Soon

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Love . . . He didn’t like the satirical tone. It was way too cheerful.

  He waited, then said, ‘Can’t we just talk on the phone?’

  ‘I don’t like the phone. I prefer face to face.’

  ‘I may come into the city tomorrow. I’m not sure. Can I get back to you?’

  ‘OK, shall we come and see you there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Rotokauri.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go to the hospital tomorrow. I’ll be at my rooms briefly, at midday. How’s that?’

  ‘Super.’

  He closed his phone. Super. Was she sounding so bouncy because she’d uncovered something new?

  A group of gulls had landed nearby and were edging towards him on their red feet. He looked at their round eyes with tiny black pupils, their white heads turning, as if they were conferring together. There was a tight feeling in his stomach. Miles was supposed to be fixing this. Ford had said it: the more often he was bailed up by little Marie, the greater the danger he would give something away. This must be way beyond routine inquiry now. They just wouldn’t leave him alone.

  The possibilities: perhaps Miles wasn’t able to ‘calm things down’. A minister couldn’t officially interfere in the workings of a police investigation. Or maybe Miles, or even David, had decided there was some advantage in letting the investigation run. Ford might have been wrong reckoning they’d do anything to make the police go away. Who knew how David had decided to play it; he was, after all, the most cunning person Simon knew. Had he seen an opportunity to get rid of the Lamptons, now he had Elke taken care of? Or was that fanciful? And how much control did David really have over Miles? That devious, manipulative prick could have ideas of his own.

  He shouldn’t have listened to Ford, couldn’t even be sure his brother’s offer of help was genuine. Ford was so awkward and eccentric, so (come to think of it) bereaved; there was no reason why he’d know how to deal with a delicate situation. He cursed Ford’s confident self-righteousness, his fucking opinions. Big brother, always marching around telling people what do. Why had he listened, why did he always listen? Fuck Ford, fuck him.

  But the next moment he was scrambling up the dune, looking for Ford out at the point. The surfers were paddling for a wave, competing for space, and there was the swimmer, his arms chopping the surface, taking his place among them. He rode the wave with his head out of the water, arms outstretched as if he was flying. The wave carried him in so far that when he finally stood up he was only thigh-deep in the churning shorebreak, hitching up his baggy togs. Simon shouted, jumping back when the breakers hissed up the sand, but Ford was already looking out for the next set of swells. He launched himself and swam away, leaving Simon yelling his name at the seagulls. Sudden chill as the wave caught him and filled his shoes.

  He gave up. Walking away into the sand hills he thought about Mereana: she’d been sentenced to jail and they’d taken her baby away, and when she’d got out she’d successfully fought to reclaim the child but it had contracted meningitis and died. Ed Miles talked about being tough on crime and Juliet wanted to bring back the death penalty because, she said, life imprisonment was not enough. Simon had kept out of those discussions, hadn’t even thought about them, but he could have told her now: imprisonment is enough. Look at Mereana, what she lost. (Losing a child because you’ve messed everything up: Roza, you know all about that.) And if I’m imprisoned, dear Juliet, you might as well kill me, because I will lose everything I value and love. Including thousands of female patients, both public and private, who benefit from my expertise, not to mention the babies over whose difficult births I preside. And I don’t see how I will get those things back: family, friendships, practice, patients.

  Karen liked to talk tough on crime too. What a laugh. Simon in jail. Where’s your lovely husband these days, Karen? We never see him at the golf club.

  Bitter laughter shivered through him, but how easy it was to forget. He was railing against fate, full of self-pity and self-justification, and yet what about Weeks? Had he deserved to die? No one deserves it. It happens. It just happened.

  But just as Ford had said, on the way to Weeks’s flat he’d left his phone behind, told no one where he was going. Had he, in some part of his mind, intended harm? A phrase surfaced in his mind, something Ed Miles had repeated to him: We tell people: you make life happen.

