Soon (3 page)

Simon thought, what was wrong . . . Lately, he'd sometimes had the primitive urge to grab his adopted daughter and shoo her out of the room. Sometimes he could understand the point (just not the justice) of a burqa.

What was wrong was that the compound was full of men. They looked at Elke's mother as much as they dared, which wasn't much. And then their gaze turned.

She was eighteen and the compound was full of men. And none of them was her real father.

Coffee and dessert wine were served on the deck. David took Roza's arm and said something quiet in her ear and she laughed and turned to Elke.

‘Come up to our room for a minute,' she said to the girl. ‘I want to give you something.'

They went inside.

‘Look,' Karen said, and they admired the moon, round and silver, coming up behind the rocky island out by the point. And soon there was a waving pathway of light across the water and the sky above it was studded with pinpricks of light. Out here on a clear night you could see the satellites, just like stars except they moved briskly across the sky.

Simon watched a security guard pacing slowly around the swimming pool. Juliet was saying, ‘But Ed. I wore the zinc and the hat. I stayed under the trees. And look, I'm peeling everywhere.'

It was time to pick up Marcus. He crossed the grounds, heading for the Little House. Looking back he saw Roza and Elke sitting on an upstairs deck, talking.

He drove along the coast before taking the road that turned inland, winding uphill through dense bush, towards the other side of the peninsula. Possums appeared on the road, their round eyes fixed on the lights, and he slowed and tooted, waiting for them to veer away into the dark.

On the other side of the hill the bush cleared and he could look down on the lights of the settlement below. He drove down onto the coast and headed for the marina. As soon as he turned into the road he could hear music. Gibson's house was lit up, its glass panels glowing like a jukebox and vibrating with crazy sound.

Simon stopped to look at Gibson's boat. He leaned over the rail, drew back then looked again. It was a novel sight, down there on the lower deck — sex from above. A man's bare back and arse, a woman's bare knees and thighs, and one of her feet raised in the air, a white jandal dangling from the toes.

The music was so loud he could feel the bass vibrating in his throat. From somewhere above him there was a scream, a shriek of harsh laughter, the sound of breaking glass. Then a cheer. Then more glass breaking, and a bottle spinning in the air before it exploded on the road.

The door was open. He walked through the foyer and paused at the edge of the open-plan space. At one end of the room middle-aged people were sitting around a coffee table, drinking. On the other side, five teenage boys had stripped to their underpants and were gyrating to the music. Two had climbed onto the kitchen bench. The room was harshly lit and in disarray, with chairs tipped over, food on the floor, a vase broken. On a wall-mounted TV black American rappers mouthed and posed, showing off their guns and their bling.

He asked the teenage boys, where was Marcus Lampton? But they shook their heads and went on dancing. He asked the adults around the coffee table, and they too shook their heads, glazed.

Out by the pool he found only a man and woman kissing exhaustedly in the spa. He passed through a room full of gym machines, a sauna and a home theatre with widescreen and rows of seats. As he climbed the stairs a group of teenagers came thumping down and a girl told him, ‘Marcus is gone. Maybe to Jason's?'

‘Jason who?' But she was sliding past him, her palms upturned.

He looked into an empty room, a television showing a news channel: floods in Queensland, evacuations, snakes and crocodiles in the floodwater. Five people arrested in Copenhagen on suspicion of planning a ‘Mumbai-style' terrorist attack. A magnitude-seven earthquake in Chile. He watched it for a minute or two.

There was a light on at the end of the dark hall. Simon called out, then put his head around the door. On the bed Gibson and a woman were asleep, tangled in a satin cover, their mouths open, breathing harshly. A TV above the bed showed a blank blue screen. Porn DVDs were piled on the bedside table and more strewn on the floor. Beyond, a door was open to an en suite bathroom, its tiles puddled with vomit.

A Burmese cat leapt up onto the bed, twitching its tail. It sniffed and jumped emphatically off again. The smell in the room was foul. The curtains were open; the moon shone on the water and in the distance lights were moving over the dunes.

Simon stood by the bed. The woman groaned and turned, her hair trailing across her face. The rank smell reminded him of his father, Aaron Harris. Aaron had got drunk out of bitterness, because of all he wanted and didn't have. Gibson had
all this
. But here he was, smashed, in ruins.

The woman opened her eyes and stared straight at him. He stepped back, but her eyes were glazed and blank, and she turned and buried her face in the pillow.

