Settlers' Creek (11 page)

Box knew that Dee was wrong. Her philosophy worked okay with young love. But there was no way that what had happened to Mark — what he’d done to himself — was going to work out for the best. He was gone for good. Something fundamental had been dropped and had shattered in the lives of the people who were left. It could never be glued back together.

Box raised his cup to his mouth. He could smell the tang of the leaves. Dee liked it industrial strength. Sure enough, when he took a sip it was as bitter as witches’ spit.

‘Have you got any sugar?’

His grandmother frowned. For a woman who added white sugar to fruit by the truckload, Dee was surprisingly puritanical when it came to her tea. She went to a cupboard and returned with a china sugar bowl. Box dropped two full teaspoons into his cup.

‘How are you really, Box?’

He thought about fudging the question a second time. ‘Numb, I guess. We’re keeping busy organising things.’

‘That will probably help for a while.’

‘People have been calling at the house. We’ve got more muffins and scones than most cafés.’

‘Something like this brings out the best, reminds people that there are still bonds after all.’

Dee stood abruptly, holding her cup. ‘Come into the singing room, Box. There’s something I want you to look at.’

‘Okay.’

Balancing his own cup on the saucer, Box followed her out of the sunlit kitchen into the darker interior of the house.

The room at the front of the house, on the left-hand side, was called the singing room because of his great-grandmother’s piano, which still sat in the corner. It was a testament to the size of the room that the grand piano didn’t seem to crowd out the rest of the furniture. That was partly because, like the rest of the house, the room had a twelve-foot stud. The huge fireplace was made out of blocks of soft volcanic rock quarried from the cliffs near the port. The floor was made of the same wide planks of rimu as the kitchen, except in here it was mostly covered in rugs. They overlapped and clashed in colour and swirling design: more of Dee’s bargains, mixed up with rugs that had been in the house since it was built.

The singing room was also where Dee kept the bulk of her books. When she wasn’t dealing to the fruit, Dee was reading. There were books scattered all over the room. They jostled against each other in the shelves where they were placed both horizontally and perpendicularly. There were books congregating in uneven piles along the skirting, on the wide windowsills and on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. Books nestled into the cushions on the couch like jagged cats.

Box crossed to the piano and finger-tapped out three notes. He didn’t play and neither did Dee, beyond chopsticks. Pop had, though. Pop’s mother, Box’s great-grandmother, had
taught him at this same piano. It had been part of Box’s childhood that piano music had often drifted about the house. It could be heard at odd hours, early morning, or late at night as Box lay in bed while his thoughts drifted in the roaming meditation that came right before sleep. In summer when the big sash windows were pushed up, Pop’s playing had spilled out onto the lawn, sometimes floating down as far as the glasshouses or the dog-leg bend in the creek.

Paul had tried to learn to play for a while in his early teens. With Pop’s calm instruction he’d achieved a certain level of proficiency. But Paul had no passion for it and had one day just stopped requesting lessons. After a while his skills faded. Box had never thought that he had music in him, beyond prodding a finger at the keyboard when no one was around to hear. Mostly he just enjoyed figuring out how the thing worked. A finger exerting pressure
here
raised the lever inside the lid
here
and that caused the taut wires to vibrate
there
. But he’d felt no need at all to learn to play the thing. As a boy he’d known himself well enough to realise that he was happier outside, using his hands, his body, fixing, building something.

Dee had gone over to the mantelpiece. Box watched her take down the big family Bible. She carried it over to the couch, two handed.

‘Come here. Sit down.’

He did as she instructed.

‘Here. Take it.’

The thing sat on his thighs, heavy as a block of sodden wood salvaged from the harbour.

‘I want you to look at this carefully, Box.’

‘I’ve seen it before.’

‘And now you’re going to see it again.’

There was a heavy copper clasp, streaky green along the edges. Dee leaned over him and flicked it up. She opened the Bible to the first page. Despite the heaviness of the book the pages were thin and smelt dry and dusty.