  He sat down at the base of a steep dune. The wind had worn the sand into shelves, patterns swirling through the layers. Closing his eyes he saw Weeks’s young face, the dark, eager eyes, the sly turn of the mouth, like a boy provoking his father: Actually, I’ve written a screenplay about a National Party Prime Minister. The marram shivered in the breeze, the dune sheltered him from the direct sun, there was nothing but light and silence beyond his body and he drifted and slept—

  May came out of the dazzling glare, her hair wet, her arms full of hibiscus flowers. Behind her the sea was calm, as though her presence had stopped the wind; looking at her he was neither sleeping nor waking, he couldn’t move, he tried to say her name but she spoke:

  ‘Did you know there’s a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy? In three billion years’ time we’re going to collide with the next-door galaxy, Andromeda.’

  His head and his eyes were full of light.

  She said, ‘So where is the pain?’

  He thought about it. The answer surprised him, made him slightly embarrassed, he struggled to bring out the words. ‘The pain? The pain is everywhere.’

  ‘Fix it,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  Her expression was harsh, ‘Then you will never find your way back in.’

  He looked where she was pointing and saw the most splendid, beautiful mansion, a paradise.

  She turned to face the horizon and he saw a black cone of cloud with points of light in it, sweeping towards the beach. The black thing was made of dragonflies. She was absorbed in it and flew away.

  He woke. There was a rainstorm out at sea, hanging like chainmail. Cloud shadows dark on the water, metal curtains of distant rain.

  Roza would be at the pool at six in the evening, to do her lengths. This was decreed in the fitness programme written for her by Garth, and she was sticking to it religiously. The regime was having an effect; Simon had never seen her so radiant, so toned and svelte.

  By six, Johnnie would be talking movies with Tulei and Elke gone dreaming off to take stock of the pile of shopping bags unloaded from the car by the bustling Troy and Chad: clothes, shoes, trinkets, toys; and Roza would have squeezed into her most sporty and businesslike bathing suit, and rolled her towel into a sausage under her arm, and snapped her goggles on top of her head like a second pair of eyes, and be making her way, humming under her breath, along the path between the hedges, her flip-flops slapping on the hot concrete. Behind her, possibly, would creep the pallid figure of Ed Miles, who liked to perv at her while she was swimming (from a deck chair, peering over the top of the National Business Review) and also possibly Ford, who was hopelessly in love with her, and who seemed to materialise whenever Simon had a chance to talk to her alone.

  Simon wondered about this while he waited for her: why a man like Ford would love Roza, whom he would label (because she was apolitical) ‘frivolous’ and ‘not intellectually good enough’. He would love her despite (or, ironically, because of?) these flaws, would be overwhelmed by the sheer force, power, whatever you wanted to call it, of her sex appeal. Her charisma. Her imperious, unreasonable femininity. Her musical laughter at the expense of hapless men. And her high heels and her beautiful legs and brown breasts, and all the reasons why Simon loved her and had ever since he’d met her. But Ford had knocked Simon off his pedestal. He knew now, little brother knew: he would never have enough of the thing Roza wanted. He had seen the way things stood. In the company of the two brothers Roza’s gaze slid from Simon to Ford,
in the same way that men’s eyes passed over plain Claire and stopped abruptly at Elke, with a pulse of animal interest.

  He waited, in a trance of calculation. No matter what he’d done, consciously or otherwise, he couldn’t sit back and let Weeks destroy him. If he was stuck in a crime story — increasingly a horror story — he would try to shape the plot. It was the Hallwright government’s mantra: Don’t wait for life to happen to you. Make life happen!

  Here she came, unlocking the gate and letting it clang behind her. Not wearing flip-flops but elaborate sandals with high wedge heels. And not in her sporty swimsuit but the outrageous white-and-gold bikini that left very little to the . . .

  Was she expecting someone? Was she got up like that for Ford?

  Simon coughed. Roza, I’m shocked. Disappointed in you. Dressed like a common . . . And who for? Whom?