He went downstairs, followed by the cat. The couple on the boat were now clothed and sharing a cigarette on a sofa on the upper deck. He called out to them.

‘There's a whole lot of kids on the beach,' the woman said, indifferent and surprisingly sober.

He hurried to the car, imagining bottles spinning in the air above his head. Down at the beach he saw lights moving across the dunes and after a while he could make out a line of kids down at the water's edge, walking through the shallows. He flashed his headlights on and off, and soon Marcus detached himself from the group and jogged up the beach towards him.

Strategy

Simon arrived at the pool with his book and his towel. He had been for a strenuous early morning run to the Kauri Lake, and so it was with a sense of earned luxury that he arranged his gear on the table beside the deck chair and lowered himself down. It was a clear, still, blue day. There was a sheen over the garden and the water made loops of dancing light on the wall of the pool house. Nearby, one of the staff, Trent, had stretched himself out on the hot concrete to reach into a drain while another polo-shirted young man, Shane, stood over him, twirling a net on a long stick.

He applied suntan lotion and put on sunglasses. He couldn't be bothered with his book but lay toasting his aching legs and watching Trent and Shane, intent over their plumbing. A pair of grey herons flapped over the garden, slow and jerkily uneven on their string-puppet wings.

Roza said to Juliet, ‘Maybe some men are attractive
because
they're thick. A big guy with a nice personality and lots of muscles. The sexy thing is that he's not complicated. He's sort of generic. Some men prefer women to be a bit simple. It's a sex thing. It's easier to have sex with someone who doesn't see you too clearly.'

‘Mmm. I suppose.'

They both looked thoughtfully at Trent and Shane.

Her face coated with white zinc, in hat, sunglasses and loose Lycra rash shirt, Juliet left the safe shade of her umbrella and stood at the pool steps, dipping a toe in the water.

Roza touched Simon's shoulder. ‘Good run?'

‘I went to the Kauri Lake. It's beautiful in the valley.'

‘It
is
beautiful. It's eerie too, by the water. The wind makes that sound in the reeds. Almost a moaning. And there are those funny little houses.'

‘We could walk there some time, if you wanted exercise.'

‘I'd like that.'

‘If you got sick of lying here, ogling the help.'

‘Mmm. There's only so much ogling you can do.'

‘Before what?'

‘Before you have to go and work it off, I suppose.'

‘Roza!'

‘What are you two laughing about?' Karen called from the pool. She'd been swimming lengths, and her eyes were underscored with red loops from her goggles. She launched herself backwards without waiting for an answer, floating on her back while Juliet breaststroked gingerly past her, her shirt billowing with trapped air.

‘It's quite nice,' Juliet said doubtfully, adjusting the cap on her orange hair.

Roza tried and failed to get up. ‘Oh, Simon, I'm trapped. Can you . . .' She was lying on her back. ‘Look, my necklace, it's got caught on the fabric. I'm pinned. I'll suffocate.'

She laughed up at him. ‘You'll have to reach behind my neck. Oh, ow!'

He couldn't get at the necklace from behind, because the deck chair had its own little awning over her head. And so he found himself straddling her, a leg on each side of her chair and his hands on her neck, feeling amid the strands of soft hair for the clasp of the necklace while she laughed into his face and his hair. And when he'd finally freed her from the webbed fabric of the deck chair and clambered off her as she sat up smiling and flushed, he turned to face four pairs of steady eyes: Juliet and Karen treading water in the pool, and beyond them Trent and Shane.

‘It was chaos,' he said half an hour later. ‘Huge house, total debauchery. It seemed so nihilistic, I was really struck by it.' He corrected himself, ‘Or, I would have been if I wasn't worried about Marcus.'

‘Nihilistic,' Karen said.

‘He's off.'

‘One of his tangents. Pass the zinc, darling. Look, now my palms are peeling.'

‘It can't have been that bad,' Karen said. ‘He always exaggerates. Harry Gibson's a lovely boy. Peter says his new partner Janine's been amazing with him. She's really brought him on.'

‘Well, his father's a lovely drunk,' Simon said.

‘They'd probably just had a few. Holidays, people want to relax.'

‘He was so relaxed I nearly called an ambulance.' Simon shifted in his deck chair. He was actually very distracted. It was now safe, he felt, to take the towel off his lap. Climbing all over Roza had had a pronounced effect. He'd been obliged to throw himself down on his deck chair, covering his groin.

