Soon (14 page)

‘So you can spy on them.'

‘I'm not a gossip columnist. This connection between us is a gift. I want to make a good film, a work of art. Come on, why not?'

‘A gift.'

Weeks's voice went on: ‘It's not political. I'm an artist. I need to do a bit of research on that world. Check my facts. Let's face it, I don't have any money, I don't mix with that kind of people. I want to make portraits of contemporary society. I want to do the rich and powerful as well as the poor. I've got the idea for a kind of modern-day Victorian melodrama. I've been reading a lot of Dickens . . .'

Dickens.
Simon thought about how much Dickens he'd personally read: zero. He said, ‘The Hallwrights? Look at them on YouTube, like a normal stalker. I'm not letting you in anywhere. It's not going to happen.'

Weeks lowered his voice. ‘What about Mereana? Do any of your friends know about her?'

He was dazzled again. The black hole in its circle of light. ‘No. Why would they?'

‘So you wouldn't want me to ask them?'

Simon sat forward. ‘That's a threat. I let you in and you don't spread rumours about me.'

‘I just think we could help each other.'

‘I don't want your help.'

‘I'll just have to go on looking for Mereana by myself.'

Simon stood up. ‘Weeks, I'm not going to do anything for you. Whatever you threaten me with. I will not be talking to you again. Do you understand?'

He limped down the steps. A cat prowled along a fence, somewhere in the distance a siren started up. The car was parked next to a rickety fence, on the other side of which, about ten metres down, was the concrete yard of the house below. All was quiet; there were gardens behind concrete walls, high hedges, a ramshackle garage sagging under the weight of a milkweed vine. He stood listening to the emptiness, the hum of traffic below.

The car had turned into an oven. He started the engine and cranked up the air conditioning. Sweat rolled down his face, his hands were wet. He tried to remember the exact words Weeks had used. The threat in them.

There was a bang, so sudden everything flew out of his mind. Weeks was at the passenger window, he'd banged hard on the glass. Simon writhed. In his fright he'd wrenched himself sideways, and something had popped in his knee.

Weeks was coming around the front of the car.

The pain in the knee was huge; it filled Simon's whole body. Anger flooded him. He stamped the accelerator to pull away. But his sweating hands slipped on the steering wheel, he didn't turn hard enough left and the front right bumper hit Weeks's hip, sending him backwards against the low fence. The fence gave way, his arms flew up in the air and he went over the top of the wall.

Simon braked and got out. He stood waiting for a furious Weeks to scrabble up over the edge, come at him. He was ready.

Silence. Only the cicadas sawing away. He edged forward, looked over, clapped his hand to his mouth. He hobbled along the road, found steps, limped down into the yard. Weeks had fallen ten metres and landed on his head on the concrete.

He looked at the angle of the head and body. Weeks's eyes were open, blood and fluid trickled from his ear and nose. His skull was fractured; he could possibly have survived that. But his neck was broken too.

A phone lay in bits near his hand. Simon put the pieces in his pocket and backed away, looking around at the yard bordered by the windowless back of a house and the high retaining wall Weeks had fallen down. Struggling up the steps he passed an empty garden, a washing line with sheets, a closed back door. A vast stillness seemed to have descended, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the world. His eyes blurred, he floundered, realised he was holding his breath, sucked in air and heard himself let out a moan.

On the street he toiled back to the car, looking at the house above; one side of it was Weeks's, there was no sign of life in the other; the front window had its blinds lowered.

One more look down at Weeks, the grotesque angle of the body, the head squashed sideways. His shoe had come off, exposing a sock and a thin ankle.

He forced himself to climb the steps to Weeks's back deck. It was a peaceful scene: the warm air trapped in the shelter of the house, the summer paddock, the bees climbing and toppling in the dry stalks. Across the hillside, the walking track was deserted. He picked up the two coffee cups. Every step down to the car the pain slowed him but also carried him, forcing him forward when all he wanted was to sink down.

Putting the cups on the passenger seat he drove slowly down the empty street, crossed the main road and entered the grid of the suburbs. He stuck to residential areas, winding his way west as far as he could, avoiding main roads, shopping centres, bus routes. The rows of houses had taken on a toy appearance; the colours looked unreal in the morning glare and he was distracted by the illusion that Karen's car had been at once shortened and heightened, transformed into a Lego-mobile in which he trundled, trundled, with mad toy-town slowness.

