Oh, well!’ said Gideon. ‘You can light mine for me.’
She lit a cigarette using the lighter on the dashboard and passed it across, a little lipstick on the filter. She lit one for herself and then, on impulse, leaned forward again and pressed the knob of the dashboard radio.
When the train left the station
There was two lights on behind
‘Oh, I love this,’ said Sandra, and she began to sing:
‘The blue light was my—’
Then Sandra was aghast. She clapped her hand to her mouth as if she had done something quite wrong. Music – in someone else’s car – on the way to a funeral! She jabbed at the chrome knob, trying to turn the radio off again.
‘No, leave it on,’ said Gideon.
‘Leave it on. Leave it on,’ said Race and FitzGerald together.
‘Oh!’ said Sandra. Then she laughed at her foolishness, and took a puff on her cigarette and exhaled lightly to show she didn’t care. Race saw that her hand was shaking very slightly. She was sitting half-curled on the front seat, in a fur coat. It was probably her mother’s or from an op-shop, Race thought – in any case it was slightly too large for her. The coat completely hid her form and yet Race thought just then he could almost see her naked, or at least that it was easy to imagine her naked and that this was not even sought by him, or by her for that matter – it was the way she held herself, it was unconscious, it was in the micro-muscles, and then some classical phrase – ‘nymph of the fountain always wet’ – came into his mind – but from where? – and in that minute, cruising along the highway in Gideon’s old Velox, the sidelong sun lighting the chrome dashboard and the blue cigarette smoke, Race thought: ‘My God. I’ve fallen for Sandra Isbister!’
A little further on, the car in front of them stopped abruptly in the middle of the highway. Gideon slammed on the brakes. They all slewed forward in their seats.
‘What is it? What’s happening?’ said FitzGerald, craning to see past Gideon’s head.
Standing across the road were four or five men, silhouetted by the morning sun, idling there, barring the way.
The hearse began to move again, but instead of going on down the highway it turned off the road and in through a gate.
‘What is it?’ said FitzGerald again.
‘Oh, they’re just the boys,’ said Gideon. He put the car into gear and moved forward. The young men who blocked the road looked at them impersonally, like car-park attendants with no interest in the people in the cars, just the vehicles themselves. Gideon drove through the gate after the hearse and they went slowly rocking across a grassy field.
‘What’s happening?’ said FitzGerald. He seemed alarmed for some reason.
‘It’s just the people here,’ said Gideon. ‘They want to keep the body. They say: “We loved this boy and now look what’s happened to him. So we’re going to keep him safe with us.” So we’ll have a little tangi – a little cry – together, then we’ll all drive on.’
In the corner of the field a woman came out from the porch of a house and began to call out in a long, high-pitched cry. The other cars were coming in through the gate. They parked in rows and everyone got out and stood on the grass.
The woman on the porch was calling out, crying out, and then, without any warning, everyone in the crowd of visitors, who had formed several ranks in front of the parked cars, began to weep. Tears were streaming on every face. It was so sudden and unexampled that Race, even through his own tears, felt amazement. ‘How does this happen?’ he thought. Yet his own grief – and presumably that of the others – was quite sincere. They were weeping for Morgan, there in the glassy hearse in front of them, and for themselves, standing in the cool sunlight that slanted across the grass, and also weeping, so it seemed to him, because in their thousand-year isolation the Maoris had discovered a certain pitch of the human voice, like that of the woman whose chant was still rising and rising in the air, which instantly and without exception made anyone who heard it cry.
Then the chanting stopped, and, abruptly, so did the tears. Race looked around him. Everything looked the same at first, but then he thought that things were subtly different. The shadows were sharper. Yet everywhere it seemed it was business as usual. Gideon was standing with his legs planted wide, jingling change in his trouser pocket as he chatted to a man in a black blazer with red piping on the collar. A few fields away a man was ploughing with a tractor, turning up sharp lines of wet black earth. A black dog squeezed through the lower bars of a gate and went racing after him, its body stretching and then closing like the symbol – ? – of an ohm. And plump Rawlinson, who had shared a flat with Morgan the previous year, and who a minute before had been sobbing openly, was now lookin
g down at his light-meter with a frown, and at the same time pulling with his thumb at the brown leather camera strap which was a little tight around his neck.
In the distance were the roofs of a town, and a tall green hill stood to the north. The wind was blowing and, as he watched, Race saw a white cloud was continually forming on the peak of the hill and streaming towards the sea. So this is the world, he thought. It was the first time he had seen or thought of the world as a single place. Yes, it was a great lit-up room which you come into and from which, in time, you leave. That was the proposition, and the effect, of the tears that had just been wept for Morgan: the world was one great room.
‘Time to go now,’ Gideon said to Race, and he and the others walked back over the grass to the cars, Rawlinson still pulling with his thumb at the dimpled brown strap which was just a bit too tight around his plump pink neck.
Part IV
2004
1
‘My darling, I cannot live without you,’ said a man’s voice. ‘I am in love – don’t you see? Why can’t we leave this awful place and go away together. Shall we go to the seaside? Do you not adore the sea?’
Toby turned around to locate the source of these endearments. Two seats behind him a man in his late thirties and wearing a panama hat with a pink band was addressing Candy. Candy, eyes lively, was drinking in every word. The man was one of the guests at the wedding. Gillian was getting married that day. The man in the panama had just flown in, he was telling Candy, from a film festival in Romania. Only the day before he had been watching a film in competition – he was on the jury – when a woman slipped into the seat beside him and began to whisper in his ear.
‘I am mad about you. Why not leave this awful place and come down to the sea? Do you not adore oysters? Do you not adore the sea?’
