Soon

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Ford went off for a shower and Simon walked alone through the lavender bushes towards the pool. It was sheltered here, the evening air warm and still. He could hear Roza’s voice. She and Johnnie were sitting on a wooden bench under the pohutukawa, a pack of cards arranged between them, although they weren’t playing. Johnnie was kneeling on the seat and Roza was shuffling cards and staring intently ahead, concentrating on something unseen. Her low voice:

  The messenger gave the Green Lady the grave news: Barbie Yah had called on the evil power of the Ort Cloud’s Wife, and despite all the efforts of the friends, she had succeeded in luring Soonica away. The Green Lady summoned her men. Soon and Starfish, along with the Village Idiot, abandoned their plans to go hunting and went to the clearing.

  The Green Lady was in conference with the Red Herring, and did not speak. The Bachelor’s bed appeared, the Bachelor himself magnificent in a turquoise robe, and the Cassowaries gaudy, cold-eyed and ferocious, shedding feathers and squawking as the bed swooped over the trees and landed in the clearing. The Bachelor, holding a cocktail, stepped off the bed and approached the Green Lady.

  “At your service, Madam,” he announced, but she only glanced at him, nodded impatiently, and went on talking to the Red Herring. The Bachelor stalked back to his bed, waved the Cassowaries off it and arranged himself in a louche pose to wait for his beloved. Time passed. The Green Lady summoned Tiny Ancient Yellow Cousin So-on. Crackers stole close to the Bachelor’s drinks cabinet but was driven away by the shrieks and pecks of the Cassowaries.

  Soon, who didn’t really mind at all that Soonica had been kidnapped, and looked on it as a good excuse for a bloodthirsty battle, got bored and began playing with matches, but after he’d set fire to a bush and then to the Village Idiot’s hat, the High Priestess Germphobia got hold of him and smacked him with her scrubbing brush, at which pandemonium broke out. Soon yelled, the Cassowaries hissed and flapped, the Guatemalans fired off blasts from their shotguns and Starfish uncharacteristically laughed.

  “Starfish, you’re a traitor,” Soon shouted, and Starfish guiltily apologised.

  “Ha ha,” said the Village Idiot, waving her blackened and smouldering hat.

  Now the Green Lady made her way towards the crowd. The Bachelor stood up, straightening his turquoise robe.

  “Dear Lady,” he began, “your flashing eyes, your splendid complexion . . .” But the Bachelor was the only one who dared speak, and even he fell silent. For when the Green Lady turned to face them, all who had waited for news of Soonica drew back in fear at the expression in her eyes. It was like looking into the blackest and most distant part of the Universe, a place where no mortal pity could survive.

  Johnnie was kneeling up on the seat and running his hand over the rough bark of the pohutukawa. He turned and regarded Simon expressionlessly.

  How alike they were, mother and son. They had the same stillness and watchfulness. But it was when they laughed that the resemblance was plainest, something mocking and anarchic in the way they confronted the world.

  A voice called across the warm dark garden: ‘Johnnie, path time.’

  Tuleimoka appeared in the space between the hedges, wearing a white flower behind her ear. Her hair smelled of coconut oil, reminding Simon of school. Sudden nostalgia. All the Island kids had greased their long black hair with coconut; the classrooms used to reek with the heavy, pungent scent. It was sad there were almost no Pacific Islanders at his own children’s expensive schools. Only one or two brown faces among the Pakehas and Asians.

  ‘Oh, Tulei.’ Roza looked away, cold. She said to Johnnie, ‘You’d better go darling, and be fumigated.’

  The boy looked like arguing but she hustled him off the seat, her eyes on Simon. ‘Go on, get on with it,’ she said. It wasn’t clear whether she was talking to the child or the nanny; both looked sharply at her, Johnnie with his hot, alert eyes, the nanny with a stubborn set to her mouth.

