by Cowley, Joy
We sit in the car to dry ourselves. We’re on a hill overlooking the arm of the Sound, water everywhere on land running down into the sea. Through the rain we can hear the rush of waterfalls, even though we can’t see them. Grandpa is quiet now. I think he’s in a lot of pain. His head is on a cushion against the window; his eyes are closed but he’s not asleep.
We have only half an hour before we reach the main road that will take us to Blenheim. Will is worried about taking the car into traffic. I’m sure he can do it all right, but people will see a little kid at the wheel. I wish I knew how to drive. At least I look about the right age.
My hair is no longer dripping. I feel in my bag for my hairbrush, and my hand stops on my phone. Something makes me pull it out and switch it on. “Hey! I’ve got a signal!”
Will is drying his head. “You’re not ringing your friends!”
I hold up the phone. “It’s a strong signal. Three bars. Grandma, you hear that? My mobile phone is working!”
“That’s a no-brainer!” says Will. “Put the stupid thing away!”
“Shut it, poo-face! We can call the hospital!”
Grandma leans over my seat. “Can you ring that thingy from here?”
“What’s the hospital number?” I ask her.
“You don’t need that,” she says. “Just call 111.”
Another problem solved. I don’t have to drive on the main road to Blenheim. An ambulance is going to meet us at Havelock, at the beginning of the road. Grandma arranged it with the hospital. She shouted so loud she hardly needed Lissy’s phone.
“Why do we meet outside the public toilets?” I ask.
“Because I need a restroom, stupid boy,” she says. She leans close to Grandpa who doesn’t open his eyes. “Oil drum!” she snorts. Then she yells at me. “Don’t just sit there! Get moving!”
No one talks for a while. I think we’re all hoping that Grandpa will wake up and make one of his stupid jokes, but that doesn’t happen. The only sounds are car noises: the swish of the tyres in the wet, and the soft thump of the windscreen wipers. We’re now on a sealed road, still lots of bends, but no more mud and bumps. Lissy has fiddled with the ventilation controls so warm air is coming in. We need that. Wet clothes are cold clothes, even in summer.
Lissy says, “There’s a red truck behind us. I think he wants to get past.”
I can’t see in the rear vision mirror. “Is he close?”
“Very.”
“There’s no place to pull over,” I tell her.
A horn sounds behind us and I jump. It’s a loud aggressive sound, two blasts meaning “get out of my way”.
“Idiot!” yells Grandma.
“Can you drive faster?” Lissy asks.
Panic always makes me feel sick. “No. No, I can’t drive faster. Look at the road! One bend after another.”
“He’s right behind you,” she says.
The driver blasts his horn again. That does it. There’s nowhere to pull over so I stop on the road. The truck stops behind us. Now I can see it, bright red and just one person. It’s not a man. It’s a woman and I think maybe she’ll get out and come over to our car. She doesn’t. She backs a little, and then drives past us.
Grandma has wound down her window. “Take a long walk over a short jetty!” she yells.
I don’t think the woman hears her. She just looks at me, her eyes opening up like she’s seen a ghost. I want to shout, “I can’t help it if I’m small,” but she is past us. Her truck spurts exhaust fumes and is out of sight in seconds.
“Do you think she’ll report me?” I ask.
“Nah,” says Lissy. “She’s too full of herself.”
I put the car into gear. I admit to being exceptionally pleased that I don’t have to drive further than Havelock.
The road gets wider and straighter, the cars behind me can pass without difficulty, and because there’s so much rain and mist, I don’t think anyone notices me sitting behind the wheel. Although it’s not yet six o’clock, the sky is heavy and all the cars have their lights on. The weather may make driving difficult but it is definitely in my favour, although that doesn’t stop me from thinking every white car we see might belong to a traffic cop.
The white vehicle we want to see is already in Havelock, an ambulance, sleek with rain, parked right outside the public restrooms. It’s so conspicuous that even Grandma spots it from a distance. “It beat us!” she says. “Well, how about that!”
