Necessary Secrets

by Greg McGee

Ellie put the other sheets aside and began reading SD 00007982 in detail. He was hardly loquacious. Under Social History, he was asked: How would you describe what kind of person you are (Introvert, extrovert, a thinker, a doer, anxious (who would admit to that?), easy-going, imaginative, practical, risk-taking, cautious etc.)? He’d written nothing in the box, just circled easy-going, imaginative and etc. Etc, for god-sakes? He’d describe himself as et cetera? Might this mean that he had a sense of humour, was self-deprecating, or just lazy?

  When she looked down the sheets at the other random questions, his answers were similarly cursory and, possibly humorous. Do you like animals? He’d written: Who would admit to not liking animals? Even Hitler liked horses. Did he? Ellie thought. That showed a considerable knowledge of history, if it was true. How do you get on with people? The answer: So far, so good. I’ve been lucky with family, and friends. I have a no dick-heads policy, but, funnily enough, I haven’t met any yet!

  Never met a dick-head, thought Ellie. Does that mean he’s extremely tolerant or that he has no social filters? She liked that he thought he’d been lucky with family and friends. She liked his irreverence, she liked that he didn’t seem desperate to sell himself. Or was that an indication that he simply didn’t care?

  SD 00007982 was a chef by occupation, a sous-chef he specified, which meant he wasn’t trying to talk himself up. What do you like doing in your spare time? I don’t get any! Watching Netflix and chilling! Wasn’t that a euphemism for sex? There was something childish about the extravagant exclamation marks, but also playful – a sign he was joking, that he didn’t take himself too seriously, perhaps.

  Do you have any special talents (Musical, artistic, sporting, creative)? He’d written: Yes! Then qualified it with: If playing the ukulele counts. And singing. Plus playing touch footy to rep level. Oh yes, and a fine arts degree, blah blah. Blah blah? When she searched back to the section on education and occupation, he hadn’t mentioned any degree, just the cooking diploma. She was intrigued: a picture was forming of an athletic, laid-back, musical, artistic Tūwharetoa chef with a sense of humour. She could almost hear his voice through his answers. Are you left or right handed? Right handed, but ambi-footerous – I can kick with both feet!

  With a rising sense that she was on the verge to committing to a destiny, Ellie went to the last page. Why did you want to be a donor? What thoughts and feelings led you to becoming a donor? He’d written: I’ve been lucky. Why not share?

  Ellie found herself staring at the fake glowing embers, the controlled flame, the ease and comfort of it. I’ve been lucky. Why not share? She couldn’t imagine a better answer.

  She heard the key-lock on the front door being punched and slid the sheets back into her bag, as Claudia and Yelena came in. Claudia was radiant, which made it safe to ask. ‘How was he then?’

  Claudia thought about it for a second. ‘He was . . . sweet.’

  ‘Sweet? Will?’ Her date had been Will, who had told Yelena he wanted to come home.

  ‘More like his old self.’

  That didn’t sound much of an improvement to Ellie. ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Not high, and not drinking.’

  ‘She wanted to bring him home,’ said Yelena.

  ‘I did,’ admitted Claudia with what looked suspiciously like a dreamy smile, ‘but bossy britches Yelena said, “Not tonight, Josephine.”’

  ‘Make him work for it, I say!’

  ‘I just don’t want to discourage him.’

  ‘And you don’t want to make yourself a doormat, either.’ Yelena softened, took Claudia by the hand. ‘Claudia, darling, one step at a time. You and the kids are the best things in his life and he knows it. He’s been straight for the past six weeks or so, as far as I can tell. But the thing is, once you’ve been to the dark side, you know the address and it’s easy to find your way back there.’

  ***

  YELENA told Claudia that she and Ellie had to dash: ‘There’s someone in the car.’ Inevitably, the someone was a young woman. Yelena’s playmates were often bi and sometimes even previously exclusively hetero; her enthusiasms were infectious, and her taste was catholic. Her one constant was younger: mid-twenties was her sweet spot. This one’s name was Luissa, exotically Pasifika but with the almond eyes, Ellie guessed, of a Chinese Samoan. Ellie may have met her before, she couldn’t be sure. There were so many of them.

