Bleak City (14 page)

Once Mike was gone and the door was closed, Lindsay rounded on Kevin. ‘Why did you let them leave?’

‘Calm down,’ he said.

Lindsay stalked off into the kitchen and stood at the kitchen sink, staring out into the backyard. She heard Kevin walk through and take a deep breath.

‘Did you really want those guys working on our house?’ he asked. ‘They’re obviously being paid peanuts if they can’t afford the time to do a proper quote, and if they’re happy to work for peanuts they probably aren’t any good. And even if they are, they might be pushed into cutting corners.’

She nodded. Kevin had been hearing things about the work being done on EQC’s behalf, that the quality was poor, they had talked about that and knew they had to be careful about their own house repair.

‘I thought they were here to assess the damage from the February quake,’ Kevin said. ‘That they were here expecting to get started on the work isn’t good, it means they’re skipping the assessment stage.’

Lindsay started to cry. ‘It’s been so long,’ she said, trying to keep from choking on her tears.

‘I know,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘But it’s better we get properly assessed, and Mike did say it would be a month, six weeks max. That’s not long in the scheme of things.’

She nodded and wiped at her tears. ‘Probably three to six months, more like.’

‘Maybe,’ Kevin said.

Although what Kevin had said made sense, Lindsay had trouble sleeping that night and all through the weekend. What if they couldn’t get people to do the job right? What if they were going to end up with a bad patch job, like some of the people Kevin was hearing about at work? Paint flaking off after a few months, cracks appearing in walls that hadn’t been repaired properly.

The following Monday, Lindsay still hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep, so instead of running her usual Monday errands, she went home after taking Olivia to school and Jack to kindy and flaked out on the sofa reading a book. Well, really, she was reading the same page of a book over and over again, her attention span wasn’t great. She gave up around noon and decided to get some cooking done, to get ahead for the week, have some things in the fridge to heat up quickly. Chicken soup and a spaghetti bolognese.

The chicken soup was on, simmering away on the back of the stove, and Lindsay was chopping up the onions and garlic for the spaghetti bolognese when she heard a quake approaching, a loud rumble, then a big shake. She dropped the knife and crouched down by the kitchen cabinets, covering her head with her arms. The kitchen cupboards flew open and disgorged glasses and bottles that smashed, splashing her and a good part of the kitchen with balsamic vinegar. She heard the knife block on the window sill fall onto the bench, and knives shot out of it and clattered onto the floor, just missing her where she was crouching. But it wasn’t like the September and February quakes, it was a small mess, a handful of objects, the knives, the bottle of balsamic vinegar, some glasses and a coffee cup.

The quake passed and Lindsay stood up, her legs wobbly. The pot containing the chicken soup had shimmied off the hotplate and pushed up against the back of the stove. The direction of the quake had pushed things on that side of the kitchen back, which was good, otherwise she would have a fresh pot of chicken soup all over the kitchen floor. She placed the pot back on the hotplate and turned the hotplate off. She would go and get the kids, once she was calm enough to drive. Once she had cleaned up. She walked unsteadily through to the laundry and retrieved the dustpan and the mop from the cupboard.

Her phone went. It was Alice, texting to say the quake was a 5.9 centred out towards Sumner, under Evans Pass. Alice was on her way home, her text said, and she would pick up Olivia and Jack. That was good, Lindsay didn’t feel calm enough to go out. And it would give her a chance to make sure she caught all the broken glass.

Kevin was working away from the city that day and while normally he texted her after any big quakes, he had left his phone at home that day, he had no way of getting in touch with her, and she had no way of knowing if he was okay. But, she told herself, he was north of the city, the quake was to the southeast, of course he would be fine. He might not even know there had been a quake, depending on where he was. She told herself not to worry, he was fine. Alice and the kids would be home soon, and Kevin was well out of the quake zone. But what if something had fallen on him? She tried not to think about that.