There is no parking space behind it, so I pull into the kerb in front, and switch off the engine. Grandma has her window down, head out and is yelling. “Hey! Over here! This is what you’re looking for!” Nothing happens so she says to me, “Sound the horn, Will.”
I press my hand on the middle of the steering wheel. It’s a loud noise, a bit like the red truck that followed us, and it gets attention. The driver’s door of the ambulance opens and a guy gets out, official uniform and stripes on his jacket. He walks quickly to Grandma’s window, glances around the car and sees me at the wheel. He has round eyes and a small black moustache. He points a finger. “You? You, the driver?”
“We didn’t have too many choices!” Grandma yells.
A woman in the same uniform is approaching. “Amanda!” the man calls. “You’re not going to believe this!”
While the paramedics put Grandpa on the stretcher, I help Grandma into the restrooms. She doesn’t want to leave him. She keeps looking back, but she has to go to the toilet. When she comes out of the cubicle, she has her skirt tucked up. I pull it down for her and help her to wash her hands. They are shaking so much, the soap stuff drops onto the bench. “Silly old fool,” she says to herself, and I realise she is really frightened.
When we come out, Grandpa is in the ambulance, a blanket tucked around his legs, and both the man and the woman are bent over him. Will is still in the car. Some people have stopped on the footpath, to see what’s going on. I want to tell them to mind their own business. This is my grandfather, not theirs.
Grandma says to the paramedics, “I guess one of you will have to drive our car to the hospital.”
The woman turns, shaking her head. “No. You all come with us. The car will have to stay where it is. Just take any valuables and lock it.”
Grandma doesn’t argue. Will is told to sit up front with the driver. Grandma and I go in the back with the woman. Grandpa lies opposite us and now has a needle in his arm with a tube connected to a plastic bag. There is a mask thing over his nose and mouth.
The woman says he has been given medication for pain and is sleeping. But I don’t think he’s asleep. He looks limp and grey, the way he did when he was lying on the garage floor. To tell the truth, he looks extremely unconscious.
The woman keeps checking his pulse. She reminds us that her name is Amanda.
I tell her everything I know about Grandpa’s fall, the cut on his head, the blood, his twisted arm.
“Did he just lose his balance or did he faint?” she asks.
“I don’t know. My brother saw it happen.”
“Why do you ask?” Grandma wants to know.
“Has he been having fainting spells?” Amanda asks.
“Nope. Never.” Grandma says. “It was that damned fool oil drum.”
Soon after that, the ambulance goes faster with the siren on and Amanda smiles at us. “That’s for the young man’s benefit. We’re very impressed that a nine-year-old could drive all the way –”
“He’s eleven,” I tell her. “Eleven and a half. He’s just small for his age.”
“Well, anyway, I think our driver is just showing him what we can do,” Amanda says, glancing at Grandpa.
I know she is lying.
The ambulance goes directly to the back of the hospital and Grandpa is put on a trolley, with the plastic bag hooked on a pole. Will and I stand back, but Grandma is
holding onto the trolley and firing questions at him. “You okay, darl? You’re in hospital. Remember the ambulance? Hey, tiger! Can you hear me?”
Grandpa’s eyelids flicker and open. He pulls down the mask and says to Grandma, “Here’s mud in your eye, kid,” and then he shuts down again.
Everyone who talks to us is cheerful and efficient, but no one tells us anything useful. Grandpa is wheeled away and we are put in a waiting room that is warm and quite comfortable, except that we are extremely uncomfortable with worry. Grandma complains about the chairs that are too soft and too low to get out of, and how she won’t sit in those high-backed rubbish chairs, also, the magazines are useless because she can’t read, and no, she doesn’t want instant coffee that tastes like pee, thank you very much.
We don’t say anything. What’s the point?
