Deadly Sky (ePub), The (2 page)

‘You home, love?' Mrs Davis called out.

‘In here.' Darryl was still standing in front of the television. On the screen, another giant mushroom cloud poured upwards, its column and spreading head a boiling mass of dark and white blotches. Once again, he wished they had colour TV like some of his friends had.

His mother appeared in the living-room doorway. She looked tired, like she often did these days. For some reason, that made Darryl feel annoyed, too. ‘I thought I asked you to light the fire when you got home?' she said. Darryl grunted. The TV announcer had started speaking again. ‘Now, almost three decades after
Hiroshima, over 200 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out across the world. The—'

‘What are you watching?' Mrs Davis asked.

Darryl didn't look at her. ‘The TV.'

His mother sighed, but said nothing. She stood watching also, as another group of protestors appeared. Hundreds – thousands – of them this time, filling a huge square with high buildings around it, and a big statue in the middle. ‘That's London,' she said after a minute. ‘They've had Ban The Bomb marches there for years.'

A man and woman were shown in close-up. They held signs with shapes like an upside-down Y on them, and the words
CAMPAIGN FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
. Darryl sniffed. ‘D'you think anyone's going to take notice of them?'

His mother was silent again. After a moment, he heard himself say, ‘I might take School Certificate History next year. They do World War II.' Still his mum said nothing. When Darryl glanced at her, she was gazing at the screen, but he could tell her mind was off somewhere else. She was often like that these days, too.

When he'd got the fire going and they were sitting in the kitchen, his mother asked, ‘Which nuclear things did they show?'

‘Hiroshima. And that other Japanese place. One test under the sea where they had a whole lot of warships and this enormous wave capsized them – that was amazing! And a few of the ones the French are doing. An island called Morri or Murri something. Some weird name.'

‘Mururoa,' nodded his mother, as she began bustling around, getting potatoes and carrots out of the vegetable bin. Bustling was another thing she did a lot of since Darryl's father had gone. ‘It used to be a really beautiful coral atoll around a big lagoon. Palm trees and sand. Now the trees and a lot of the coral have vanished in the explosions, and the fish are too radioactive to eat.'

The Island guy on TV had been talking about stuff like that, Darryl remembered. But how did his mother …

Mrs Davis saw the startled look on her son's face, and laughed. ‘Most of our overseas girls come from the Pacific Islands, remember? They talk about the nuclear tests. None of them likes what's going on.'

‘Is it any use having all those marches against it, though?' Darryl went again.

His mother pulled a packet of chops out of the freezer compartment, sniffed them, then dropped them into a frying pan. ‘What do you think?'

‘Why would anyone take notice of them? And …' Darryl felt himself struggling to think of reasons, and that made him annoyed again. Then he remembered
what the TV announcer had been saying. ‘We need a weapon that'll stop communist countries like the Soviet Union and China from attacking us. And you know what Dad says – said. How dropping those bombs on Japan ended World War II and kept Grandad Davis alive. Plus it meant all those other soldiers didn't have to take part in an invasion. It saved so many lives.'

‘There have been protests in Tahiti and other islands this past month,' Mrs Davis said. ‘A few of our overseas girls had friends or families taking part. They held a prayer meeting for them in the boarders' hostel. They are very churchy, most of the Polynesian kids. One girl prayed that her mum wouldn't whack any policemen with her sign.'

Mrs Davis laughed. Darryl didn't. Those protestors are just wasting their time, he told himself.

Rain began thrumming on the roof as they ate. Darryl felt glad he'd got the fire going. ‘Ugh, I hate August!' his mother said. It was the first time she'd spoken since they sat down. Once again, her mind seemed to be somewhere else.

At least it's only three weeks until the holidays, Darryl thought. The second term was the longest: fourteen weeks this year.

‘Put a tape on, love,' his mother said. ‘Something cheerful.' Darryl got up and slipped a cassette into the player. Abba: he'd seen a programme about them (on a
colour
TV) at his friend's place. They'd both said they liked the guys' flared pants. They hadn't said they liked the two girl singers, but they'd thought it. ‘That OK?' he asked his mum.

‘What?' Mrs Davis looked blank, then, ‘Oh, yes. Fine, thanks, love.' She fell silent again, then seemed to yank her mind back to the kitchen. ‘So how was school today?'

Darryl shrugged. ‘OK.' His mother was gazing into the distance once more. She was acting really weird; he felt fed up with it. ‘So how was
your
school today?' he went.

His mum smiled, but she still seemed off in a world of her own. Darryl stopped feeling fed up and started feeling worried. Was she OK? Was there some trouble with his father that she didn't want to tell him about?