She mopped the balsamic vinegar from the kitchen floor and filled a bowl with chicken soup. She was carrying the bowl of chicken soup through to the lounge when she heard another quake coming. She headed for the doorframe between the hallway and lounge, balancing the bowl of hot soup, determined not to drop it, not to have another mess to clean up today. It was a bigger quake than before, and given the last one was a 5.9, this one had to be a six. Hadn’t they had enough? Somehow she managed not to spill her soup, although some slopped out onto her hand. She steadied herself and licked the soup off her hand, then set the bowl down on the coffee table. She heard the cat crying mournfully and followed the noise through to Alice’s room and tried to coax him out from under the bed. But he just backed further into the corner, letting out deep howls. Where was Alice?

In the kitchen, two more glasses had been thrown onto the floor, but nothing else. So just shards of glass to sweep up before two little kids arrived home. She retrieved the dustpan from where she had stored it only minutes before and swept the mess up. She was emptying it into the rubbish bin when she noticed that the driveway was wet, muddy water running down from the back of the section, not as much as during the February quake, just a trickle. Liquefaction once again. She walked down to look and sure enough there was a new layer of silt on top of the one they hadn’t yet cleared from February. At least the new round of liquefaction meant the City Council would be collecting it from the roadside once again. They had missed the February collections and hadn’t yet dug out the silt as they had no idea what they were going to do with it.

Alice’s car came up the driveway. Olivia and Jack jumped out as Alice pulled to a stop and they rushed Lindsay, telling her about being in the car during the quake, how Alice had just belted Olivia in and gotten back in the car when the quake hit. They saw the ground rolling, they said, and the trees shaking, and the car had been bouncing, like it was dancing. She hugged them both and they all went inside, where the phone was ringing. Alice ran for it, told whoever it was that they were all home and okay, then handed it over to Lindsay. ‘It’s Kev,’ Alice said.

Lindsay asked when he would be home. About half an hour, he said. She should make sure all the water bottles were filled, he said, he was hearing on the radio that power was out in some parts of the city, water too, and there had been a lot of liquefaction. Again. There was more at home, she told him.

When he arrived home, they left Alice with Olivia and Jack and went to check on Lindsay’s parents, then her grandparents. Both places had done reasonably okay, less mess than February, a slight worsening of existing damage. Lindsay’s mother Heather was furiously trying to scrub coffee stains off a wall. When the second quake hit, Heather had a cup with milk and instant coffee sitting on the bench by the jug. It had been tossed onto the floor and had splashed up the wall, where it had seeped into existing plaster cracks.

‘That’s not coming off,’ Lindsay said. Like so many in Christchurch, she was used to living with damage, although coffee stains in cracked plaster were a type of damage she hadn’t seen before. But her mother kept scrubbing at the stains, determined to get them off the wall.

By the time Kevin and Lindsay arrived home, Alice had the kids asleep in bed and was watching the day’s news. Someone had caught video of dust clouds coming off the cliffs in the seaside suburb of Sumner when the second quake hit, and a stone building had collapsed at Lyttelton, the historic timeball station that had been used to set ships’ time when they came into port, in the days before radio signals were used. Then there was footage of more damage in the central city. Fortunately, people working on demolitions had evacuated after the first quake, so there was no one in the buildings that suffered further collapses. Alice had a serious look on her face that made her look a decade older.

‘This is why people shouldn’t be trying to save historic buildings,’ Alice said, ‘they’re too dangerous while we still have quakes.’

Lindsay was worried that Alice was getting too wrapped up in the building collapse inquiries. They would be going on for months, and Alice was reading news reports about them most days, telling Lindsay about how the people shouldn’t have died. She was right, it seemed a lot of people had died who shouldn’t have, but Lindsay thought that shouldn’t be the concern of someone as young as Alice.

Lindsay mentioned this to Kevin when they went to bed.

‘She cares,’ Kevin said. ‘That’s good.’

‘But you can’t take on all the world’s burdens,’ Lindsay said. ‘That drives a person round the bend.’

‘She is looking very tired lately,’ Kevin said. ‘What do you want to do?’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘I tried suggesting that she gets away. Andrew’s mother is over in Sydney, maybe she should go over for a break.’

‘Isn’t she staying with relatives? Would they have room?’