  As they walked between the hedges Tulei raised her arm in mock threat at the boy, as if about to give him a backhanded slap, and he laughed, and she in turn allowed her face to relax and gave him a beaming smile. Roza didn’t notice this; she was staring fixedly away. Simon remembered that the last time he’d seen Tulei and Johnnie singing hymns together, Johnnie had had his arm thrown around the nanny’s shoulders. The boy was so close to his mother, he’d probably always have an easy way with women.

  ‘Off she goes, the Bible-banger,’ Roza said.

  She chafed her hands uneasily and looked about with an expression of disgust. ‘I hate Christians. You have to be a liar to be a Christian, and a hypocrite.’

  ‘She seems like quite a nice nanny.’ Simon sat down next to her, cautiously.

  ‘Tulei thinks she’s “saved” and I’m not. I mean, really. Saved. How primitive.’ She gave a high, scornful laugh.

  Simon waited. She gathered up the deck of cards and shuffled them, her hands moving rapidly. A cloud of midges hovered near, making a dark smudge in the air, abruptly zooming away as Ed Miles came up the path from the pool, his head down, a towel around his neck and his cell phone clamped to his ear. He saw them, said something quiet and folded the phone shut. He was wearing swimming trunks and plastic flip-flops; his feet were narrow and pale, almost dainty. He stood dabbing his hair with the towel and looking them over, various calculations and impressions registering in his pale grey eyes. Out of his clothes the Police Minister looked colourless and oddly sexless, even feminine, as though a lifetime of sedentary plotting had turned him into a hothouse plant.

  ‘Hello Ed,’ Roza said, not nicely.

  Ed acknowledged her acid tone, glanced at Simon.

  ‘Good swim?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Ed said, and gave a sardonic salute and walked on.

  ‘Creep,’ Roza said under her breath.

  Simon stood up. ‘Should I leave you alone?’

  ‘Why?’ She looked furious.

  ‘You seem in a bad . . .’

  ‘Oh rubbish.’ She pulled him down beside her. ‘Tell me about your affair. It was like Miss Schlegel and Mr Bast. Only you were middle-class Miss Schlegel and she was low born . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me more about it. Give me details. What she was like, where did you meet?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to go into it. I feel bad about it.’

  ‘You can’t start a story and then not finish.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. You having an affair. It made me feel . . .’

  He stared. His arm burned where she was touching it.

  ‘. . . a little thrill. Almost jealous.’

  They were sitting very close. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Adrenalin shot through his body. He pressed against her but she drew back and he looked into her eyes. Her teeth were slightly bared and her breath was on his cheek. He glanced towards the hedges — what if Ed Miles were lurking there? — then took hold of her arms and kissed her. He said her name; it sounded almost like a gasp. She put her hand against his chest, pushed him back and said in a high, breathless voice, ‘Let’s go out to the Kauri Lake tomorrow, just the two of us.’

  ‘Yes.’ He had a moment of pure happiness.

  She got up and walked towards the hedges. The kiss had surely broken the prohibition against touching; he followed her and when they were on the narrow path between the overgrown bushes he put his hand on the small of her back, but she turned and put up her arm, forbidding. They were standing in the shadows under a big spreading pohutukawa. The ground was raised and they could see there was no one on the path in either direction. She came close and breathed in his ear; he put his arms around her.

  ‘Funny. We have a daughter together,’ she said.

  He drew back and looked at her. She smiled strangely.


  ‘You love our daughter.’ She pressed herself against him. ‘You really love her.’

  ‘What do you mean? Yes, I love Elke.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  A prickling started up in his body; little stabs of alarm.

  ‘What are you saying, Roza?’

  Her eyes opened. ‘Does Karen know you had an affair?’

  ‘No. Well. She might have had a suspicion.’

  ‘Does she know you were out in South Auckland, consorting with the low born?’

  He said sharply, ‘I’m pretty low born myself, if you want to use that term.’

  ‘Is that why you did it? Were you returning to your roots?’

  He was stung by her tone.

  ‘Or, was the poor little South Aucklander a substitute for what you really wanted?’

  They stared at each other.

  He said, icy, ‘No, Roza. She was exactly what I wanted.’