There hadn't been any mail from his dad since a postcard to Darryl nearly a fortnight ago. He checked the mailbox every day. Sometimes he felt wild at his father when he opened the box and found it empty. Sometimes he just felt heavy and tired. The postcards that had arrived were in his top drawer, under his handkerchiefs.

Did she have bills to pay, maybe? His dad had
sent them money since he took off for Australia, but sometimes it was a while before any arrived. That was one reason his mother was doing extra hours at her school.

Darryl looked over at her again, sitting there and staring straight ahead. She'd hardly touched her dinner. Yeah, something was wrong, all right. Oh man, she and his father must be going to get divor— They'd decided, and now she was trying to work out how to tell him.

He found he was gabbling, saying anything that lurched into his head, just to stop his mother from speaking. ‘I might get some books out of the library on nuclear weapons and stuff. We'll be studying World War II in Form Five next year, if I take History.' (You already said that, you stupid wally, his mind told him.) ‘That might come into it.'

He realised his mother was watching him in surprise. After a minute, she said, ‘Did you know that you could see one of the explosions from New Zealand?'

‘From here? Incredible!'

His mum nodded. ‘An American test, I think. As big as a million tons of high-explosive, the newspaper said. They let it off on an island away out in the Pacific. People up in Northland reckoned they saw a bright red glow on the horizon, with white streaks in it. And there was something about increased radioactivity
measurements here for a couple of weeks afterwards.'

Here? Darryl thought again. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. Someone should … should protest.

Mrs Davis poked at a potato as though she had just noticed it, then put her fork down on the table. ‘I'll get pudding. Oh, listen to that rain! Brrrr, I'm fed up with winter!' Even as she spoke, she was staring into space again.

‘I'll light the fire as soon as I get home in the afternoons,' Darryl heard himself saying this time. ‘Sorry I forgot today.'

His mother looked at him. Really looked at him. She stood, walked over and put her arms around him. ‘Thanks, Da.' She still called him by his childhood nickname sometimes; it was embarrassing in front of his friends. ‘Anyway, you'll only have to do the fire for another three weeks. That's all.'

Oh, no, Darryl knew. They
are
getting divorced. We're going to leave here and move somewhere else. I won't see my friends again. I won't see Dad again. He pulled away from his mother. ‘Why? What do you mean “only three weeks”? What's wrong?'

His mother straightened up, and pushed the hair back off his forehead. Darryl hated it when she did that; he was trying to grow his hair long, like The Rolling Stones on the cover of their new LP record, but she kept wanting him to get it cut.

She smiled at him, then looked at the wall and seemed to make her mind up. ‘Nothing's wrong. But the term finishes in three weeks, remember? And then you're coming with me to Tahiti.'

Twenty days, eighteen hours and thirty-five minutes later, Darryl and his mother were 25,000 feet above the Tasman Sea, on a plane bound for Sydney.

He had a couple of small bruises on one arm, where he'd kept pinching himself to believe it was truly, actually, genuinely happening.

That evening at dinner when his mum had suddenly told him, he had gaped at her until she began laughing. ‘If you let your mouth hang open any more, I'll drop some dinner into it.' Darryl quickly shut his mouth,
then opened it again to ask: ‘What? When? How? Why?'

The Pacific Islands groups who helped organise getting girls to New Zealand high schools wanted to know more about what was available, Mrs Davis explained. Since the girls' high where she worked took more Pacific students than anyone else, they had invited her to come and talk to schools and churches and other people. So she was visiting Tahiti, and then going to some really little place called Manga-something; so remote that they had to fly for hours to get there. They'd be away for about ten days.

‘Coming to New Zealand is a huge change for kids from the Islands,' she said. ‘They get really nervous about it. Hardly any of them have ever flown before.'

Me neither, thought Darryl, while he sat there and his dinner got colder and colder. His mouth was hanging open again; he hauled it back up. He wasn't interested in how the Island kids felt – he was more interested in how
he
felt. I'm going to Tahiti, he kept telling himself as he started putting the first bruise on his arm. To Tahiti!

‘We get students whose parents are teachers or church ministers,' his mother went on. ‘Ones whose father is a fisherman and whose mother helps cook for the whole village. A few of them have never been in a car before. They cry when they leave home, and they
cry when they arrive at our school. Then they cry when they have to go back to their homes again.'

Girls, thought Darryl. Weird. But he still wasn't really listening. In his head he was already miles away.

Mrs Davis looked at the two plates on the table with their half-eaten cold chops and vegetables. She picked them up, and scraped them into the under-bench rubbish tin. ‘I think this is a night for fish and chips, don't you?'

The school was helping with some money, his mother told him as the next three weeks began to stream past. ‘Plus your dad's sent us a fair bit.' She was standing at the sink as she said this; she didn't look at Darryl. ‘I've written to his last address – that mine in Queensland – and told him where we're going.'

