Carnival Sky

by Owen Marshall

  ‘I got drunk a few times, but that didn’t help. I’ve had an almost savage need to hold someone accountable and couldn’t find anyone except myself. Maybe I took it out on Lucy, too – I don’t know. Things just don’t connect and matter as much as they used to.’ He paused to give Jessica the chance to say something, but also to weigh up if he wanted to carry on. ‘You’re in a bloody pit, and there seems no way out.’ Jessica remained silent, just moved her hand in his hair, and he was unsure if he heard it as well as felt it. ‘This is a bit like being on the psychiatrist’s couch,’ he said when they had been quiet for a time.

  ‘I don’t think they really use them, do they?’ she said.

  ‘Probably not.’ Yet being stretched out there in intimate vulnerability was conducive to confession. For the first time Sheff spoke unguardedly about finding Charlotte dead and all that followed. How the pinks and greens of the soft toys in the cot accentuated her pale skin, how one of the dancing bears on her pyjama top was darkened by childish dribble, how one small hand was cupped and empty. She had kicked off the blanket and lain unshielded. How Lucy had been unable to stand, and had been crouched on the floor when the ambulance people came.

  Sheff and Jessica talked for long time, without moving from the sofa, so that the living room grew darker and the sun in the west was just a red line of reflection on the underside of the cloud hung close above the hills. Each of them talked of a unique experience, yet one that provided understanding of what the other had gone through.

  His father’s death somehow made it easier for Sheff to accept that of his baby daughter. He could find no logical reason for that, but his reliance on rationality had diminished. It was as if his grief for Warwick had added to the backlog of sorrow concerning Charlotte, until the whole was too great to contain, and had to be released.

  ‘Why on earth would you bother with me?’ said Sheff. ‘Just another complication surely?’

  ‘I like you,’ she answered. ‘I don’t mind men. I’m used to them around me. I wish Kevin and I could be closer, but there’s too much baggage there, too much hurt. We can be reasonable for Emma’s sake, maybe comfortable in time. I’d settle for that.’

  ‘Would he be pissed-off if he knew we were hanging out?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s bad enough having Pamela on my case, without Kevin gunning for me as well. Alex is becoming a bloody dangerous place.’

  ‘Yeah, I feel sorry for poor you. Do you want a wine, or a whisky?’ It was almost night, and with the room still unlit and the curtains open, they could see the darkening tops of the silver birches against the fading sky.

  ‘No thanks,’ Sheff said.

  ‘You can stay the night if you like,’ she said.

  ‘Separate rooms?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Bugger. I’d better go then. Mum might wonder where I’ve got to.’

  ‘I’d run you back, but I can’t leave Emma,’ Jessica said.

  ‘There’s enough light, and I like walking.’

  They parted at the door without awkwardness. No kiss, but she briefly touched his arm as he knew she would. ‘Ring me in a couple of days,’ she said quietly because of the sleeping child. ‘I’ll have the final visits jacked up by then. We’ll take my car because I’ll have quite a bit of stuff. And thanks again for cutting the hedge. It had got away on me.’

  ‘Men have their uses.’

  ‘But none of them indispensable,’ she said.

  ‘I’m working on it. Anyway, see you.’

  Easy walking in the summer dusk. Alex is a quiet town, and the more natural sounds were seldom lost for long. He could hear the last of the wind in the gardens and trees, the furtive rustle of a hedgehog, even a small snapping noise that came from high on the electricity poles. The residual light was turning the broad river to mercury. By the fence of the trucking firm he came abruptly on a large, black dog standing beneath a sign on the footpath verge. The dog stepped out silently in front of Sheff in a custodial sort of way, and they stood and looked at each other. ‘Okay,’ said Sheff, ‘I dare you to bite me, buster. Go on, you black bastard, bite me.’ It was challenge not so much to the animal, as to the trivial malevolence he’d come to expect from everyday life. ‘Bite me,’ he urged, but with increasing conviction that there was no threat, and when he walked past, almost brushing the shaggy coat, the dog just turned its head and watched him, almost, it seemed, with regret at the parting, a disappointment that their separation of species denied the possibility of comradeship.