Roza said, ‘Let's walk to the Kauri Lake.'

‘Oh, that's miles,' Juliet said.

‘It's not that far,' Simon said to Roza.

Juliet sat up. ‘Well, I suppose . . . Do you want to, Karen?'

Simon said, ‘Well, actually, it's
quite
far. And there's not much shade. I did get quite burnt running out there, even in a hat — the glare comes up off the road.'

Karen looked at him.

He said, ‘I think David'll be down soon. He wanted a swim before the Cock turns up.'

‘Haven't you just
run
out to the lake?'

‘Yeah, but you know it's the only thing that keeps me happy, loads of PE. And anyway, we haven't had much exercise for days.'

‘I'd better not,' Juliet decided, arranging her scarves.

‘I'll come,' Karen said.

‘That's the spirit.' Simon was expressionless.

Troy appeared in the gateway between the hedges. A tiny cloud of flies flew up from the grass and glittered in the air above the pool. Roza was gathering her things and shuffling into her pink jandals. She slid on her dark glasses.

‘Here he is.'

David limped around the side of the pool house, wearing baggy board shorts decorated with hibiscus flowers.

‘Hello all. Roza, are you going? Who's going to keep me company? You'll stay here, won't you, Karen?'

Karen said of course she'd stay. She took David's towel and lotion from Troy and arranged them on the table beside his deck chair.

David tossed his shirt to Troy and dived into the pool. They watched the wavering form under the water, frog-kicking through the loops of light. He surfaced with a snort of bubbles, fair hair streaming.

And now Elke came through the gate and stood at the edge of the pool in her striped bikini, one hand on her hip and shading her eyes. She was wearing a necklace Roza had given her the night before. Vague, tentative, she walked to the side and lowered herself to sit with her legs in the water.

Simon remembered when she was eight, back when they'd brought her home for the first time. She had long, slender fingers, thin arms and legs, soft hair. She was always shying away. She still had that elusive quality. But when Roza passed behind her and touched her shoulder Elke leaned her head back and looked at her mother upside down and actually grinned.

Karen called out. ‘Elke. Put on some lotion.'

‘God, Mum, you're obsessed with the sun.' She slid into the pool and sank to the bottom to sit cross-legged on the tiles, her hair waving above her head.

Roza and Simon walked up to the main house. She said, ‘Can you wait while I get changed?'

He sat out on the deck, looking at the sea, with its million points of light. David's elder son Michael was lying on a towel nearby texting, and his sister Izzy walked past, carrying her giant white cat, Suzie. Izzy paused and frowned at her brother.

‘Tulei says you fed Suzie,' she said.

He said, looking at his phone, ‘So what?'

‘But you don't care about Suzie. You've never fed him. He's mine.'

The boy lowered the phone. He smiled. ‘You think Suzie's yours. You think he “loves” you. But it's all just about food. If I fed him all the time, he'd love
me
.'

Izzy stared. Then she walked down the steps and away across the lawn, lugging the cat.

Roza appeared in the doorway. ‘Why did you say that, Michael? She loves that cat.'

The boy rolled over. ‘I just
fed
it.'

‘But why? You don't care about the cat. That's so gratuitous. Telling her it doesn't love her.'

‘I fed it,' he said. ‘Why shouldn't I? Maybe I just felt like being nice to it.'

‘Oh, rubbish.' Roza turned away angrily. ‘Come on, Simon.'

At the gate she was peremptory, refusing when Ray, one of David's staff, said he would go with them.

‘Let's get out of here,' she said, setting off at a furious pace. ‘That Michael. Why think up something like that, just to upset Izzy?'

Simon's legs were aching. He said, ‘You mean he's trying to demonstrate that it only cares about food? He's trying to take over the cat? To show her?'

‘It's so bloody gratuitous. Why shouldn't she believe the cat loves her?'

‘Even though he's right.'

‘Yes, he's right, but why — oh, I don't know, strip her of her illusions? It's nasty.'

He hurried to keep up. ‘What if he really just wanted to feed it? What if he's got fond of it? It's not necessarily a
strategy
.'

She gave him an amused, bitter look. ‘In our household, everything is a strategy.'

They went to the shop to buy drinks. A blonde woman in a tight white dress was bending over a toddler, unwrapping an ice cream.

