Charlotte was about to start dialling when she heard the approaching rumble. She froze, just stood there in front of the bookshelf on which the cordless phone and its charger sat. It had been a long time since she had taken cover during an earthquake. The house jolted and swayed, she heard glasses and crockery jiggling in the kitchen and the TV swayed alarmingly on the cabinet. The quake was from the northeast, had that under-the-sea feel that accompanied the quakes that originated offshore. It was strong, bigger than a four, probably a five. The motion stopped and Charlotte felt her heart racing. She just stood there for a minute, breathing deeply, then put the phone back into its cradle and walked through the house to check for damage.
Nothing seemed to be broken except for the pot that held The Last House Plant, the only survivor of all the quakes. Before the September quake, her mother used to have them all through the house, potted creeping figs, peace lilies, spider plants and different coloured African violets. She said she wasn’t going to replace them until the quakes were over, it was just too hard to clean up. One plant that fell in the September quake had landed on a bunch of books that had slipped out of the bookshelves. They were still, over a year later, finding bits of potting mix in various books.
Charlotte wished her mother would start getting some more plants, they made the house feel full of life in a way it hadn’t for over a year. Her mother had seemed softer then, now everything was about her job, the house and EQC. Maybe once Charlotte was feeling better, she would get some pot plants. When she was younger, she used to buy her mother plants from the supermarket, but the supermarket was gone now, and there was no indication as to when it would be rebuilt. There was a hardware store in Ferrymead that sold plants, and an actual plant shop on Ferry Road closer to the city, she would go to one of those.
This last plant was one of the African violets. It had been sitting on the window sill above the kitchen sink and had been tossed off and down onto the floor. Pieces of broken pot and dirt were everywhere, its lone pink flower peeking through. Charlotte found some newspaper, gently picked the plant out of the remains of its container, along with as much soil as she could scoop up, and wrapped it in the newspaper. She poured some water into the makeshift pot and placed it in the sink.
There was nothing else broken because they had become used to being vigilant. Dishes were never left on the bench where they could crash onto the floor and shatter, they were always stacked into the dishwasher as soon as they had finished eating off them. Books they were reading, things they were using, cups, plates and bowls, all were tucked away, put into drawers or pushed towards the backs of cupboards to minimise the possibility of them being lost, should there be another quake. So many precautions. Alice said her mother was the same way, and her grandparents, too. Charlotte opened up the cupboard and pushed her favourite coffee cup towards the back, where it was less likely to fall and break. Just in case.
Charlotte vacuumed up the last of the dirt and threw out the broken pot. Back through in the lounge, she started to compose a text to her mother and father, but then decided not to. Would they get in touch with her? They hadn’t so far, and it had been nearly twenty minutes since the quake. She texted Alice instead, who was going to be coming over that night. Sean had said they would cancel, but Charlotte had been home sick most of the week, she was bored, she needed the company, and if Alice wasn’t there, Sean would just study the whole night. Or worse, not bother to come home, just hang out with his university mates. She was almost better she insisted, no longer contagious, and they should stick to their Friday night plans.
Alice replied saying one of her co-workers had freaked out, her husband was working in the city and she couldn’t get in touch with him. Charlotte looked on The Press website and a story said the city centre had been evacuated. The quake was a 5.2 under the sea near Scarborough, east of the city, about 20 kilometres from where Charlotte was. People were reporting things falling off shelves, but nothing worse. It seemed the shelves of Christchurch houses had been cleared, people were tired of picking things up, throwing them away, cataloguing what had been lost and putting in contents claims.
Charlotte settled back on the sofa, tucked her blanket around her and returned to her book. She soon finished it and decided to move on to the third one, it was too exciting, she wanted to see what happened next. She forgot about the suspicious man and woman across the road until her mother arrived home after five. One of the neighbours had been broken into, she said. The woman had come home from work early to check on the house and found the back door open. Had Charlotte seen anything? she asked. Charlotte hadn’t seen the man and woman clearly and how could she explain not calling the police? Sure, there had been the quake and the clean up, but would her mother see that as a reasonable excuse? Not likely. She decided not to say anything.
‘What’s missing?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Doesn’t look like anything’s missing,’ her mother said. ‘But the back door has been kicked in.’
They must have been interrupted by the quake, then scared off. Served them right.
She was going back out, her mother said, meeting a friend for dinner, since Sean and Charlotte were going to be watching a movie and their father was working late. She asked nothing about the quake, nothing about how Charlotte was feeling.
It was different when Sean arrived home, with Alice arriving soon afterwards with Thai food she had picked up on the way. While they served up and started eating, they exchanged experiences. Alice’s workmate had left work early to go into the city and find her husband. Everyone had tried to reassure her it was just a five, but she kept saying she was over it all, Christchurch, quakes, everything.
‘I don’t think she’ll be sticking around,’ Alice said. ‘I wonder how many other people will feel they’ve had enough. My mum’s not very happy, she didn’t say it, but I could tell she wants to leave again. I just hope that’s the last five we have for a while, or the last anything.’
‘It wasn’t a big deal at uni,’ Sean said.