  HIS FATHER TOOK HIM ONCE to the Anzac Day dawn service. He remembered it because it was cold, although still autumn. He remembered it because of the straight rows of medals on the old soldiers’ jackets and the playing of ‘The Last Post’. And he remembered it because his father was shorn of any disregard. ‘Some of those poor beggars fought in both wars, you know. Thousands of them blown to pieces, or drowned, or badly burnt up,’ he said as they walked home. ‘I belong to a lucky generation, and I hope you will, too. We’re in a good place in a good country and should try to deserve it, don’t you reckon?’ He’d rested a hand on Sheff’s shoulder. It was one of the first times Sheff felt Warwick spoke to him as he would to an adult, and he liked that, although he was too young to think of an adequate and mature reply.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ‘BOBBY WASN’T ON THE CHECKOUT,’ said Belize the following afternoon when she came back from the supermarket. Sheff had offered to take her there, but his mother had insisted she was fine, and he thought it a good thing she still had the confidence to drive. It was important her life didn’t contract too much, Georgie had advised. He went out, though, and helped carry in the bags. ‘I suppose he’s been stuck in the back, or relegated to stocking the shelves, but I didn’t ask.’ She seemed in a bright mood and had taken care with her appearance, even for a trip to get groceries. Her lipstick, her blue eyes and the pencilled black arch of her eyebrows were accentuated by the frame of loose, white hair.

  She began to make coffee, but the phone went, and so Sheff took over the task. ‘They’ve put the stone up,’ she said when her conversation ended. ‘Just finished it today. I said it had to be a marble one. Some of the lettering becomes unreadable on those others. Do you think we could go and see?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No hurry. Have your coffee.’ But there was hurry. It showed in her quick repetition of small, unnecessary movements, and the glances she gave to see how often he was sipping his drink. It showed in the minor agitation with which she gathered white climbing roses, and the urgency with which she clipped them to length. Not until they were in the car did she relax. ‘I told them I wanted a rounded top,’ she said. ‘Less stuff builds up on it then, or grows.’

  The cemetery was peaceful and deserted, seeming more spacious without an above-ground population. It was a border setting: the even town on one side and the country hill on the other. The demarcation seemed appropriate to Sheff. Unhesitatingly Belize headed for the new headstone, although Sheff was already unsure of the location. ‘Warwick Edgar Davy 1935–2012’, bare of any religious platitude, or claim of achievement. Belize stood as close as she was able. ‘They don’t allow any planting around it,’ she said. ‘I told them to have the lettering quite high. Anne said Peter’s is often covered up by the grass.’ With a finger she tested the depth of the lettering, and then slid her hand over the dark, polished surface. ‘Space has been left for me. You’ll see to it when the time comes?’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ said Sheff, ‘but that’s years away yet.’

  His mother wasn’t convinced he could be left unaided to fulfil a pledge so vital. ‘I’ll talk to Georgie about it, too,’ she said.

  Warwick’s memorial stood out from the others in its stark newness, catching the sun at an angle to glint as Sheff and Belize moved back. Soon enough it would dull like all the others, have a tinge of verdigris in the crevices of the lettering, and faint outlines of bird shit, despite regula
r ministrations.

  ‘I’ve got a container,’ she said. She gave the black plastic flower-holder to Sheff, who went to a nearby tap and filled it so that she could arrange her white roses in it. There were too many roses. She put those left over on the nearby grave of Esme Pearl Buchanan. ‘I knew an Esme years ago,’ she said. ‘Lovely name, lovely girl.’

  Mother and son sat on a bench in the small paved enclosure built to commemorate stillborn babies and infants. The significance wasn’t lost on Sheff, but Belize, rather than being saddened by the occasion, was buoyed up by finding all in place, and as she wished it. ‘Warwick used to say that in most countries they can’t afford the loss of productive land for burials now. We visited cemeteries in Italy and they were always immaculate, mostly with sealed photographs of the dead. Our city graveyards are so often a disgrace.’