  As Yelena waited at the centre lane to take a right into their street, Ellie looked down Ponsonby Road towards the little patch of civility and diversity that had become home. She loved it. A couple of hundred yards in either direction would take her to brilliant Italian cuisine, or tapas, or vegan, Vietnamese, or Turkish. She could drink freshly ground espresso at half a dozen different cafes, from kosher to shabby chic, where she could sit and watch the Ponsonby Road passeggiata and the comings and goings from the brothel that looked like a modernist Salvation Army Citadel, two along from the old paint-blistered wooden steeple of the Samoan Methodists. Branko’s funeral had been held at the Anglican church on the other side, All Saints. She’d got her first school holiday job behind the counter at a kebab joint nearby, and had waited tables through uni at various cafes all along the strip, most of which had lasted about eighteen months, when the first terminal tax bill arrived. You could see the constant churn of restaurants and cafes and boutiques as Darwinian, but Yelena reckoned it was more like unintended Marxism – rich men with tax problems redistributing their ill-gotten gains through their bored wives by financing them into vanity retail. At fourteen Ellie’d had her first sloppy kiss under the old Hydra sign just around the corner, before an after-ball party where she’d got so drunk she’d vomited over her date, inadvertently saving her virginity for another year. This was her town, her village, her hood, she had memories imprinted on every yard of it, yet she couldn’t afford to live here any more except as her father’s caregiver or as Yelena’s tenant on mate’s rates.

  Living cheek by jowl with Yelena in her little heritage cottage just off Ponsonby Road was never going to be a long-term thing, but was for the most part, a joy. In lovemaking, as in most other things, Yelena was boisterous almost to the point of disinhibition, and it was hard to avoid hearing her dear friend ratcheting through her seduction routines in the sitting room and climaxing in the mistress bedroom across the little entrance foyer. Once home, Ellie quickly bid Yelena and Luissa goodnight and, as soon as she’d used the bathroom, was careful to fully close the bedroom door. She stripped, climbed into bed and inserted the little rubber ear-plugs, so that, with a bit of luck, she could disappear into her own fantasies rather than be an unwilling witness to Yelena acting out hers. Ellie took some deep breaths, relaxed her toes and calves and let her mind wander. Behind the number, SD 00007982, a person was appearing, still a wraith perhaps, but becoming more substantial the more she thought about him. She fell asleep wondering whether she might finally have met her match.

  I’M NOT SURE what I’ve done. Something wrong. A new one, in uniform, blonde with scarlet lipstick and matching epaulettes, says I need better care. Somewhere else. Another room. They’ll help me shift tonight. I tell her I’d rather stay here where I can still see the lights at night. She smiles her red and white smile like that striped toothpaste with the perfect name to match the teeth . . . Macleans! An American advertising construct, surely, Ma and cleans. Like Marlboro Man. Southern Man, who did that? Rocket Man. Was that really me? Is that who I am? ‘Is it a dark room,’ I ask her, ‘this one you’re shifting me to?’

  ‘It hasn’t got the views of this one, but it’s still light and airy.’

  She would say that. Can I believe her? What have I done? I tell her I’m sorry, I’m not sure what I’ve done, my memory isn’t what it used to be, but I do apologise ful . . . ful . . . fully. She smiles her red and white smile and tells me not to worry. But I do. What if there are no lights in this new room? Should I go quietly into that black room? I n
eed a plan. I had a plan. Walter was going to help me. Where’s Walter? Walter had a plan. Find Walter. That’s a plan. It’s now or Nebuchadnezzar. It’s now or . . . The Netherlands? It’s now.

  ***

  YOU have everything you need, Den. You do. I’m sliding through the foyer in my favourite Air Force 1s, the grey leather ones with a white swoosh, and a nicely detailed mini swoosh up by my little toe. I have my Rainbird in my curled palm, so as not to give my intentions away as I cross the crowded reception foyer to the main entrance. I’m hidden from the women behind the counter by a queue of visitors wanting directions. If I can’t see them, they shouldn’t be able to see me. You’ll be okay. Don’t panic.