Eventually he parked under trees on a road on the edge of an estuary. He pulled himself out of the car, sat on a bench, his sore leg stuck out awkward and stiff, and found himself taking an interest in the speed of the tide creeping in over the mudflats, as if he'd entered a new world in which things taken for granted had assumed powerful significance: speed, colour, sound. There was a noise in his head, the sound the world made as it turned. The mangroves and flax bushes gave off a bright sheen, a heron stood motionless at the water's edge.

There was a hard object in his hip pocket. He pulled out the pieces of phone that had been scattered near Weeks's hand. He slotted in the battery and fitted the back, and when the cracked screen came to life he saw it wasn't Weeks's phone, it was Mereana's.

Banging on the window, the young man had said something. It could have been, ‘Here. Here it is.'

He must have decided to give up Mereana's phone.

Had he fetched it, hurried down the steps after Simon, banged on the window, come around the bonnet towards the driver's side, and offered to hand over the one thing he could hold over Simon as proof?

Simon looked at the gold sheen on the mangroves, the dark purple-brown of the estuarine mud, the pinks, greens and yellows in an oil slick on the slow water. It seemed to him that something was coming writhing up out of the colour, that it was alive.

The Green Lady

Soon, Starfish and the Village Idiot were crossing the forest on their way back to the castle. They were carrying fishing rods.

“Starfish, you poof,” Soon said complacently, “you're a failure at most things, and fishing is one of them.”

Little Starfish ignored him and went back to help the Idiot, who'd got tangled in a creeper. Then they heard hoof-beats, and the Green Lady and her men rode past them, armed and on their way to the castle.

Keeping a wary eye out for the High Priestess Germphobia, they followed her to the castle to see what was going on. But the Green Lady entered into a secret conference and they were told nothing.

Later that evening they heard a rumour from the Bachelor, who was parked in his bed in the courtyard and drinking cocktails with his girlfriends the Cassowaries.

“It has come to me through the grapevine,” the Bachelor said in a languid voice, “that the secret conference concerns your sister, Soon.”

“Her!” Soon said in a scornful voice. He preferred to ignore his sister, the mysterious and beautiful Soonica.

“It seems,” the Bachelor went on, “that Barbie Yah herself has hatched a diabolical plot, and that your sister is involved.”

“Involved? Then let's have her arrested!” Soon cried. “De­tained. Thrown in jail. Or perhaps tortured. What do you think, Vill?”

“Ha ha,” said the Village Idiot.

“That's monstrous,” Starfish said. “Your own sister!”

“You're right. Forget torture. Let's have her executed,” said bloodthirsty Soon.

Starfish said, “What else have you heard, Bachelor?”

The Bachelor lay back on his pillows, drew his satin robe around himself and narrowed his eyes. The menacing Cassowaries hissed softly. Coloured steam rose from the Bachelor's potent cocktail. “The witch Barbie Yah, in cahoots with her henchwoman, the Ort Cloud's Wife, has tried to cast a spell on your sister, to draw her away from us forever. She has had their paid spy put a spell on Soonica, in order to create a door into her dreams. Soonica received a message in a dream to enter the Dark Forest. The Green Lady rode after her and brought her back, but Barbie Yah told Soonica in another dream how to escape. Soonica woke in time and returned to the castle, but she is in danger every time she sleeps. She must not sleep unless she is under lock and key!”

The Bachelor turned to Soon. “The Green Lady will save your sister; I have no doubt of it. But the battle may be difficult. And it will be fought in the world of dreams.”

Johnnie was silent. In the trees, a tui ran through its repertoire of squeaks and trills.

Finally the boy asked, ‘Does the Bachelor have a name?'

Roza considered. ‘He does actually. Now you ask. The Bachelor's full name is Schlong Lovewand. He's the son of another great bachelor, Cock Lovewand.'

‘What's his mum's name?'

‘She's . . . let's see. Mountain Titswoman.'

Simon looked up from his book. Roza went on pushing Johnnie on his swing. Mother and son faced him, with their potent eyes, their identical smiles. The sound of their laughter filled his ears.

From his station, propped and braced with cushions on a chaise longue, he watched the mother and the little boy, now on their knees in the grass hunting for specimens. His leg was tightly bandaged. He'd had an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon who had told him the damage wasn't severe enough to require surgery, at least not at this stage, and had recommended physiotherapy and special exercises, a period of rehabilitation that should improve it.

