Soon (4 page)

‘Mm. Best not to bandy that notion about. Brilliant women are butch.'

‘He just thinks they have more masculine personalities. As in, they don't love shopping, and they don't stab each other in the back all the time, and they don't endlessly discuss shoes
.
'

‘Do you think he's right?'

‘I think he's just an old-fashioned sexist, probably.'

‘Probably?' Roza laughed.

‘Look,' Simon said. He parted the leaves and showed her what had caught his eye — a vivid green gecko sunning itself in the ti tree.

‘It's beautiful! Catch it.'

But the lizard ran down the trunk and disappeared.

They walked on. Roza said, ‘Is it possible that relationships, marriages, are better if the couple don't completely understand each other? Is it off-putting, knowing someone too well?'

He wanted to say, fervently, no. To the contrary. But he only answered, ‘That's another way of saying opposites attract.'

Roza went on, ‘People say they just want someone who understands them. But I think, be careful with that. You might be better off with someone who doesn't.'

He was silent.

She said, ‘Don't look so serious!'

His smile was pained. ‘You're a brilliant woman, Mrs Hallwright.'

‘But I have hundreds of pairs of shoes, and I love to shop.'

‘Only proving our Peter wrong.'

‘Although, I'm no back-stabber.'

‘No. You simply mow people down from the front.'

They carried on walking and talking, although Simon suddenly felt he had rather a lot on his mind.

At the crossroads, Ray stood scuffing his feet on the grass verge and talking on his phone.

Simon lowered his voice, ‘I suppose you feel you're never alone.'

She sighed, ‘It's possible to feel one's
always
alone. Even in a crowd. Don't you think?' She added, ‘Although it never seems like that when I'm with you.'

He had an immediate sense of happiness. His legs ached pleasantly, the colours were beautiful, the light was intense, and he was walking along the sunny road with Roza.

Make Soon Talk

Karen said, ‘How was the lake?'

‘It was nice. Hot.'

His cell phone rang. It was a young man's voice, polite, well-spoken.

‘Hello, Dr Lampton, my name's Arthur Weeks. I was hoping I could speak to you — it's about a friend of mine I think you might know: Mereana Kostas?'

Simon looked at a patch of light on the wall above Karen's head.

‘Hello? Dr Lampton?'

‘You must have the wrong number.'

‘You're Simon Lampton? I'm just looking for some information—'

‘Sorry. Don't know the name. Can't help you. Thanks.' He hung up.

Karen looked up. ‘Where are you going
now
?'

He paused at the door. ‘Swim.'

‘God you're hyperactive. Don't you want a rest?'

‘I'm hot. I'll just fall in and get wet.'

He pretended to dawdle off down the path, although he felt like breaking into a run. It was years since he'd last seen Mereana. He didn't know where she was, but he was sure she was gone for good, and as far as he knew no one could link his name with hers. Who was this Arthur Weeks? Who?

Heading for the beach, he met Roza coming down from the main house. She said, ‘I'm going to take Johnnie for a swim. Want to come?'

They found the boy in the upper garden, being pushed on a swing. Roza took charge of him. ‘Look at your hair, all on end. And your nose is sunburnt. Pool or beach?'

He ducked away. ‘Pool.'

The nanny, Tuleimoka, went to the house and came back with a bag containing towels, sun lotion and goggles. She said, in her ceremonious way, ‘Mrs Hallwright, here is his gear.' She pronounced it ‘kea'. Tuleimoka Faleuka was a tall, stately Niuean. Simon liked her beautiful voice and her accent: ‘fitteo' for ‘video', ‘tala' for ‘dollar', ‘Cray Lynn' for ‘Grey Lynn'. She'd decided Johnnie was running wild and needed to be taken in hand; consequently Roza, who was inclined to be permissive, spent a lot of time trying to get rid of her.

‘Thank you, Tulei. You can go and . . . see what Jung Ha's doing for his dinner. And after that, we might be back, or we might go for a last walk on the beach or . . .'

‘Mrs Hallwright?'

‘Oh, I don't know where we'll be really. We'll come and find you.'

Johnnie took his mother's hand and they walked through the grounds.

‘Make Soon talk,' he said.

‘No, Simon's here, we have to talk to him.'

‘Make Soon talk!'

‘Don't mind me,' Simon said.

‘Oh, all right. Let's see, then. Phew, it's still hot.'

Roza put on a pair of oversized, movie-star sunglasses, and they walked slowly along the path. She cleared her throat.

One morning Soon and the Village Idiot were on their way to the Idiots' Village, where a ceremony was being held in honour of the Village Idiots' God, the Great Wedgie. But they hadn't got far when Starfish came panting up behind them.

“Come quickly,” Starfish said. “Everyone's assembling in the castle. The Green Lady has arrived with news.”