A nurse comes in with a clipboard. Well, we think she’s a nurse but she turns out to be a doctor. She asks the same kind of questions that Amanda asked in the ambulance, wanting to know if Grandpa had fainting fits.
“Never fainted in his life!” Grandma says.
Will says, “I thought he was going to faint two times.”
The doctor looks up. “Why did you think that?”
“He was huffing,” Will says.
“Anything else?”
“When he huffs he goes a funny colour,” says Will. “Like now.”
“Interesting,” says the doctor.
“Interesting?” barks Grandma. “What the hell do you mean by interesting? Where is he?”
“He’s fine. He’s with the cardiologist now but you’ll be able to see him in a few minutes.”
Grandma looks as though she’s going to explode. “Cardiologist? For a broken arm?”
The woman pats her on the arm. “I’ll be right back,” she says.
That’s another lie. I take out my phone, and this time Will doesn’t say a word. He knows I’m calling Mum and Dad.
I think I’ve been asleep. I know this is the hospital waiting room, but it looks different, shifted somehow, like turning over too many pages in a book and getting to a different part of the story. There’s a cushion under my head, a grey blanket trailing on the floor. Lissy is standing near me, and Mum and Dad are talking on the other side of the room. Mum and Dad! Where has Grandma gone? I look at the clock. That can’t be right. 4.20am?
“You’re awake,” Lissy says.
“Unnecessary statement,” I mumble.
“You had a good sleep,” she says. “You were tired.”
I’m about to repeat the unnecessary statement line, when I realise she’s not being sarcastic. “Where’s Grandma?”
“Ah, Will!” Dad gets out of his chair, strides across and pats me on the shoulder. “Congratulations are in order. That was a fine effort!”
“It was an effort for a fine,” Mum says, standing up. “I hope no one reports you for underage driving. You should never have been put in that situation.”
Lissy laughs. “We’d just have to tell them it was our parents who put us in that situation.”
I push the blanket aside. “Where did Grandma go?”
“She’s asleep in a bed next to Grandpa,” says Lissy. “She was exhausted. The doctor said her blood pressure’s very high, not good at all.”
I look at the clock again. I’ve been asleep for more than seven hours, my last memory being of Lissy on the phone to Mum at 9.00pm. Seven hours and twenty minutes out of my life!
Mum and Dad are standing together, and almost, but not quite, holding hands. I anticipate announcements, and am not far wrong.
Mum begins. “We’re all shattered. We’ve booked a room at a motel. We can catch up on sleep before I drive you back to Christchurch. First thing, though, we’ll go to Havelock to pick up Grandpa’s car. Dad will keep the car in Blenheim until they’re ready to go home.”
Dad says, “Mother will probably be out today. Dad will be in a little longer. He has a double fracture of the right arm, both radius and ulna. At his age that probably means surgery with steel plates and screws. He won’t be driving for a while. But that’s not the main concern. It’s his heart. They’re going to insert a pacemaker and he’ll be right as rain.” He stops, reading something in our faces. “It’s not a huge operation,” he says. “A wire is threaded into the heart. The pacemaker itself sits in a pocket of skin in his chest. It will make a big difference.”
Lissy says, “What about the rest of the holiday at the bach?”
“I’ll be taking the two of them back to Timaru,” says Dad.
“But the bach isn’t locked!” I tell him. “The garage was left open.”
He smiles. “I don’t think there’s anything there that a burglar would want.”
“Don’t worry,” says Mum. “We’ll fix that later. We’ve got some good news for you. Mrs McKenzie phoned. She said you’d called her when the twins were out and this is what she’s offered. If we put you on a bus to Queenstown, you can stay with them for the rest of the holidays. Both of you! Isn’t that wonderful?”
I look at Lissy. We don’t say anything.
“You can pack tomorrow,” Mum says.
“Our clothes are still at the bach,” Lissy says.
Dad shrugs and holds out his hands. “Look guys, we’re doing our best. This is a very complicated situation. We’ll get the old folk back to Timaru and then we’ll think of sorting out the bach and your clothes. Right?”