He hadn't had to invent anything about the injury: he'd described getting out of the car in a hurry, wrenching the knee sideways, the terrible click or pop, the pain. He'd been given strong painkillers; they were effective but at night they made the edges of reality blur; he saw images melting, like photographs set on fire and curling as they burned. Somewhere inside him there was a vibration like the crackle of cicadas, a wall of noise.

Karen was sitting up in bed, hunched over. It was morning, hot sun coming in through the blinds. He put his hand on her warm back.

‘What's wrong?'

She clenched her fists under her chin. ‘Roza's asked Elke to go on their trip to America.'

‘That's nice. She'll love it. If she can fit it in with her studies.'

Recently Elke had, without much enthusiasm or purpose, enrolled for a BA at Auckland University. He wasn't convinced she'd see it through but they'd encouraged her.

‘You'll need a career,' he'd told her. ‘What are you interested in?'

Her vague smiles, her shrugs. ‘Dunno. Like, journalism? The media? Something with animals?'

Karen said, tense, ‘There's more. Roza wants Elke to move in with them. In Auckland.'

He stroked her back automatically; he was partly trying to soothe himself. ‘She's old enough to move away from all of us. We can't control where she goes.'

‘I've devoted myself to Elke. Slaved for her. All that time we spent getting her right when she was little, the sleepless nights, the worry, year after year, while Roza was swanning around being the grand lady, having
abandoned
her. How can she get rid of her own child and then just suddenly decide, OK, I want her back, now it suits me. She'll take her up and then get sick of her, like she's a toy or a puppy. She'll hurt her.'

‘Karen—'

‘How dare she? She sees what a beautiful success I've made of Elke and she thinks, I'll have that. Just decides to take her away.'

‘Elke's grown up; she has to make up her own mind.'

‘Roza's manipulating her, trying to turn her against me.'

‘That's not true. I know it's hard, but they
are
going to have a bond; they're mother and daughter.'

Karen let out a harsh, doomed laugh.

‘Come on. When she adopted Elke out she was so young, she was in confusion, she had the Catholic-zealot depressive mother. Then she had her alcohol problem, and she didn't know where Elke was for years. It's natural she wants to make up for it now.'

‘I could never adopt out my own child. It's sick. Unnatural.'

‘Ah, you don't know what you'd do.'

‘You think I'm competitive. You think I want to “own” Elke. But I can tell that woman will hurt her. What hurts her hurts
me
.'

He pulled her down to the bed, hugged her, stroked her hair. ‘There comes a point where you have to let go, let nature take its course.' She didn't answer, only looked bitter. ‘Anyway, look at the way Roza is with Johnnie. She wouldn't hurt
him
.'

Karen waved her hand, dismissive. ‘That little boy is exactly like David. Nothing could hurt him.'

‘Really?' Simon was distracted by this.

‘And no, Roza wouldn't hurt Johnnie, he's completely her creature. He's like her creation. The way they talk and talk together, always the secrets and private jokes; the kid is unnatural. What is he, four? The
vocabulary
he has already, like an adult. They're like a witch and her familiar.'

‘A witch.'

‘But Elke's been mine, so Roza thinks she's
tainted
. She thinks she's got to get her back and purify her, make her into her own again, like Johnnie.'

‘Tainted? This is starting to sound quite mad, Karen.'

She pushed him away. ‘You don't know because you're a man and a doctor, you're utterly unimaginative. You don't see anything. You've got your secure world, everything up front and straightforward, nothing below the surface. All your medicine and your reason, and half the time you're blind. I sense things. The world is more animal than you think.'

He felt the noise in his head rising. ‘We need to be rational. And if we can't, we should invent an excuse and go home.'

‘No.'

‘But if Roza knows you're thinking all this it's hopeless, we can't stay here.'

Karen smiled. ‘Roza? She doesn't know what I think. Roza loves me. She thinks I'm simple and easygoing and we're best friends.'

Simon stared. ‘I see. And . . . David?'

‘David and I have a bond. We understand each other.'

‘So, the other night . . .'

‘When he and I were talking and you came barging down? It was so obvious you were jealous.'

Simon thought for a moment. He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. ‘Darling, I understand what you're saying. But these are complicated people we're dealing with. Do you think you can keep your thoughts to yourself while we're here? There's just a faint possibility that you — or I, of course — might get some signals wrong. Misjudge things. And we have to think of Elke. We wouldn't want to ruin what we've got with the Hallwrights just because we've misunderstood.'