  She blinked, then gave a merrily spiteful laugh. ‘Goodness, Simon. You surprise me.’

  He was silent. Her mood changes were so abrupt. Was there a threat in what she was saying? What was she saying?

  With an impatient little shrug she took his arm. ‘Let’s go, it’s time for happy hour with the Cock.’

  Walking beside her he regretted his lost happiness — she had actually kissed him! — and wondered whether, despite her now unfriendly tone, he might after all expect a blissful rendezvous out at the Kauri Lake. Brief daydream: lying with Roza in the long grass, the hot wilderness, the feathery toetoe plumes waving against the blue sky in celebration . . .

  But she was so unpredictable, she would probably come on like a nymphomaniac and then scream and knee him in the balls. And then the bodyguards would arrive, Ray, Jon, Mick, Shaun, and drag him before David Hallwright in handcuffs.

  ‘What’s funny?’ she said.

  The absurdity of it. Everything threatened by his situation with Weeks and here he was dreaming about sex with the Prime Minister’s wife. And then he thought, But I’m always dreaming about sex with the Prime Minister’s wife. I’ve imagined having sex with her every day since I met her. He sighed, and gloomed after her through the soft dusk to the tables under the trees, where Trent and Troy had lit scented coils and candles to keep mosquitoes away, and the Cock was sitting next to boozy Peter Gibson, and Ed Miles, who had put his clothes on, had drawn his chair close to Karen’s and was looking at her intently while she talked. Karen’s nervous laugh rose above the murmur of voices. Ed was wearing linen trousers and effete loafers with no socks, and his expression was sinisterly respectful. God knew what indiscretions he had been drawing out of poor Karen, who looked up at them now with a troubled expression, as though she thought she might already have let something slip.

  Sharon Cahane’s buzz-saw voice: ‘He talks in his sleep! He wakes me up in the night droning about his portfolio. The budget. The deficit.’

  The Cock held his glass between finger and thumb and gazed into the clear liquid. ‘My wife is an inventive woman. My wife loves to make things up.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s unbearable. He runs the place even while we’re in bed. He wakes up shouting about the nation’s credit rating. I’ve started wearing ear plugs.’

  ‘If my wife only possessed the necessary cognitive powers, she would be able to write fiction.’

  ‘Stop glaring, darling. Look at that face. The wind’ll change.’

  The Cock smiled. He had placed a circle of burning mosquito coils around his chair; at intervals he reached down to check and rearrange them. He said, ‘The wind’ll change. My wife’s famous wit. Sometimes I think I might expire with mirth . . .’

  Roza said with quiet amusement, ‘You’ll set your trousers on fire with those things.’

  The Cock stopped tending his smoking coils, turned his head to one side, and gave Roza a charged glance. He would have been handsome if there weren’t such an air of thin-lipped, sinister restraint about him.

  It now occurred to Simon that Roza liked the Cock very much. She was a junkie for power, and the Cock radiated ambition, competitiveness, ferocious cleverness. Something else was suddenly clear to Simon: at the centre of Roza’s personality was a craving for things stronger and more potent than herself. Only the most powerful mixes would do.

  Now she and the Cock looked at each other through the lines of drifting smoke, each with a hint of secret laughter, and Simon felt a weight settle on his shoulders: he would never be able to supply the mysterious thing Roza wanted. She would always look beyond him. Tormented by her own restlessness she wanted to meet her match, to be arrested, contained, held.

  Sharon carried on, ‘One mosquito bite and it’s a catastrophe. We practically have to go to hospital . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she sat biting her thumb and looking from Roza to the Cock.

  Juliet Miles let out a theatrical sigh and clapped her hand over her mouth. Ed had turned his attention away from Karen; his gaze travelled from Roza and the Cock to David.

  David caught Simon’s eye and gestured to the chair next to him.

  Simon accepted a drink from Trent. He wondered what Roza had meant before, about Elke. Her manner had frightened him — and now he had so much to fear. He sensed she was angry about Elke’s return to the Little House, which she would see as a wounding defection by her daughter and a victory for Karen, and the idea of making Roza angry was unnerving in any circumstances, let alone now.