Box knew the story. The Bible had come to this country with the original Saxton, who’d left England with his wife in something like the mid-eighteen hundreds. Right now, Box couldn’t remember the exact date or the man’s first name. So, he was a little hazy on the details.

Box turned the pages slowly, feigning interest, wondering why Dee was wasting time showing him this again, now of all times. Dee leaned across him. Her sweet stewed smell wafting over him again.

‘No, turn back. Yes, there. Pop’s great-grandfather, Augustus. He came out in 1849. Grew up in Surrey but sailed halfway round the world to get here on a ship called the
Getty
.’

Box strained his eyes in the meagre light coming from the tall windows. The handwriting was small and tight and to Box’s eye completely illegible. Dee must have studied it carefully because she didn’t need to look at the page as she spoke. Originally, the first two dozen pages had been blank but over the years they had been filled with family names. There was no orderly family tree, though. Instead, each descendant of that original settler, Augustus, every generation and each family, had staked out a space on the pages, pushing and elbow-jostling for enough room to reinforce their existence. Box was looking at them now, the Bible lying heavy on his lap.

The names were scrawled down as children were born. Or as people died — from accidents or disease or from
good old-fashioned ageing. There were additions and comments around the edges of each page in ink that was darker or lighter than the rest, and in a multitude of handwriting styles ranging from large and looping to small, indecipherable chicken scratchings.

‘His full name is written down there as Augustus Edward Saxton. His young wife died in childbirth during the trip. Wife and child were buried at sea.’

‘I know this, Dee. You used to tell us about this stuff when Paul and I were kids.’

‘Just listen, will you, Box. Stop trying to be the boss.’

‘I’m not.’

She sighed like a kid acting in a school play. ‘Just look here.’

Dee reached down beside the chair and pulled out a plastic supermarket bag that she’d obviously had waiting. She opened it and took out a shuffle of sepia photographs. Some were originals that Box had seen before, but several were printed out on new photographic paper.

‘Where did you get all these?’

‘I’ve been spending a lot of time doing research on the Saxtons, and on this place. I joined a genealogical society. It’s amazing what you can find out online.’

‘Online?’

‘Ian Jenkins has been letting me use the school library’s computer. They’ve got broadband.’

The idea of Dee surfing the net made Box shake his head in amazement, wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told him she’d taken up pole-vaulting. He couldn’t imagine those sun-damaged old hands, so rooted in the practical business of the house and the land, manipulating a keyboard, or wrapped over a computer mouse.

‘Why?’

She didn’t answer him but took a photograph from the top of the pile and held it out to him. ‘This is Augustus, here.’

Augustus stood for the camera, bristle-bearded and stiff as a broom handle. He looked to Box as though he’d rather be anywhere else but in the photographer’s studio. Box assumed that the dark suit Augustus was wearing was his best outfit — probably the same suit he had been married in. He may even have been buried in the thing. Despite the gorse-bush beard, Box guessed that the man in the photograph was only in his mid-twenties. As far as Box could see there was no family resemblance — not to him or Paul, certainly not to Pop.

Dee was still talking, close to lecturing him now. He wished she’d get to the point. ‘There’s no photo of the first wife, the one who died during the voyage. There’s just the name Helen. It says right there, though, near the top of the page, that he married again less than two years after he arrived. This time to a woman called Jessie Wells, who was the youngest daughter of the butcher in the port. Augustus was only twenty-three then. That age and already living on the far side of the world from his family, a widower and twice married. These days that bears a lot of thinking about.’

No, thought Box, nineteen and already dead. That’s what bears a lot of thinking about. He suddenly felt irritated by the old woman’s insistence that he sit and listen to her wittering on about her new hobby. He’d come here for — his thoughts stumbled — for something. But whatever it was it sure as hell wasn’t a history lesson. He put the photo down on the couch.

‘Why are you showing me this, Dee?’ His voice sounded hard even to his own ears.

The old woman twisted so that she was facing him. ‘Why don’t you and Liz and Heather move over here, to the bay? Come to Whitecliffs.’

Box was already shaking his head, pulling himself up from the couch even before she’d finished speaking.