“You’ve got heaps of clothing at home,” Mum says.
I look at Lissy again and she says it for me. “But what if Grandma and Grandpa don’t want to go back to Timaru? What if they want to stay on at the bach?”
“Impossible,” says Dad. “Entirely out of the question.”
“They could go back to the bach if we went with them,” I add.
Dad laughs and says, “Who would drive?”
“You would,” says Lissy.
All that seems a long time ago, although it’s less than three weeks. Yesterday Dad drove Grandpa into Blenheim to get some stitches removed. Today being hot as an oven, all Grandpa is wearing is his old khaki shorts and the plaster cast on his arm. He is showing off the scar on his chest.
“You’re looking at a real bionic man!” he says to Grandma, his hand over his pacemaker. “You want to feel my electronics?”
“They should have done your brain while they were at it,” she says.
“No, I’ve got you for that,” he says. “Brain hot-wired to your mouth.” He turns to us. “You know something, kids? She even argues with herself.”
Outside, the chainsaw splutters and roars. Dad has fixed it and is using it to cut up Will’s macrocarpa branch.
Will gives a backward nod towards Grandma and Grandpa. “Truce didn’t last. They’re fighting again.”
I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. I think people have to be very close to each other to have that kind of freedom.”
“What?” He looks as though he is tasting something bad. “Melissa, that’s a screwed-up philosophy!” and then he goes out to help Dad with the wood.
He is such a child!
Today I am doing the washing, and am very pleased that Mum is not here to see Grandma’s method of cleaning clothes. You throw everything in the bath, fill the bath with hot water and soap powder, then get in and tread on the clothes. That’s it. You just keep on walking up and down, then let the soapy water out and run fresh water for rinsing. After the rinsing water goes down the plughole, you squeeze the clothes with more stamping. But get this! The next thing is to bring in the wheelbarrow, yes, the old garden wheelbarrow, right into the bathroom, and put a sheet of plastic in it. On top of the plastic you throw the wet washing, then you wheel it outside to the clothesline. Now, I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s actually extremely easy, what Grandma calls beach laundry.
Mum wou
ld have a fit.
Our mother has explained to Mrs McKenzie that we’re very grateful for the kind holiday offer, but we have to look after our grandparents. It was difficult to leave so many things unfinished – just one chord on the guitars, fishing rods not fixed, much more swimming to do, and learning to make different kinds of bread – and now, especially now, impossible to leave with the Hoffmeyers’ seventeen-year-old son Conrad home from his summer shearing job, tanned skin, crinkly hair and a smile like melting golden syrup. Also, I’ve nearly mastered the art of snorkelling and clearing my mask. I mean, there’s so much to do here!
Mum says she might come up next weekend. Then again, she might not. I tell her I’ll put a vase of flowers in the outhouse just for her, but she just grunts and says she’s busy at the shop.
Dad has taken three weeks’ leave and he’s having a ball, running around the bach, finding things he’s forgotten, telling us about the scrapes he used to get into, like the time he and some friends made a raft and borrowed a man’s outboard motor. It fell off into the sea and they put it back on the man’s boat without saying anything. It was useless, Dad said, all seized up with salt. I’ll bet Grandma and Grandpa didn’t know that.
At home, Dad sometimes sings in the shower. Here, he sings a lot, all day. We all do. We have concerts at night with the guitars and Will and I are learning a whole lot of folk songs like “Shenandoah” and “Lonesome Traveller.” There are also songs that would make Mum’s hair curl, like the one about the sailing ship. The first mate’s name was Carter, and gad, was he a farter. When the wind wouldn’t blow and the ship wouldn’t go, they got Carter the farter to start her. Will just loves singing that. And the graveyard song. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. They go in thin and they come out stout. Oo-oo! Oo-oo! Ah-ah! Ah-ah! How happy we will be!