In his room that night, Darryl took out the most recent postcard again. A huge truck for carrying iron ore up from a great pit in the ground. The guy in a hard-hat standing beside it was only half the height of its tyres. His dad had drawn an arrow pointing to the guy, and written
I'M BETTER LOOKING THAN HIM!

Sometimes he felt wild at his father, leaving and upsetting things the way he had, but mostly he just
wished his dad was here. He put the card back in its drawer.

For a while, he stood staring at the photograph on his bookcase. Him and his father and Grandad Davis; his mum had taken it when Grandad came to dinner one Sunday. His dad had an arm around Darryl and an arm around his own father, and they were all laughing. Now one of them was dead and another had gone away.

The time until they left was busy, then more busy, then frantically busy. First, they had to get passports. When these were delivered, one Tuesday after school, in a bright yellow envelope that Darryl had to sign for, he looked at his photo and went ‘Aarghh!' But I'm still going to keep this forever, he promised himself.

Another postcard from his dad arrived, addressed to them both. One of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Have a great time! I'll be thinking of you.
A bit about the weather and his work, then,
Tell me as soon as you're back, Jacqui. Time for a talk.
Darryl wondered about that last sentence all evening.

Darryl told his friends about Tahiti and Mangawhosit. They exclaimed: ‘You're kidding!' Then they went: ‘Hey, bring us back a souvenir, eh? A canoe. Or a bunch of coconuts. Or one of the girls!'

He had piles of schoolwork to finish: all the assignments he'd planned to do in the holidays. When they came back, he would still have a bit of time since the Term Two holidays were three weeks long. His mother had suggested he bring along some work to do while they were travelling, though.

When she said this, it was Darryl's turn to go, ‘You're kidding!' His first trip overseas and she wanted him to spend it doing assignments? School exams didn't start until November. Time enough to worry next year when he'd be 15 – jeez! – and sitting School Certificate. He had to pass that or he wouldn't be allowed into Form Six. But now? Nah, he was going to Tahiti, and maybe to a few James Bond-type adventures!

They flew out from Mangere Airport. Darryl could just remember his dad taking him there for its big opening in 1966. They had seen all sorts of aircraft displays and fly-pasts and stuff. He'd have been about six then, and things had been OK between his parents. The rows hadn't started. Or if they had, he'd been too young to notice.

About an hour after they took off, the air hostesses served them a meal. A meal on a plane! Well, it was four hours to Sydney. Darryl looked at the plastic tray,
with everything divided up into little compartments. He wished he had a camera to take a photo, but they only had his mum's, and she'd said they were going to take just four or five pictures a day. ‘That'll be nearly four rolls of film. And developing photos is expensive, remember.'

He still felt excited. He thought about starting another bruise on his arm; instead, he glanced sideways at his mother. She had finished her meal and was sitting, flicking through a magazine. She seemed calm, but he remembered how on Tuesday night, before the last day of term, she had grabbed him suddenly as he turned off the TV after watching part of an Elvis Presley concert, and danced round the room, dragging him with her. ‘Aw, Mum!' Darryl had grumbled. ‘Cut it out!'

Now she caught her son's eye and smiled. She looks pretty, Darryl suddenly thought. When they had boarded the plane, working their way down the crowded aisle until they found their seats, a guy in a suit stood up as they arrived beside him, gave Darryl's mother a cheesy grin, and asked, ‘May I help you with that bag?' The man was asleep now, his mouth open. Mrs Davis glanced at him, then at her son, and rolled her eyes.

Darryl grinned and turned to look out the window. There wasn't much to see: a haze of thin white clouds,
and a pale blue far below that, which could be sea or sky or both.

I mustn't keep staring, he told himself. People will guess I've never travelled overseas before.

He hooked his bag towards him from under the seat in front and pulled a book from it.
Deadly Cloud: The History of Nuclear Weapons.
He was reading about them after all. He'd mentioned the TV programme to his social studies teacher, and Mr Reidy had said, ‘Yes, could be useful material for next year. After all, you're going to study History for School Cert, aren't you, Davis?' Then his teacher had smiled. ‘We'll look forward to hearing about your trip. A speech to the class, perhaps?'

Me? Speak to the class? Darryl thought. No way!

He had read the sections on Hiroshima, and on Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb had been dropped. There were photographs of burn victims that he hadn't let his mother see, and there were descriptions of radiation sickness that made him swallow as he read: dark-coloured spots appearing all over victims' bodies; bleeding from ears, nose, mouth; the way they were given pain-killing injections, but their flesh started rotting away from the hole made by the needle.