  ‘Hi,’ he said in a cracked voice. It sounded like the strangled noise the bastard tuis made at 4 a.m.

  ‘Simon, hi!’

  She spread out her towel and sat down on a sunbed. She was wearing mirror shades, silver holes in her face.

  He wanted to say, I loved you. But you . . .

  ‘Roza, we need to talk.’

  ‘Mmm?’ She barely moved her head. ‘Are you annoyed about Mr Bast and Mr Wilcox and the slapper in Cyprus? Sorry. I can’t help teasing you.’ She reached out a hand. ‘It’s only because I love you.’ Her warm fingers touched his arm.

  He said softly, ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Poor Simon.’ She looked over the top of her shades. ‘You looked so tense today. I felt guilty.’

  ‘I confide in you and you take the mickey,’ he said, hoarse.

  ‘Bad of me.’

  He touched her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve had something much more important on my mind.’ He needed to hurry; they would have company any minute. ‘Listen. I’ve had this worry. I’ve got to tell you.

  A man rang me on my cell phone recently. He was a journalist, want­ing gossip about all of us. I got rid of him, but he rang back. I got rid of him again . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been visited by the police. They told me the journalist who rang me has died.’

  ‘Died. What of?’

  ‘He was young and he had a fall. They are investigating the death, and they found he’d rung me. They looked at his phone records.’

  He studied her face. Her eyes were hidden behind the opaque silver shades.

  ‘You with me so far?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I told them all I knew, that he’d rung me and that I’d got rid of him. When they were asking me about it they told me he’d been writing a screenplay about a National Party prime minister. A blond, left-handed prime minister who walks with a limp, would you believe.’

  ‘A screenplay.’

  ‘Yes. And they asked whether anyone would have wanted to harm the guy because of what he was writing. I said that was a ridiculous idea, which it is.’

  She frowned. ‘Is this something we should mention to David?’

  Had David really not spoken to her about it? He couldn’t tell.

  ‘I have told David. He’s going to get Ed Miles to look into it.’

  She grimaced. ‘Ed.’

  ‘But there was something I didn’t tell David and Ed.’ He waited, then went on. ‘I didn’t tell them that Weeks — that’s the dead man’s name — asked me about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘He asked me whether you’d had what he called a wild youth.’

  She drew her mouth down on one side, tough, amused. ‘I suppose you could call it that.’

  ‘He mentioned something about you having a “relapse”. Drugs, he said. He told me he’d met a woman called Tamara. She had a surname that started with Gold, Goldsmith or Goldwater. He said this woman had given him information about you that was negative, not flattering, concerning drugs. He also mentioned your housekeeper, Lin Jung Ha.’

  Roza didn’t move.

  He went on, ‘I noticed you’d fired Jung Ha — and I wondered . . . I’m sorry Roza, I don’t mean to alarm you or interfere in your business, but when you fired Jung Ha I wondered whether Weeks had rung you too. There was something the police said: they asked if I knew how Weeks had got hold of cell phone numbers and they seemed to be talking about more than one number. And when you fired Jung Ha I thought, that’s a coincidence, since Weeks mentioned her. I thought, has Roza been worrying about the same thing I have?’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  He waited.

  ‘You’re suggesting I fired Jung Ha because she spied on me? Revealed some dirt to this man? About a “relapse”, you call it?’

  ‘I thought the police might be suggesting . . .’

  She pointed her finger. ‘I fired Jung Ha because she’s been incredibly surly for a year.’

  ‘Oh. That’s fine. It’s just the way it looks. I mean, it’s a coincidence you firing her, so you can see why I wondered whether Weeks had rung you.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this, Simon.’

  He could have laughed. You don’t like the sound of it. ‘Sorry. But the man’s dead, and the police are being very tiresomely conscientious about their investigation. I thought you’d want to know, because, well, to be honest, I was thinking of Johnnie.’

  ‘Johnnie!’