‘Well it wouldn’t be way over there,’ Charlotte said. ‘Not coming from off the coast.’
‘It wasn’t where I was,’ Alice said, nodding. ‘The building just sways a bit. It was only a big deal because Connie’s husband was in the city and she was freaked out.’
‘Did you hear anything from Mum and Dad?’ Charlotte asked Sean. ‘A call? A message?’
‘No, nothing,’ Sean said. Sean and Charlotte had been talking lately about how they were almost invisible as far as their parents were concerned. They were too wrapped up in paperwork, trying to get the house assessed, to get some idea of when their repairs would finally happen. They were seldom home at the same time any more, which was kind of a relief, as there was less arguing.
‘Me neither,’ Charlotte said. ‘She didn’t even ask if I’m feeling better.’
‘She was home?’ Sean said.
‘For all of five minutes,’ Charlotte said. ‘Enough time to change. She said she’s going out for the night.’
‘Not still at work?’
‘Nope,’ Charlotte said. ‘Apparently not.’ She raised an eyebrow, he raised one of his back.
‘What?’ Alice said, looking back and forth between them. ‘What’s going on?’
Neither of them said anything at first, but then Sean told her. They thought their mother was having an affair, but they weren’t sure who with. In fact, they weren’t really sure, maybe she was just going and meeting a friend, a sounding board, someone she could talk to about earthquake and house stuff because she couldn’t talk to their father about them. But if that was the case, if it was just an innocent friendship, then she would say who she was meeting, which she never did.
‘You could sneak a look at her phone,’ Alice said.
‘Which would only give her something to use against me,’ Charlotte said, ‘whenever I object to her wanting to see the contents of mine. No way.’
‘Then don’t get caught,’ Sean said.
‘H
ey, hang on,’ Charlotte said, ‘why all of a sudden am I doing this?’
‘Forget it,’ Sean said. ‘We’re probably just reading too much into things.’
Charlotte caught him shooting a look at Alice. He looked uncomfortable. Did he know more? Was he trying to protect her? She wished he wouldn’t try to do that, she wasn’t a child. And she had lived through hundreds of earthquakes and the city she had grown up in being destroyed. It was probably a change-the-subject look, because that was what Alice did.
‘What do you miss most about the city?’ Alice said.
‘Going to the movies,’ Charlotte said. She had finished her meal and got up to slide her empty plate onto the coffee table. She sat down again, tucking her blanket around her. ‘I’m sick of the malls, I wish they’d do something about getting the Moorhouse Ave movie theatre open again.’
‘Isn’t that all coming down?’ Sean said. ‘The whole railway station?’
‘Is it?’ Alice said. ‘I hope not, I like that old place.’
‘I miss Drexel’s,’ Charlotte said. The place on Hereford Street served American-style breakfasts, and she had loved their pancakes ever since she could remember.
‘There’s the one in Riccarton,’ Sean said.
‘You mean in the mall?’ Charlotte gave him a pointed look.
‘It’s not in the mall, it’s just outside the mall,’ Sean said. ‘You don’t have to go in the mall, you just have to breathe some of the god-awful mall air wafting out the automatic doors.’ It was an old argument.
‘I miss people not talking about insurance all the time,’ Charlotte said, moving on to the next item on her list.
‘What do you want them talking about?’ Sean said. ‘How evil malls are?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Just something else.’
‘People are worried,’ Alice said, her voice softer than Sean’s, kinder. ‘There’s a lot of money at stake, some people could find they can’t afford their house any more.’
‘What would happen then?’ Charlotte said. She pictured people living in tents in Hagley Park. Some people had done that at the end of last year, camping in the park near the hospital. It was part of the Occupy protest movement that had started in New York. Some people who no longer had houses as a result of the quakes had ended up there, which was maybe why the city hadn’t moved them on as quickly as they did elsewhere in New Zealand.
‘They would have to find a smaller place, one they could afford,’ Alice said. ‘Or rent.’
‘What I can’t believe,’ Sean said, ‘is people who didn’t bother to have insurance.’
‘It’s expensive,’ Alice said. ‘Not everyone has loads of money to blow on insurance they might never need.’
‘Well they take their chances, then, don’t they?’ Sean said. ‘They can’t go crying to the Government asking to get paid out because they couldn’t be bothered to get a better job so they could have insurance.’
Alice had tensed up. ‘Are you talking about red zoners?’ she said.
Charlotte knew Alice’s grandparents had a section that might be red zoned. It was a section they planned to build their retirement home on, now it looked like they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Alice was worried about them, they had a lot going on, they were in a rental while their house was being fixed, and it looked like it was going to take longer than expected. But, it seemed, Sean did not know this. Things could get entertaining.
‘There are some talking about taking the Government to court,’ Charlotte said.
‘The ones who didn’t have insurance,’ Sean went on, ‘people with bare land.’
‘People with bare land can’t get insurance,’ Alice said. ‘It’s just not possible. So it isn’t a matter of negligence or stupidity, they simply can’t get insurance.’
Sean stared at her, baffled. ‘Then why do people talk like they could. The Minister does, and I’ve heard lots of people say the people who weren’t insured shouldn’t get anything.’