  Outside, real air embraces me. I shrug into my Rainbird. That feels better. It must be a Sunday, there are swarms of visitors coming down from the carparks, all so much younger than the elderly prisoners inside. Do I look like one of them? I expect to hear my name called. I walk as quickly as I can against the tide, up past the pharmacy and chiropodist and physio and hairdresser, on past the carpark entrances and exits, up towards the street. I’ve no idea where this is. It could be Timbuktu, though I’ve never been to Timbuktu. My father used to mention it. I see a woman coming down my side of the street from a bus stop further on. She looks a bit severe, buttoned down, permed to her roots, but she’s not wearing a uniform so I take a chance. ‘Excuse me, madam? Could you tell me where Auckland is?’

  She looks at me a bit peculiarly through very thick glasses. ‘You’re in Auckland.’

  I try unsuccessfully not to be surprised. ‘Am I?’

  ‘You mean the city, the CBD?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean, yes.’

  She hesitates and I think the game is up, but she indicates where she’s come from. ‘That way.’

  ***

  I’M crouching behind the bus shelter, listening for the hue and cry. I’m not sure what form that would take. Maybe sirens. Not searchlights, at least till after dark. Surely not dogs.

  A blue bus pulls up. It’s a darker blue, much darker than the driver’s turban, which is the colour of the vine in the pseudopanax that Stan said he’d pull out. Did he do that? Where is Stan? What did I do to make him run away? I’ve seen countless graves of Sikhs beside the rebuilt monastery at Monte Cassino, just along from all the white crosses of my father’s mates. He must be an ally. I step onto the bus and tell him I’d like to go to town, please.

  ‘Senior citizens travel for free, sir,’ he says, ‘but you need a HOP card to do that.’

  ‘If it’s free, why do I need a card?’

  ‘A very good question, sir,’ he says, ‘to which I have no adequate answer, except that the authorities require it.’

  I tell him I used to have many cards, but now I don’t.

  ‘That is an existential question for our times, certainly,’ he says, ‘but it shouldn’t be.’

  I have no idea what that means. I look at the empty seats stretching all the way to the back of the bus. ‘You could probably fit me in.’

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat just there, sir,’ he says, ‘where I can keep an eye out for you, and when we get back to Britomart station, you can go to the information booth and obtain the card to which you are entitled.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good plan.’ I tell him I like a good plan. I take a seat a couple of rows back from the driver, where I can see him in his little rear-vision mirror. Where he can see me.

  ***

  WHERE is this? Hills and vales. Dales? Hills and vales and dales of houses, getting older, more trees. Where on earth is this? I try not to despair of arriving somewhere I know. I have to trust the driver. The Sikhs have always been allies. I clearly said I wanted to go to town and he gave no indication that he didn’t know where town was. Perhaps I should have been more definitive about which town. What if the town to which this bus is going is . . . Bulls, say? I am not getting off in Bulls. If that’s where I end up, I mustn’t panic, but stay on the bus until it turns round and comes back. Where the fuck is Auckland?

  ***

  PEOPLE get on. I move with them down the back of the bus. I find a seat beside the rear exit door, in case I need it. In case the cry goes up. The hue and cry. Is that correct? Isn’t hue a colour? Just in front of me is a little video screen, with ads and notices. Every so often there’s a view of the inside of the bus. I see a little man with white hair whose head moves when I move mine, but the opposite way. There was a word I knew for that. If I move my head to the right, the little man on screen moves his to the left. Same when I lean. It’s mesmerising, waiting for the picture to come round again and reveal myself sitting on a bus, mugging for the camera. I’m still here: there’s the proof.

  ***

  WE’RE on a motorway to somewhere that doesn’t look like Bulls. At one stage I brace against the seat in front, when it seems our bus will crash head-on into another bus coming the other way, but there is room for both. We seem to be on a separate bus-way, to one side of the motorway. That rings a bell. I think I’ve seen this before, not from a bus, but from a car.

  ***

  WE start lifting towards the harbour bridge, and my battered heart jumps and thumps as I recognise it and know what I will find on the other side. The city flickers like old film through the stanchions of the bridge. The forested masts of Westhaven marina. The windowed cliffs of the city towers, reflecting the sliding sun. To my right, just as my heart hoped to find it, the string of little coves and bays with their dark green pōhutukawa fringes, running right around to the top of the harbour, where water and bush merge into the blue-green mass of the Waitākeres. I’m nearly home and know I’ll never leave again.