‘Roza, hi!'

Roza didn't smile. ‘Janine . . . Simon Lampton,' she said, waving her fingers and looking away.

He shook her hand, ‘Hello, we've met. I brought my son to your party.'

She was all smiles, licking ice cream off her thumb, shaking hands. She seemed to have no memory of him standing over her bed.

‘Oh yes, the party.' Roza turned back, with a lilt in her voice. ‘How did that go? It was a wild success, I hear.'

Janine gave the child a complacent pat on the bum. ‘Look, it was just a few quiet drinks. With some really good friends of Peter and I. But the boys get on amazingly well. They had an amazing time, just really chilled out, relaxing by the pool.'

Roza was already moving away.

‘Awesome,' the woman said, and a breeze came up the pavement and lifted her short skirt, and the ice cream paper flew out of her hand. The child ran after it; she shouted, ‘Harrison! Don't go on the road!' and a tall, muscular man stepped forward, catching the ice cream wrapper and putting out an arm to stop the child.

‘Ray,' Roza said. ‘What a surprise. When are you going to stop stalking me? No one's going to bother us here.'

Ray was all amiable forbearance, allowing himself to be waved off, dismissed, charmingly cursed, Roza flapping her hands at him, pretending to hit him with her hat.

They walked on.

‘You like that Ray,' he said after they'd walked for a while.

‘He's all right.' She looked at him, deadpan. They turned inland towards the valley. The wind died away and the bush was still in the heat. The track leading to the Kauri Lake started at a bend in the road and wound away through stands of toetoe, its white plumes waving against the blue sky. As they got further in the path was walled on both sides by ti tree. The only sound was the sawing of the cicadas, but Simon supposed Ray was behind them somewhere.

‘They were completely out of it, in bed,' he was saying. ‘And she opened her eyes and looked straight at me. She obviously doesn't remember.'

‘God. Disgusting,' Roza said.

He ventured, ‘Are there AA meetings around here?'

‘Mm, there's a local group. They meet above the PostShop. I've been going along.' She sighed. ‘It's nice to get away, just by ourselves. The Cock's coming this evening, and I'll have to spend hours with his wife.'

‘What's she like, the Cock's wife?'

‘Not bad, as wives go. I do get sick of them.' She hesitated. ‘Except Karen, of course.'

‘You and Karen have got so close.'

Roza's smile was wide, bland. ‘It's wonderfully lucky we get on so well.'

‘I suppose you talk about Elke a lot.'

‘Not
all
the time. Actually, Karen quite likes talking about David.'

‘Ah.'

They reached the edge of the lake. The water was smooth and glassy, fringed with raupo stalks. Roza ventured along the edge and got into a bog. He gripped her wrist, and her foot came out of the mud with a wet sucking sound. They rinsed off in the lake water and took another branch of the track that led away from the lake and rejoined the road into the valley, passing the row of small houses, where he showed her the skinny white pony. At the far end of the valley, where the hills cast a shadow and the road began to wind upwards, they turned and made their way back.

Roza said, ‘What you said about Peter Gibson's party — I was thinking. There's a mood . . . I suppose it's exhilaration or defiance, what you might feel driving a fast car listening to loud music. That sort of fuck-the-world feeling.'

‘Yes . . . ?'

‘A lot of people don't seem to get into that kind of mood, ever. Even when they're young. Mild little women, say. Or mild little men, for that matter. Maybe it's to do with testosterone. Do some women have more testosterone than others?'

‘Possibly.'

‘Well, that kind of emotion is what got me into trouble in the past. Wanting extremes, wanting to smash myself against the world.'

He considered this. ‘It
is
possible to be a quiet, retiring, mild addict.'

‘I know. I'm just saying
I
got into trouble at first, became an alcoholic, because of that kind of sensation-seeking.'

He said, cautious, ‘I thought you were numbing your . . . distress, over Elke.'

‘Later, maybe. But at first I was just wild. I was an addict before I had Elke; I was born an addict. See, I know how people can change, because when I was young I was a very bad person.'

‘I'm sure you weren't.'

‘I was dishonest. My mother was a bad role model. She was completely cold towards me — hated me. I had to work out for myself how to behave.'

Simon hesitated. ‘You mention testosterone. My colleague Peter Brown thinks genius is related to testosterone. He says very accomplished women have more masculine traits. He told me that over a beer. Privately.'