‘It’s not about insurance,’ Alice said. ‘It’s about the Government taking their land. The whole insurance thing is a red herring, an excuse for not paying them out.’
‘No, that’s not right,’ Sean said. ‘The red zone offers let people move on, the Government steps in and takes over the claims with EQC and the insurance company so people don’t have to.’
‘What if the Government negotiates a better deal with EQC and the insurance companies than the people would’ve gotten?’ Alice said. ‘What if the Government gets more than they paid the original owner?’
‘That won’t happen,’ Sean said. ‘That’s not how it’s going to work. And besides, we’re talking about people who didn’t bother to get insurance, it’s different.’
‘So my grandparents, who have a section in Heathcote, didn’t have insurance on the land,’ Alice said, setting her trap. ‘If it gets red-zoned, should they should just lose the land, lose the money they used to buy it?’
Sean hesitated. ‘If they didn’t have insurance, couldn’t get it like you said, why should the Government pay them out for the land?’
‘Why can’t they build on the land?’ Alice said.
‘Because of the earthquakes,’ Sean said.
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘Because the Government red zoned it.’
Sean said nothing to that.
Alice went on. ‘They’re losing their land because the Government red zoned it, it’s nothing at all to do with whether or not they had insurance. The Government red zoned it, the Government should compensate.’
She glared at Sean, waiting for his answer. Charlotte kept glancing between the two of them, waiting to see if Sean was going to get it. Finally, he nodded.
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘Not about insurance at all.’
Alice nodded and sighed. ‘I hope, Sean,’ she said, ‘that when you’re no longer a baby lawyer, you do a better job of analysing the finer points of the law than you’re doing now.’
Sean blushed and mumbled what might have been an apology.
Charlotte pulled her blanket up around her face, smiling behind it. The last five minutes had been thoroughly entertaining. It was the most fun she’d had all week. She tried not to giggle, but only ended up coughing.
Transit of Venus
June 2012
Lindsay had expected that the winter of 2011 would be the only winter they spent in their broken house, but as 2011 finished and 2012 began to drag on, it became clear there would be at least one more winter. Although they had been handed over to their insurance company months ago, it wasn’t until May when someone came around to have a look at the foundation. The guy who visited pointed out cracks in the concrete ring foundation, different spots where it was crumbling away. He went under the house to check the piles and when he came back up the manhole, he said they looked mostly okay, there were only a handful that looked wonky. But the house would need to be lifted and a new ring foundation built. Kevin and Lindsay were given no indication about how long this would take. They had to wait for the insurance company to send them a scope of works before they could have some idea of timeframes.
‘Once the geotech work is done, it won’t be long,’ Kevin reassured Lindsay. ‘They know what they’re going to do, we just need to be patient, wait a few more months, then we’ll have a better idea of timeframes.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lindsay said. ‘Sometimes it feels like we’ll see another Transit of Venus before we’ll see our house fixed.’
Kevin laughed. ‘Not like we’ll see this one,’ he said. The transit was the next day, but the city was smothered in grey cloud and the air was damp, threatening rain.
The previous Transit of Venus had been in 2004, and Lindsay remembered Kevin trying to explain it to Alice. Alice was still learning to accept Kevin then and had been torn between being fascinated and not wanting to show too much interest. They had both been disappointed that it wasn’t visible from New Zealand and promised each other that they would be sure t
o see the 2012 one.
When Lindsay woke up the morning of the transit, it was starting to snow and soon the driveway was white. She got the fire going in the lounge to warm up the house. In the kitchen, Alice had made two coffees. Lindsay flicked the fan heater on and sat at the dining table sipping her coffee while Alice made porridge.
‘You’ll be careful on the roads?’ Lindsay said.
Alice raised an eyebrow. Annoying. ‘I’m going to go 70 down 50 kay roads and put an end to my miserable existence.’
‘Okay then,’ Lindsay said.
‘Want some?’ Alice said, filling a bowl with some porridge for herself.
Lindsay shook her head. ‘In a little while,’ she said.
Alice sat down at the table and started to eat while flicking through news articles on her phone. She looked up. ‘You should get Grandma and Grandad over here today, it’ll be cold in their place.’
Neil and Heather were still in their rental, which they hadn’t expected for winter. Repairs on their house were going to take an extra month or so, only the contractor hadn’t told them until a few days before the original completion date. They had frantically negotiated with their landlord for another two months in the place. The landlord turned away the tenants he had lined up for a six week repair, which Neil and Heather felt bad about. But, Lindsay told them, it was probably happening all over Christchurch, they weren’t the only ones with repairs that didn’t stick to the schedule.
‘I think I’ll do that,’ Lindsay said to Alice. ‘Even if school opens, I’ll keep the kids home, and having Mum and Dad here will help them relax for the day.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Alice said.
Lindsay laughed.
‘You’re right, though,’ Alice continued. ‘It will be good for them. Text Sonya, maybe you can pick up Cody and Ella, have them here for the day. It’ll mean she doesn’t have to choose whether or not to go to work.’
Bleak City Page 21