  ***

  MY knee is complaining – that cartilage moaning its fucking head off – as I limp around the marina boardwalk towards the harbour bridge, following the footsteps of my AF 1s, which seem to know the way better than my eyes. I must have walked here many times before because I remember the sound the halyards on the moored yachts make, a sort of tinkling noise in the wind. There’s no noise today, it’s all unsettlingly calm. The masts stretch away to one side, my right? Like . . . like upturned ice picks, bobbing in a turquoise cocktail. I wonder how long it’s been since I had a real drink. I wonder if someone will give me a drink. I wonder what time it is. I used to have a phone that told me the time and other things. Did I lose it? I seem to remember someone at Colditz taking it away from me, telling me I didn’t need that expense because I had a land-line connection to my cell. But whenever I picked up that phone, a voice asked me what I wanted to do. It so surprised me that she was always there that I couldn’t answer the first few times. Then I said, finally: ‘Escape.’ That wasn’t the right answer. I had a visit from a red and white to check that I was all right. She must have decided I was, but I’m not sure how she could know. But it was shortly after that, I think, when another red and white, or perhaps it was the same one, told me I would be shifted to another room. My father reckoned he could tell the time in the desert with his wristwatch. You point the twelve at the sun and north is halfway between the twelve and the hour hand. Which is how you find north, of course. If you had a wristwatch, you’d already know the time. Fuck, I’m a worry. Don’t panic, Den. You’re doing fine. It’ll be all right. Follow those shoes.

  ***

  THE fishermen are still here. They can’t be the same ones I’ve seen here before, but they are, as I recall them, Asian and Pasifika mainly, trying to keep their rods and tackle and bait and catch-bins out of the way of the lycra-clad prancers and dog walkers coming down the hill. Would you call them recreational fishermen? When their families, often sitting in parked cars alongside, are hanging out for a feed? Most of the cars look like they’ve been round the clock more than once. I wonder what happened to my car. Had Ellie said something? Maybe she’s looking after it for me. I could do with a drive. I could do with a feed. Some of the fisherm
en have cut lunches, but I can’t take food out of their mouths.

  ***

  I REMEMBER this long gravel drive. I know what it leads to. My AF 1s have brought me home. Except that it isn’t there. There are a few blackened timbers sticking up like those masts, some broken, gaunt against the sky. The entrance to a sooty concrete cavern that used to be the double garage is fenced off with yellow tape, with signs saying Hazard! and Danger! and No Entry. The words are blurring as I stand there slobbering at what used to be my home. Now I remember. A terrible fire in the night. And running. And how everything seems to have accelerated from that moment. How on earth had that happened? The garden gate is still there, but I fear the worst . . .

  Hallelujah! Carol’s garden is as it was. The grass has been recently mown and everything looks cared for. That would be Ellie, of course, she might even have said something on one of her visits, I can’t remember. Every pore in my broken old body seems to inhale, my nose and ears and eyes all breathe deeply of the plants and flowers and trees. Mostly spent, the flowers, the phlox turning yellow and the rest of them whose names I’ve forgotten wilting and drying, becoming wood, becoming dead. Except the roses – blessedly, there are still some roses. There’s one I stop beside. I dare to hope it might be her favourite, Abraham Someone . . . not Lincoln. The little fork to the right takes me down towards the melia. I can remember that this tree is significant but I can’t remember why. Can the zaps in my head be that precise? This gone, but not that. The melia is deciduous but sheds late, not leaves so much as twigs with yellowish berries, which I used to rake in late autumn at Carol’s insistence. Behind the melia, the glossy pseudopanax with the blue highlights still blocks out the world and makes me safe. I’m home, I can allow myself to be tired. I take my Rainbird off and roll it up. I lie down on my back, putting the Rainbird under the nape of my neck to support my head, and stare up at the branches spreading like capillaries against the sky. And hope, as I close my eyes, that when I open them again, this won’t prove to be a dream. And that I’ll still know who I am. Your name is Den. Don’t panic. You’ll be okay.