by Craig Cliff
‘Why?’ she asked. I could see her nipples through the slip. As with her hair, they seemed much darker. Perhaps it was the dimness of the hut, I thought. Or an effect of the pearlescent silk, or the fact she’d been kept inside for weeks.
She let the dress drop to the floor for a second time and pulled the slip over her head. ‘You’ve seen me unencumbered almost every day of our lives. You know my body, outside and in.’
I let go of Doig’s wrist and looked into his eyes. He knew. She’d told him everything.
‘There’s really nothing to be ashamed of,’ she continued in a sing-song voice.
‘Stop it!’
‘Stop what, Eugen?’
I slapped her with the back of my hand.
She held her cheek and looked at me, her eyes suddenly cold. I waited for her to blink but she refused. I raised my hand as if to slap her again but Doig stepped between us and caught my elbow. ‘Get off me, old man,’ I said and pushed him to the floor.
‘Eugen, please.’
‘You’ve got fat,’ I said. ‘You disgust me.’
‘I’m not fat, Eugen. I’m pregnant.’ That tone. That damned know-it-all tone.
Doig had raised himself onto one knee but his head hung down in shame or exhaustion. When he raised his eyes to mine I felt something give way within me. An almost physical shudder.
I heard myself say, ‘You bastard,’ and watched as my foot swung toward his head, making contact with his jaw and folding his body back awkwardly.
Avis continued to scream my name, but I was on top of Doig now, my fingers around his leathery neck, his head trying to shake but struggling in my grip. I seemed to have so much time. I saw him through the window in his brown suit, ogling Avis. I saw his wooden figures, his mannequins, in the window of Hercus & Barling, each in their own little world. I saw the inside of Doig’s house, the block of wood on the workbench, his pencil sketch of my sister. His mouth opened and I looked into his dark gullet. I closed my eyes and listened to the crackle from his throat as he tried to talk, tried to breathe, tried to wrest my hands from his neck. I saw Avis and me through The Carpenter’s eyes, posing in the window, still as wood, dead as iron. I felt Avis pulling at my shoulders, beating against my back, but it was nothing to me. She’d grown weak. Her hands were fluttering moths. I felt his windpipe pop and let my fingers tighten more, let them plunge deeper into him until I was no longer hearing noises.
I opened my eyes and gave one final squeeze.
XI.
I’ve saved many more lives than I’ve taken, but the ledger will never leave the red. There’s always that doubt after you’ve brought someone in from the surf that they might have made it out themselves, or that another swimmer would have come to their rescue. Sometimes, it’s as if they got into trouble only because they knew the beach was patrolled.
But there’s nothing more definitive than taking a life. You can tell yourself he was old and probably would have died in a couple of years, or that there was another man about to burst into the scene who might have killed him anyway—might have—but the fact remains: you did it with your own two hands.
I was still sitting on Doig’s chest when my father came through the open door. I turned and saw him standing there. His hands were empty. The barrel of Bannerman’s rifle didn’t show above his shoulder. He didn’t look like some avenging angel, a force of nature. He seemed in those first seconds like a confused little boy.
Avis got up from the floor, where she’d been sobbing, ran to him and they embraced: my father dressed in the same grubby undershirt and trousers he’d worn the last three weeks, my sister completely naked.
She tried to talk through her tears. ‘Calm down,’ my father told her. ‘Take a breath. I’m here now, Avis. I’m here.’
‘He,’ she said and took a deep breath, ‘killed him.’
He placed his chin on the top of her head and looked at me. I got to my feet.
‘He’s dead,’ I said.
‘I,’ he paused, ‘I can see that.’
Avis pushed herself away from my father. ‘Is that all you’re going to say? Don’t you care?’
He reached down for her slip. ‘Put this on.’
‘You don’t understand. Neither of you do.’
He tried to place his hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.
‘You don’t have to talk about it, Avis, if you don’t want to. We can never speak about what Doig did to you, if that’s your wish. It’s my fault you were taken. I should never have left you in the window.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she repeated and finally snatched the slip from his hand. ‘Gabriel rescued me. He never touched me. But you two . . .’ She started crying again as she dragged the slip over her head.
My father turned to me. ‘What happened here?’
‘I beat you to it,’ I said.
‘You can’t just kill a man,’ he said slowly. ‘What happened? Why?’
I shrugged. ‘Don’t say you wouldn’t have done the same thing.’
Avis was pulling on the hem of her slip and swaying gently.
‘He didn’t touch you?’ my father asked her. ‘Why’d he bring you up here? Why were you naked?’
‘He rescued me. And Eugen killed him.’
‘All right, all right,’ my father said. ‘We can sort this out.’
‘How?’ Avis wailed. ‘Gabriel’s dead.’ She slipped past my father and ran out the door.
My father called her name and went after her. I stood over Doig for a moment. His eyes were still open, but they were cloudy and lifeless, like the eyes of a fish out of the sea for too long.
Outside, the drizzle had stopped but the ground was still damp.
‘Stay away from me,’ I heard my sister shout. ‘You’re a monster. You’re both monsters.’
I came around the corner and saw her waving what looked like a gouge at my father.