  ‘I know — we all know — what a good mother you are. How Johnnie adores you, how close you and he are. I wouldn’t want anyone casting a doubt on that.’

  Now she laughed, not nicely. ‘Casting a doubt. What on earth do you mean, Simon?’

  ‘All this is delicate. But we’re friends, so we can be frank. I care about you deeply; anything that hurts you, well, I couldn’t stand it. With this talk of drugs and relapses, I wouldn’t want anyone to raise the idea that they should worry about Johnnie, just when you’ve just got it all sorted with Elke.’

  She clutched her towel. ‘Worry about Johnnie? What rubbish. What “relapse”? I did not take drugs when I was pregnant with Johnnie.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘I did not. Johnnie’s perfect. They can’t say that. And neither can Tamara Goldwater.’

  Silence.

  ‘Roza I’ve upset you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘My children . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My children are the most important thing in my life.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I don’t want anything bad to happen. We need David to make this go away.’

  She squeezed the towel against her chest. ‘I’ll talk to David. Not Miles.’

  Simon pretended to consider. ‘Miles makes me nervous. In some­thing like this, when you’re talking about the children, delicate personal matters, do you trust him?’

  ‘No. But David can control him.’

  ‘So long as you’re sure. This Weeks person was a snoop and a stalker. He shouldn’t be allowed to cause you damage . . .’

  ‘David won’t let him. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘. . . no matter what he found out about you.’

  The gate creaked: it was Juliet Miles. She waved and disappeared into the pool house.

  Roza stood up. ‘I must find David.’

  Simon got up and said in a low voice, ‘One other thing. Karen and I would like to have Elke at our place for a bit longer. Claire’s still at home, and she’s going to give Elke some tuition. Up to you, of course. I was going to suggest it earlier, but I’ve been preoccupied about the police and what this fellow said about you. I don’t know who else he might have told, or what he was talking about with this Tamara person, and I don’t know what period he was talking about with this “relapse”, whether it was supposed to be when Johnnie was a baby or when you were pregnant with him. I don’t know what he put in his scre
enplay, whether it’s got anything about drugs in it. You’d have to ask . . . the police.’

  She looked at him, her teeth slightly bared, and he felt her taking in every implication of what he was saying. For a second he thought she might hit him. She raised her hand and he controlled the impulse to flinch, but she only drew her sunglasses down, and he looked into her eyes.

  ‘You want, you’d like Elke to . . .’

  He waved his hand noncommittally. ‘Just a thought. Talk about the Weeks problem with David and see what you think. The main thing is that Johnnie and Elke should feel secure.’

  She came close, eyes searching his face. ‘Simon . . .’ He smelled her perfume, felt the hairs lifting on his scalp. She smiled, her eyes were ice.

  ‘Simon, you surprise me. I didn’t think you had it in you.’

  Understanding

  The final morning, Karen was in a bossy flurry of packing, toting armfuls of clothes, elbowing him out of the way, reaching under the bed and coming out with dusty items held between finger and thumb. Sensing work to be done, Elke and Marcus had made themselves scarce, leaving their usual fantastic mess. Karen loaded Simon up with bundles and ordered him out to the car and he trudged obediently back and forth, surprised at the amount of luggage.

  He was in a state of tension bordering on madness. The previous day he had driven into town to his clinic, called in at the hospital, returned to his rooms in the afternoon — and Ms Da Silva hadn’t shown up. He’d even lingered in his rooms after five o’clock, and she hadn’t appeared. There was no sign of her or her silent colleague O’Kelly. And nor had she called.

  Barely able to contain his restlessness, he decided on a last swim. He invited Karen along, guessing she would decline: still too many things to do. She tucked her hair up into a baseball cap and went on with her organising.

  Ford was hitching a ride back to town with them, but Simon wanted to get him alone. He found him out the back of the Little House, emptying sand out of a sports bag.

  ‘Last swim? Come on.’

  He waited impatiently for Ford to change.