  David said, ‘It’s never going to be popular.’

  Ed leaned forward, running his finger around the rim of his glass. ‘That’s precisely why you need to inoculate. You say, “We won’t do it in this term but we won’t rule it out. We’ll consider it if we’re re-elected.” You need to bring it up, deal with it, show you’re not avoiding the issue, admit a certain amount but by no means all, and then move the debate on.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know all this. ’ David nodded, impatient, eyeing the Cock.

  ‘We need to run through two inoculation speeches before the conference; you’ve got asset sales and tax. You’ve also got an opportunity, re, um, boat people. It would be helpful if the punters thought there were hordes of them on the way, and that you were the man to keep them out.’

  ‘A tried and true strategy,’ the Cock said sarcastically.

  Ed smiled. ‘It never gets old. What we need is a boatload, foundering and disintegrating somewhere off Australia, and to put it about that they are heading here. Preferably about four hundred of them, looking sick and obviously ethnic and, you know, hungry for the nation’s benefits and jobs.’

  The Cock said, irritated, ‘Don’t forget to throw in that they’re terrorists.’

  ‘Yes, terrorists and Muslims and riddled with disease, all that.’

  ‘Gosh, I suppose we’re lucky we’re so far away,’ Juliet said, ‘or else they would be arriving all the time.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt if people thought they were.’

  The Cock said, ‘Well, Ed, why don’t you hire some actors to bob about in the ocean starving and dying and waving pitchforks, and holding signs saying “We want to come to New Zealand and blow you up and steal your jobs”.’

  ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ Ed said with a bland smile.

  The Cock scoffed and glanced at Roza.

  A red spot appeared on Ed’s cheek. He pressed his glass against it. ‘You’re such an intellectual, Colin. You shouldn’t concern yourself with spin this crude. It’s beneath you.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said the Cock.

  ‘It’s also not your forte,’ Ed said.

  The Cock turned from Roza to Ed with a cold, steady look.

  Ed leaned hastily towards David, ‘As I was saying, David, there are the two inoc speeches and also—’

  ‘You told me,’ David said, dismissing him.

  Karen laughed. Ed sat back in his chair, pressing the glas
s against his cheek and darting a bad look at Karen.

  Roza, who had been watching the exchange with keen enjoyment, laid her hand on the Cock’s arm. ‘Brrr. Has it got a bit chilly?’ She grinned and shivered. The Cock’s expression seemed to blur, as though he was suddenly, drunkenly lost in contemplation of her wicked smile and her beautiful hot eyes, and Simon felt the tension in the air rise another notch. Trent crossed the grass with his tray and the wind blew a piece of paper up and over the hedge, sending it whirling in the air. Karen lifted her empty glass and waggled it at Trent, who came obediently forward, and Roza said something quiet in the Cock’s ear. Simon could feel David beside him, watching Roza leaning close to the Cock, playing with her hair, laughing, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

  ‘Let’s take a turn around the garden,’ David said. ‘I want to smoke.’

  They got up and everyone stopped talking, uncertain. Roza took her hand off the Cock’s arm and frowned.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

  David only looked at her and smiled. He signalled to Simon and walked away with no explanation, leading him across the lawn towards the lower garden.

  They went down the path to the beach, where Ray was standing guard at the gate. The wind was blowing hard, making the dry bushes rattle. David took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

  Simon said, ‘I didn’t know you smoked those. I thought it was only cigars.’

  ‘Secret vice.’ David blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘I get them from Tuleimoka, the nanny. That’s why I won’t let Roza fire her. She’s just fired Jung Ha, but I told her we’re keeping Tulei.’

  ‘Jung Ha?’

  ‘Lin Jung Ha, our old housekeeper. Roza’s sacked her.’

  ‘Actually, I think Johnnie really likes the nanny.’

  ‘He does. Roza says she hates Tulei because she’s religious. But it’s really because Johnnie loves her.’