‘Put it down, Avis,’ he said dismissively.
‘It’s your fault,’ she said, her face red and puffy. ‘It’s your fault we’re like this. It’s your fault he’s dead.’
‘Flossie,’ I said, remembering her for the first time since finding the hut.
‘What about her?’ Avis asked, the fear evident on her face.
I shook my head. ‘It’s just the three of us now.’
She let the gouge drop to the ground. ‘She’s dead?’
‘Eugen,’ my father said. ‘Just . . . Just clear off for a minute. You’re not helping.’
Avis was on her knees now, in the mud, her head in her hands. ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.’
My father placed his hand on her head. ‘I know, I know.’
‘I can’t do it,’ she said, hysterical now. ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want this child.’
‘Child?’ My father turned to me.
‘Now do you understand—’ I began.
‘It’s yours, Eugen,’ she said. ‘It’s yours.’
‘No. You’re wrong. It’s Doig’s.’ I looked up at my father. ‘I saw them together. Well, not together. But Father, it’s as we suspected.’
Avis stood up. The way she held her hips forward, her belly caught the light. It was only a small bulge but it was there.
‘I can’t believe this made me happy,’ she said, rubbing her belly. ‘Even when I knew all of the lies, this made me happy.’ She sobbed again.
My father turned to me. ‘You defiled your sister?’
‘It’s not my child,’ I said. ‘It can’t be.’
‘You stupid boy.’ He struck me across the face with the back of his hand.
I took two handfuls of undershirt and pinned him against the wall of the hut. ‘Don’t touch me,’ I spat. He was shaking his head. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again.’ I shook him and let him drop to the mud.
I turned and saw Avis running down the slope, past the horses. ‘Avis?’ I shouted but she kept running, the morning sun shimmering on the patches of her silk slip that weren’t covere
d in mud. Her feet were bare but she didn’t seem worried about sharp stones or rabbit holes.
I set off after her. It felt good to run, to work my legs, my arms, my chest, without violence.
Avis looked over her shoulder and saw me in pursuit. She must have realised then that she could never outrun me because she veered toward a pile of rocks and boulders at the base of the cliffs and started climbing.
‘Come on now, Avis,’ I called. ‘You’re in a state. Be careful.’
She was swiftly on top of the first boulder and leant against the trunk of a cabbage tree as she pushed herself higher.
‘We can work something out,’ I said from the base of the rock fall. ‘We can start new lives.’ She kept climbing without looking down. ‘You know I could come up there and get you. You’re going to hurt yourself.’ I pulled myself up the first boulder. ‘Avis? Come on now. Please. I’m sorry.’
She’d reached the end of the rock fall and was met with the vertical cliff face. Without pausing she slipped her fingers into one of the pock marks that riddled the rock and lifted herself up.
‘Avis,’ my father called from the grass below. ‘Eugen, get her down from there.’
I made it to the cliff face and found my first hold. Though I wasn’t used to climbing like this, I was fit and strong. She was about ten feet above me, but I would catch her.
‘If you stop there,’ I said, leaning out from the rock, ‘I can help you climb back down.’
‘No.’
I took it as a good sign that she was talking to me again. I pulled myself up a few more feet, then a few more. I could almost reach her ankle. I looked up and saw that she was still a way from the top. The pock marks had run out, leaving her nowhere to put her hands.
I reached up and gently took her heel between my thumb and forefinger. ‘Got you,’ I said.
She shook herself free and lunged for a hold far to her right. I couldn’t see if her fingers had latched onto anything, but for a moment she hung there, still, and it looked as though she’d made it. But then her feet began to scrabble against the smooth rock, trying to find a ledge, a seam, anything to take her weight. She brought her free arm up to meet her other hand, but, rather than steady her, this manoeuvre sent her sliding down the rock face.
I thrust out my hand but she was too far across and I caught nothing but air.
I remember hearing my father call her name as she fell, but for the life of me I can’t remember if she made a sound.
XII.
My father got on his horse, rode to the nearest township with a constable and brought the force back to Crossman’s Gully. I wasn’t there when they returned. Charlotte and I were plodding north with a small purse of money and my sister’s diary—parting gifts from my father. I also had the pages Gabriel Doig had written, the ones Avis had promised would explain everything. We made Christchurch in a couple of days. I bought a pile of newspapers and asked the landlady of my lodging house to read me anything about murder, suicide or tragic accidents.
‘You don’t look like the murdering kind,’ she said, rubbing my upper arm.
‘It’s not me,’ I said. ‘But I heard an upsetting rumour about a friend.’
According to the papers, Colton Kemp, a window dresser from Marumaru, had admitted to murdering his rival, Gabriel Doig, in the hinterland. He also admitted that Avis was his daughter and blamed himself for her falling to her death. He showed compunction, the papers said, but may still face the hangman’s noose. There was no mention of a son or a brother.
I quickly ran out of money, but my landlady and I came to an arrangement. Funny, but I can hardly remember her. I can’t see her face or hear her voice. Good riddance.