‘No.’

‘Box.’

‘Jesus, Dee!’ He took a deep breath, started again. ‘Now’s not the time to talk about this. Mark’s only a day dead.’

‘I think it’s exactly the time.’

‘Dee.’

‘What better time to think about your family’s future?’

‘We’re fine where we are.’

‘Rubbish. You’re drifting, Box. I want you to listen to me.’

‘That’s what I’m doing, I’m listening.’

‘I’ve been watching you, Box. The last few years have changed you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Moving back here would do you good, especially now.’

‘No.’

‘If you don’t take over then when I die the land will just be sold.’

‘You’re not going to die.’

‘Well then, I’ll be the first.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re as healthy as a goat.’

‘One day this place will be sold and all you’ll be left with is money.’

‘Actually, I could use the cash right now.’

‘I’m talking about your roots here, Box. Money comes and goes.’

‘Tell that to my creditors.’

‘There have been four generations of Saxtons living in the bay, three of them in this house. I don’t care if you’re the richest person in the world, money can’t buy that type of connection to a place.’

Box moved away from Dee. Her voice had become claustrophobic. Sitting on the couch surrounded by her exhibits of photographs and family names was more than he could take right now. He walked away from her and stood by the fireplace with the huge cantilevered mantelpiece that appeared, like a magician’s trick, to hang unsupported. He ran his hand over the almost-pink stone, so soft that a residue of chalky grit appeared on his fingers. He decided to resort to logic.

‘I couldn’t make a go of the land, Dee. You know there’s no money in tomatoes anymore, not on this scale.’

‘Who said tomatoes? Up the road there’s a plant nursery on less land than this. They sell hostas over the internet. And the Hillarys grow cut flowers for the supermarkets in glasshouses
half
the size of the ones we’ve got sitting empty here. Other people in the bay are experimenting with asparagus, figs, even chestnuts.’

Box tried to imagine himself walking between rows of snowy gypsophila or harvesting ripe spongy figs. He shook his head. ‘No, Dee. Paul would’ve done it but not me.’

‘Well, Paul’s not here, is he?’

‘No, he’s not!’ He was shouting at her.

Dee slumped back onto the couch. She seemed to shrink.

‘Sorry,’ said Box.

‘If you let the land go then I know who’s going to buy it, some developer.’

Box didn’t even bother trying to tell her that she was
wrong. When the banks eased up their panicked stranglehold on credit, and interest rates went back to reasonable levels, then those developers who were still standing would be trampling all over each other for a slice of this place. Christ, back when he’d been building houses for profit he might have thought about it himself. Whitecliffs was fifteen hectares, gently sloping, sea views, good sun. It was a developer’s wet dream.

He knew exactly how you’d do it. A savvy operator would put up a gate and call it a
community,
rather than a development; a refuge for the seriously rich to come back to after a day working in the city. Forty-five minutes driving over the hill in a Range Rover with heated seats wasn’t exactly a hardship. When it was sold, Whitecliffs didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being worked as a market garden.

‘I’m sorry, Dee, but I’ve got to get going. I said I’d meet the minister up at the church soon.’ Not all of it was a lie, just the soon part.

‘I need you to think about coming back here to live, Box.’

‘Sure. I will.’

But he was just humouring her now. He had no picture of himself living here, making a living off the land. And right now he didn’t have the emotional reserves to try and figure out why not. He just knew he needed to keep his mind focused on the present, the practical; on the surface of things. Even if that surface was crumbling.

Dee struggled up out of the low couch. She tried to give him the Bible, holding it out to him with both hands.

‘I want you to take this with you. Have a good look at it.’

He knew it was pointless arguing, not when Dee had that look going. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

She followed him out to the ute. As he stood in the driveway, the sunlight felt good on Box’s face and on the backs of his hands. He hugged Dee with one hand, the heavy Bible tucked up under the other arm. When she finally released her grip on him he was forced to look away from her ravaged face.

Box edged himself in behind the wheel. The Bible sat next to him, solid as a concrete block, on the passenger seat. He wound down the window.