It all stinks, Darryl told himself. But what would happen if the United States and Great Britain and others didn't have nuclear weapons? The USSR – the Russians – could just invade anytime they wanted.

So could others. ‘Just think of China during the Korean War in the 1950s!' Grandad Davis had said. ‘The thing that stopped them and the other commies was that they knew the Yanks had atomic bombs to use against them.'

Darryl looked at the bookmark he'd stuck between the pages. His father's postcard, with the huge iron-ore truck. He'd grabbed the card just before they left home; he didn't know why. Actually, he did know; he just didn't want to think about it.

Now he was onto the part about nuclear tests by the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1950s. The British had exploded one bomb on an old frigate, just off the northwest coast of Australia. (Australia! He hadn't known that.) It was a ‘small' bomb, just a quarter of the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The frigate was vapourised and dead fish were found floating on the surface eighty kilometres away.

Then the Americans had detonated a really big bomb on a coral atoll in the Pacific. The whole atoll vanished, leaving a gaping hole in the seabed. After another American test at Bikini – a place called Bikini: how weird! – radioactive fallout was reported as far away as—

His mother was saying something, pointing out the window. Darryl looked, then looked harder. The blue was clearer now. It was sea, all right, and reaching out
into it, so definite that he blinked, was a curve of brown and green. Land. Australia.

The plane curved in over the harbour. Tall buildings rose up towards them. Trees. Dry earth. The glittering sea, with boats moored or crawling across it. A curved white shape slid past below, its roof like shells or sails. ‘The Sydney Opera House,' said Darryl's mother, leaning over his shoulder. ‘Just opened late last year.'

They both exclaimed. A bridge was in view. A huge, arched bridge, with tall towers at each end, and a spider's web of cables and girders between them. The one on his dad's other postcard! Might— Might his father be down there, waiting for them? No, that was kid's stuff. His dad had gone. It was just the two of them now.

They were in Sydney Airport for three hours, until their flight to Tahiti left. They stayed in the terminal. ‘Don't want the plane taking off while we're trying to find the door back in,' his mother told him.

A poster on a newspaper stand read:
RUSSIANS, AMERICANS MAY SIGN AGREEMENT. ‘NUCLEAR MISSILES KEEP FREE WORLD SAFE,' SAYS US PRESIDENT.

As they sat on hard chairs at a hard table and listened
to Australian accents (‘thees weel be a beet better'), Darryl stared through tall windows at a narrow strip of trees and grass outside. Any kangaroos? No. Emus? No. Crocodiles or snakes? No. Thank goodness.

Then something Australian did appear. A small, terrier-type dog trotting along. It stopped and looked through the window at Darryl. Darryl looked back. The dog waved its tail. Darryl waved his hand. He'd met his trip's first foreigner.

The plane to Tahiti was bigger. The voices speaking to them over the intercom were different. They sounded French, Darryl realised.

‘Our aircraft is powered by four turbo-prop engines. It can climb on three, fly on two, and make a controlled descent on just one.'

‘What happens with
no
engines?' Darryl asked his mum. She jabbed him with her elbow.

They powered along the runway, lifted up over busy roads and railway lines. No harbour bridge or opera house this time: after a few seconds they were over the sea, Australia already behind them.

A guy five or six years older than Darryl sat across the aisle. He wore blue jeans and a blue shirt, and looked foreign. He also looked bored, like he flew to
another country every day. Darryl decided he didn't like him.

He gazed down at his own khaki-grey trousers and cream shirt. He wished he had some jeans like the guy across the aisle. How hot was it going to be in Tahiti? And that other island, Mangarora. No, Mangareva. He'd looked it up in the atlas and it was way south of Tahiti, in among a whole lot of other islands. He hadn't realised there were so many of them.

What was he going to do in Tahiti, anyway? His mum would be visiting schools and talking to her groups, and she'd told him he was welcome to come along. Come along to a lot of girls' schools? Darryl had thought: I wouldn't mind. Out loud, he said ‘Hell, no', and his mother laughed.

The meal on this flight was different from the first one. There was fish, and a crisp bread roll, and cheese. It looked French, somehow. ‘Would you like a glass of wine,
monsieur?
' the air hostess asked him, and he didn't know what to say.

‘Go ahead,' his mother grinned. ‘Try it.' It tasted like cough medicine, he decided after three sips; he wished he'd got a Coke instead.

Then he realised his mother was signalling to the air hostess. ‘I think my son would like a Coke.' He said nothing, but felt grateful.

There was a man sitting between them and the
window, so Darryl couldn't see out. It was just ocean all the way to Tahiti now, anyway, and it was starting to get dark outside. This guy was asleep with his mouth open, too. Planes seemed full of men sleeping and showing their fillings.