A year went by in a blur of disappointment. Sometimes I’d walk past Ballantynes and catch my reflection in the glass. I was becoming grey and shrunken like the rest of the population. I returned to my routines, morning and evening, and started to feel better. Then the news of my father’s prison sentence found me. Perhaps it was my landlady who told me. I remember asking her for the money to go abroad. She must have refused. She probably felt betrayed. This wouldn’t have been helped by the fact I stole some of her jewellery. That’s how I paid for my passage aboard the Moeraki, how I came to Sydney, to Collaroy, to the top of the escarpment at MacLeans Lookout, where I survey the Pacific. Sometimes I see all the way down to Antipodes Island. Sometimes back to Marumaru, back to that day in 1903 when Sandow came to town. Sometimes I see my father in prison, tracing my mother’s face with his finger on the wall of his cell. He’s dead now. He must be.
‘What are you running from?’ June Hervey asked me on more than one occasion. She was the best of my tutors, the greatest of my Collaroy loves.
‘I’m not running,’ I’d say. ‘I’m staying put.’
‘That’s not what I mean, Sandy.’
I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t want to lose her. And I didn’t, not for a long while.
As I’ve said, I’ve known love and I’ve known happiness, both in Marumaru and in Collaroy. What does it take to find happiness after you’ve felt another man’s windpipe pop beneath your grip and seen his eyes roll back into his skull? After you’ve laid your sister’s broken body on the ground and walked away? After years of being visited in dreams by golden-haired children who claim you’re their father? It takes strength. It takes fortitude. Perseverance. Maybe even grace. It’s a test of character befitting my father’s window. Some mornings it’s physical, a great weight bearing down on me as I trudge up to Collaroy Plateau. I’m a creature of habit, a slave to symmetry. I’m saved daily by simple routines.
The bronzed young things at the surf club are always asking, ‘How do you keep in such good shape, Sandy?’
‘I stick to my routines,’ I say. ‘This is my shape. This is who I am.’
Acknowledgments
This book started with an idea—two ideas, actually—that needed to take place in the past: a time of department stores and sailing ships, a time without television or aeroplanes. Because I started with these ideas, these fictions, and because I’d never written anything set before the year of my birth, I began with a rather cavalier attitude to history. I disliked the term ‘historical fiction’, as it seemed to have things backwards. The Italians say it better: romanzi storici. The fiction comes first and the history is just the wallpaper. This seemed true, at least, for the novel I was working on. But I soon learnt that I couldn’t provide that wallpaper by myself and I gave in to the charms of research.
The following sources proved the best company over the past few years and have all made their mark on the book you now hold: the stories, gossip columns and ads offered up by Papers Past (www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/), and its Australian counterpart (www.trove.nla.gov.au); Leisure and Pleasure: Reshaping and Revealing the New Zealand Body 1900–1960 by Caroline Daley (Auckland University Press, 2003); Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and The Challenge of Modernity in America by John F. Kasson (Hill and Wang, 2001); Eugen Sandow’s own books and booklets; Helen B. Laurenson’s Going Up, Going Down: The Rise and Fall of the Department Store (Auckland University Press, 2005); Scotland: A Concise Cultural History edited by Paul H. Scott (Mainstream, 1993); Inverclyde Council’s history pages on its website (www.inverclyde.gov.uk/community-life-and-leisure/local-history-and-heritage); Wood-Carving, Design and Workmanship by George Jack (D. Appleton and Company, 1903), Figureheads and Ship Carving by Michael Stammers (Naval Inst. Press, 2005); Ships’ Figure Heads in Australia by Gordon de L. Marshall (Tangee, 2003); Tall Ships by Philip McCutchan (Crown, 1976); Along the Clipper Way by Francis Chichester (Coward-McCann, 1966); Straight Through from London: The Antipodes and Bounty Islands, New Zealand by Rowley Taylor (Heritage Expeditions, 2006); and Vigilant and Victorious: A Community History of the Collaroy Surf Life Saving Club 1911–1995 by Sean Brawley (Collaroy SLSC, 1995).
Although at times it seemed like writing this novel was a solitary experience, I didn’t spend the last three yea
rs solely in my office. Thanks are due to friends and family who’ve acted as sounding boards, boosters or much-needed distractions, my writing group for their comments and support, Harriet Allan for her patience and belief and Anna Rogers for her eye for the anachronistic.
If it wasn’t for the Ministry of Education, who let me vary my hours, and Creative NZ, who supplied a writer’s stipend in 2011, goodness knows how much longer this project would have taken.
Special thanks to Michael Fitzgerald, Andrea Hearfield and Sara Guthrie at Te Papa, without whom I’d never have felt a castaway suit or seen a scale model of the Hinemoa. Thanks to Andy Peters from www.maritimawoodcarving.co.uk for answering my questions in between trips to Sweden, and the real Dr Stanley for the Lead Poisoning 101.
Last, largest and longest thanks to my wife, Marisa. Thank you for not tolerating laziness. Thank you for reading this book too many times and never complaining. Thank you for knowing the difference between me and the stuff I make up.
Darren Cliff
Craig Cliff is the author of A Man Melting, a collection of short stories, which was previously published in New Zealand and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. In 2012 he was a judge for the inaugural Commonwealth Story Prize, and he is the recipient of a Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.
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