‘Apparently the place is huge, there would be enough room for all of us,’ Lindsay said.

‘What did she say when you suggested it?’

‘She says she needs to be here.’ Lindsay was quiet a moment. ‘I don’t like that she feels like she has to be here for me. I mean, I am coping. Mostly. And it’s not her responsibility.’

Kevin was quiet, and Lindsay wondered if he was considering debating with her whether or not she actually was coping.

‘Do you want to stay here?’ she said, and she felt him shuffle in discomfort. ‘I don’t mean going back to Timaru now, I’m okay with being here. I mean long-term. Do you want to stay in Christchurch?’

He was quiet. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and that surprised Lindsay, because she had thought the answer would be yes, that this was their home. She had only broached the idea to let him know that she might not want to stay here forever. She sat up and looked at him, feeling a small burst of hope in her heart. The hope of escape, of getting away from this wrecked place. He must have seen it in her eyes, because he proceeded to elaborate. ‘Those EQR guys the other day, working for not much of anything. Stuff like that going on isn’t going to be good for the city. I’m not sure there’s going to be work for people who refuse to cut corners.’

‘Is it that bad?’ Lindsay said.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve heard of some guys being let go, there’s not enough work unless you’re in with EQC or the insurance companies.’

‘Could you look for work with one of the insurance companies?’ Lindsay said. Now he had her worried, they needed to keep money coming in, and it had been pretty tight in the couple of months after the quake. She thought things were picking up.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, might be better than what’s going on with EQC.’

‘But?’

‘I’m hearing things.’

‘What about?’

‘Rebuilds suddenly switching to repairs.’

‘Well maybe that’s what they’re finding out when they take a closer look,’ Lindsay said.

‘But this is on badly damaged places,’ Kevin said. ‘There’s something not right about it, and I’m starting to wonder if this is going to be a good place for Olivia and Jack to grow up. I mean, think about it, the rebuild is going to cover their formative years. Is this really what we want them growing up thinking is normal?’

‘They’re a lot better with the quakes,’ Lindsay said. Ever since Lindsay had been making serious efforts to deal with her own anxiety over the ongoing quakes, Olivia and Jack had been handling them better. It was now more a game, which was good. They were developing resilience. Though she still hated the word, she had come to realise that trying to protect them from everything bad was a bad strategy, that what they needed was to learn how to cope, how to bounce back.

‘Yes they are,’ Kevin said. ‘But in ten years they’ll each be looking at what kind of work they’re going to get, and I have a feeling the standard of workmanship is going to be dropping.’

‘So not a good place to pick up a trade,’ Lindsay said. ‘University might be a better option.’ She didn’t want her children taking up trades. Yes, the work was steady, everyone needed homes and cars and so on, but she had seen the physical toll. Her father had spent his working life as a mechanic, which he was now paying for with his bad knees and back problems, and it wasn’t uncommon for painters and plasterers to have shoulder problems. Kevin was nearly forty and although he didn’t have anything of that sort going, he still had more than two decades of work to get through, and who knew what would happen. No, she wanted her children to go to university, get degrees, not have to ruin themselves physically to earn a living.

‘What if they’re not cut out for university?’ Kevin said. ‘What if it’s too expensive by then?’

Lindsay didn’t want to have this discussion. ‘It doesn’t matter what they do,’ she said. ‘I suppose the question is do we want them growing up in Christchurch if the rebuild goes wrong?’

‘It’s going wrong now,’ Kevin said.

‘I don’t want them growing up in a dysfunctional city,’ Lindsay said. She felt her voice catch and tried to stop from crying. ‘They should know what normal is.’ She swept her arm in an arc, meaning the broken city a few kilometres beyond their bedroom window. ‘Not this, not this broken place that keeps having quakes. Two big quakes today. How many more sixes can we possibly have?’

Kevin put his arm around her and kissed her hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘In my head I know it can’t go on forever, but at what point do we say let’s go? Maybe this is the point. We can’t do anything until the house is fixed, but maybe we can start talking about possibilities.’

Lindsay nodded, sniffing back tears. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’d really like that.’