  ‘We’re not religious any more,’ said Sheff.

  As they talked, two people came into the grounds. A youngish, dark-haired man in business clothes despite the heat, and a girl of about Emma’s age, wearing shorts and carrying a small spray of flowers. They placed the flowers at a grave some distance away, and almost immediately turned back. Although they weren’t close, the girl’s voice carried well in the quietness of the place. Her words couldn’t be made out, but the tone was cheerful and she skipped once or twice as she walked. Perhaps she was pleased to have been taken out of school. Her dark hair was in a pony-tail, and she made graceful, upward gestures with her arms as if she was about to begin a ballet exercise. Perhaps she’d lost her mother, but was too young to carry the grief on in her life.

  ‘It was good of Lucy to come to the funeral,’ Belize said. ‘It was an awful thing that happened, and nobody’s fault. Your father was really cut up about it – we both were. We only saw Charlotte twice, but what a beautiful baby she was. I wish we’d gone up to you more often in those months, but we weren’t to know. You wonder how such a short life can be so important, don’t you?’ Sheff had no response, and after the pause his mother turned her startling blue eyes to him. ‘You don’t mind me talking about it?’ she said.

  ‘No. It’s okay. Mostly I don’t like to dwell on it, but it’s okay with you and Georgie. You and Dad liked Lucy with good reason. It just doesn’t work between us any more.’ His mother maintained her searching yet sympathetic gaze, and Sheff noticed again the slight, persistent tremor that had come with age, and was most evident in her head and hands. ‘What about you, though?’ he said. ‘You don’t have to stay in Alex if you don’t want to. We know you were here because of Dad and his business. You could sell up and come to Wellington, or Auckland, closer to us. There’s all sorts of cultural things going on in the cities.’

  ‘Well, who knows, but I think this is it for me. It takes a long time to realise that you’re ordinary, and longer to accept it. I thought I was talented as well as good-looking, but I was just pretty and young. It’s a common enough confusion at that time of your life.’

  ‘So the saxophone won’t be coming down?’

  ‘That’s a bit cruel,’ said Belize. ‘I will say that I wasn’t a bad actor for an amateur.’

  Son and mother were alone again as they walked back to the car. The visit had been easier than Sheff had anticipated, even profitable in its closeness. ‘He was a man of gestures,’ Belize said. ‘Understated and not always easy to understand.’ It was true. Warwick’s signals were sometimes indirect, and all the more meaningful for that. Friendliness can be a shield also. ‘On our tenth wedding anniversary we flew to Wellington, and went to the railway station. He said he’d first seen me there, coming in with the varsity group for the theatre competitions. Even though it was cold and wet he wanted me to stand on the platform, and he stood where he thought he’d been that first day, and waved and then came through the rain. I thought he was going to kiss me as a romantic conclusion, but he laughed, smacked my bum, and said it was time to find a bloody good restaurant.’

  So many such memories of their life together, and now that he was dead, would they lose half their power, or be doubled in significance when Warwick wasn’t there to share them? ‘You remember the girl from Burkina Faso I sponsored?’ Belize continued. ‘It was supposed to finish when she left school, but he took over and sent money for almost two years despite not hearing back, until he got a letter from a man who said he was her husband, asking for a larger amount. He would never buy any firewood from that place on the way to Clyde, because he once saw the man there thrashing a dog with a stick, and he never went to sleep without saying goodnight.’

  ‘I remember him whistling when he drove,’ said Sheff.

  ‘That’s right. Yes, but that stopped when he got sick.’

  ‘And I remember that at picnics he’d often wander off to some quiet place and just sit there by himself for a while. He loved hills, didn’t he?’

  ‘He was good with people, and just as happy with himself. Not everyone likes their own company.’

  ‘Would you like to drive round a bit before we go back?’

  ‘No, Georgie’s going to ring later and I want to be there. I want to tell her about the headstone.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get down more when he was sick, and even before that.’