She groaned. ‘Don't patronise me. I can't stand it. You have no idea about people. You're all science. With human beings, two plus two does not always equal four.' She lay back, inspected her nails. ‘Poor David.'

‘David can look after himself.'

‘Oh sure, in politics. But dealing with Roza.'

Simon thought, David is the only person around whom Roza is just slightly uncertain.

‘I'm sure David'll be fine. Meanwhile, there's Ed Miles to watch out for. And I wouldn't confide in Juliet. Since she's an open book and Ed reads minds.'

She sighed. ‘I told Elke I didn't want her to move out.'

‘What did she say?'

‘She just hugged me, very sweet, very dreamy. She never says anything.'

Simon fixed his eyes on her. ‘David's got attached to Elke too, because she looks like Johnnie.'

‘Oh.'

‘Not that you'd be jealous of David.'

She looked up quickly. ‘David's influence is good for Elke.'

Their eyes locked. It felt like something was twisting in his chest. He squeezed her shoulder, got dressed and went out before he could say anything he would regret.

He walked slowly under the pohutukawa trees, across the lawns where Trent and Shane were browsing over the hedges with clippers. He skirted past the dancing lawn-sprinklers and took the broad shell path to the seaward side of the Wedding Cake where David, wearing a tight Lycra shirt and a towel around his neck, sipped from a glass of dark green fluid. Below the deck Dwayne and the new guy Chad stood hands on hips, silently contemplating a flower bed.

David raised his glass. ‘You're late.'

Simon sat down with the usual pleasure that he'd been expected and waited for. He hadn't got over the thrill that he was the only one at Rotokauri who was invited to join David for breakfast. Roza and Johnnie slept late and Simon and David met early each morning like a couple of lovers, with their shower-wet hair and their yawns and their occasional sleepy exchanges about what was in the newspaper — they were provided with one each — or the weather, or what had been said by whom at dinner the night before. Simon felt chosen. It was partly excited vanity — he, the son of loser Aaron, picked out to be friend of the country's top man — and partly affection for David, who could be charming and confiding in the mornings, bleary-eyed, relaxed, talking blokeishly or even crudely about women, asking Simon's opinion of politicians and staffers, sometimes describing a recent altercation, grabbing Simon's arm, working himself up: ‘You wait. I'll get him. I'll fuck him up.'

Now he said, ‘Try this shit Dean's got me on. It's seaweed. Fucking disgusting but makes you live forever. And I'm supposed to have lean protein and no butter or cheese. And guess what. We've just been for a run. Right to the end of the beach.'

Simon nodded, sliding into his seat.

David signalled to Troy. ‘Bring Simon some of this green stuff. And what else? Your usual?'

Troy received his instructions and glided away.

‘It's going well with the training then?' Simon spoke politely, with correctness; he was naturally reticent, careful.

‘I'll have a body like iron.'

Simon's eye fell on the vivid blur of colours in the flower bed. Still hazy from last night's pain pills he murmured, ‘It's already bothering me that I can't run. With the knee.'

‘It'll get better. Try this.' Solicitous, David handed him a glass of liquid seaweed.

He sipped. ‘Mm. Yuk. Vile.'

‘Swill it down.' David rustled the newspaper, raised it, and the headline appeared in front of Simon:
Mt Eden Death Investigated
.

Whipping the paper away, David said, ‘Vince Buckley's got his publicity about suicides. What an arsehole. I'll laugh if the suicide rate goes up. Sudden waves of jumpers and wrist-slashers.'

Simon smiled thinly. David shook the paper up again. ‘Cahane's tax working group's about to report. They'll recommend something radical and we'll act moderate, go for the middle ground. It's Cahane's method, sort of like good cop–bad cop, isn't it. Drink your seaweed.'

The article bobbed in front of Simon:
The man found dead in a suburban back yard on Wednesday was local journalist and film-maker Arthur Weeks
.

They would see that Weeks had fallen over the retaining wall, but would they realise he'd been pushed by a car? There'd surely be a bruise on his leg or hip. Maybe there were tyre marks on the road, maybe someone had seen the whole thing: an old lady high in the house next to Weeks's, hiding behind her curtains, telling her story when the police came knocking.

Simon drained his glass. His stomach was full of ice. Troy arrived with plates, scrambled eggs for Simon, poached for David. Below, Dwayne worked his way round the edge of the flower bed. Chad followed, intent, a plastic pack strapped to his back, a thin hose spiralling out of it. He stooped and sprayed, little rainbows dancing in the drops of liquid.