  ‘Everybody’s got their own life to lead,’ said Belize. ‘I wonder if you could take the car in to have the window chip looked at before you go? He wouldn’t have liked it in his field of vision all the time as he drove. Sometime I must think of getting a smaller car.’ She ran her finger over the star craze on the windscreen, and then went round to the passenger’s side and got in. ‘We should’ve brought the camera,’ she said. ‘Georgie and Cass would want to see the headstone. Next time that’s what I’ll do.’

  HE HAD A DREAM ONCE of his daughter’s wedding. A high-vaulted building with abundant light from clear glass windows. His daughter was taking her vows. She was tall, slim, imperturbable, like a woman in a Swedish film. So pale as to appear unfinished, colours still to be filled in. She turned from the celebrant and her groom, smiled at him in joy and affection.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JESSICA WAS RUNNING late on the day Sheff was to accompany her on the farm visits. She’d been delayed at the clinic because she stayed to give assistance to her partner who struck trouble with an operation on a German shepherd. Jessica said that was just the way the job was, you never knew how the day would go.

  She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but had a thick jersey and a heavy, black apron in the car. She wore boots, too. ‘You can get filthy in the close-quarters work,’ she said, ‘and once stood on, twice shy. It’s not a job for anyone with a delicate stomach.’

  ‘I’m strictly an observer,’ Sheff said.

  ‘And today you’re just a journalist out for the story. These people don’t need anything personal about us, right?’

  ‘Professional it is, at least in company. Would ten minutes make a hell of a lot of difference?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that if it’s okay I’d like to make a quick call at Emma’s school,’ he said.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘A message for Pamela Rudge. I’ve been feeling a bit of a wimp about her. Just a quick word, and I promise not to mention you, or Emma.’

  ‘Well okay, but I’ve a hunch it’s not a good idea. Better to let well alone.’ Yet she headed for the school without further argument. ‘Make it snappy,’ she said when they were there, ‘and remember, nothing about us. I think you could turn out to be a bit of a stirrer.’

  All visitors please report to the office, a sign instructed, and reception was easy to find: a rubber plant and two dark, wooden chairs outside the principal’s study, and immediately across the small corridor the large glass slide of the school office where Pamela Rudge and a fellow secretary sat at their desks. The principal’s door was ajar in keeping with modern leadership practice, and Sheff tapped it a little farther with his foot before stepping across the corridor and opening the slide. Pamela’s f
ace showed no alarm, and no welcome. Her older companion looked up with a practised smile.

  ‘I just had to pop in and say how much I love you,’ he said boldly. ‘Can’t eat or sleep for thinking of you. I don’t want to interrupt anything. Just wanted you to know I’m mad about you, that’s all. You’re always so generous with expressing your own feelings.’ He blew a kiss, turned away and began to walk back down the corridor. When he glanced back, Pamela remained expressionless at her desk, her companion had her hands to her mouth, and he caught a glimpse of the woman principal’s askance, enquiring face at her doorway. Sheff didn’t turn again, and there was only silence behind him. He had a sense of small but necessary accomplishment, of having unfurled his own flag in answer to Pamela’s challenge. Nugatory perhaps, but a satisfaction nevertheless.

  ‘So?’ said Jessica when he was back at the car.

  ‘I told her I loved her. It was a warning.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘No, but Pamela will understand,’ he said. ‘It’s a sauce for the goose and gander thing. Don’t mess with me. Anyway, now let’s concentrate on a day in the life of a lady veterinarian.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to be weird. I have to live and work with all these people, you know.’ She gave him a long, level look before starting the car.

  ‘Boring is my middle name. I promise to behave.’

  Jessica drove with accomplished ease, heading towards Omakau and then on the side roads into the Dunstans. Air-conditioning made it pleasant enough inside the car, but already the landscape was beginning to quiver slightly in the heat, as if in resistance to the suction cup of the immense blue sky. Off the main road they passed only one vehicle, a faded yellow ute with a sheepdog in the back pushing its face into the false wind of momentum, as eager to see ahead as a curious child. The driver was a young woman with short, blonde hair, and she lifted just one finger from the wheel in acknowledgement as she passed. The pale dust in her wake drifted like smoke from the gravel road.