“Go away, Starfish,” said Soon. “You're a poof.” Studious Starfish was carrying two of his textbooks and Soon knocked one out of his hand into the mud and laughed, but Starfish ignored him and they went on.

Roza stopped to cram on Johnnie's hat. They took the path through the flower beds.

Starfish said, “Soon, you're monstrous, but it's because you're deranged from a bad upbringing. Your mother, Mrs Soon, was a monster too.”

In the clearing they found a crowd assembled: the Green Lady and her soldiers; the Weta; the Praying Mantis; the two wise men, Tiny Ancient Yellow Cousin So-on and the Red Herring; and, from over the treetops, came the Bachelor flying in his bed, with his girlfriends the Cassowaries on board, ruffling their feathers and hissing angrily.

The Bachelor landed his bed and said suavely to the Green Lady, “Dear Lady, you look ravishing. Come and sit on my bed.” The Cassowaries nearly hissed themselves to death with jealousy but the Green Lady, who always resisted the Bachelor's charms and often had to call her men to shoot at him when he hovered in his bed outside her castle, thanked him coolly and said she would remain on her horse. At which point the Red Herring was heard to observe, “It is always darkest before the dawn
”
, and his colleague, Tiny Ancient Yellow Cousin So-on, sagely agreed . . .

‘. . . Johnnie, don't pull the heads off the flowers.' Roza looked at Simon. ‘Sorry.'

‘No problem,' he said, his mind on the stranger who'd called. Week? Weeks? How had he . . .?

“I have received a message from the Universe,” the Green Lady said. “We are to expect a visit from the Ort Cloud, who has been having fresh trouble with his Wife.” The Ort Cloud's Wife was said to be in league with the evil Barbie Yah herself. She was, like the Ort Cloud, vast and purple, with luminous eyes, but where his eyes were wise and steady, hers were boiling and ferocious. When the Ort Cloud and his wife fought, the turmoil in the Universe was truly terrible . . .

Simon undid the pool gate and stepped back to let them through.

‘Keep going,' Johnnie said.

‘Right. In you get.'

‘'S cold.'

‘Only at first.'

Johnnie launched himself off the concrete edge and into the deep water.

Roza arranged her towel. ‘God, Soon. I have to make him talk morning, noon and night. I say, “Can't we just be Mummy and Johnnie for a while?” But no, he wants Soon.'

Simon was reluctantly familiar with Soon. Soon behaved appallingly towards his adoptive brother Starfish (who was a starfish); Soon was rude, foul-mouthed, unwashed, sly, wicked and a liar, while Starfish was studious, well-behaved, kind and endlessly shocked by Soon's behaviour. Soon never missed a chance to have Starfish blamed for his crimes. Soon wore armour, was always bristling with weaponry and dreamed of being a warrior, but was thwarted by the fact that he was only three inches tall. The story was being told by ‘Mrs Hallwright', who produced the story in her Boardroom. Sometimes, in a postmodern interlude, Mrs Hallwright and Johnnie had disputes in the Boardroom over plot developments, and Mrs Hallwright would become menacing if Johnnie argued too strongly, and would mutter, ‘The boy grows cocky.' There was a ban on technology in the plot, and if Johnnie wanted to insert a computer or other modern device he would be pursued by the Technology Police, who would arrive in the story to arrest him. Whenever Soon banged his head, he would turn into the hippy Dandelions, and preach peace and love until his head cleared and he became bloodthirsty Soon again; but in a recent episode, when Tuleimoka was at the dentist and Roza had made Soon talk for three hours, there had been a rent in the Universe and Soon had been trapped between selves: half Soon, half Dandelions. And so on.

Roza didn't make Soon talk in front of David; she said it would drive him insane. Simon tried to feel flattered, but he sometimes wished Soon would shut up. He had to content himself with the sound of Roza's voice, and Soon's, and Starfish's, and the rest of ‘the friends'. Roza had recently added another group, the Guatemalans, tiny people who lived in Soon and Starfish's room and were violently excitable, discharging their shotguns at the slightest provocation. Recently Simon had endured an episode in which the Bachelor had taken up poetry and had held a reading, at which his girlfriends the Cassowaries had adoringly applauded, the Green Lady had laughed (many of the poems were dedicated to her) and the Guatemalans had become outraged and shot down the poems with their guns.

Johnnie was a subtle and verbally acute child. He had every plot detail in his head and exhausted Roza with his appetite, but she hated to disappoint him, and the boy knew exactly how to goad her with a mixture of charm, persistence and nagging, so she wore herself out giving voice to a three-inch, comically violent, obnoxious dwarf.

——

Johnnie climbed the ladder, trotted along the concrete and threw himself into the water again. The sun had moved across the sky; the flower beds beyond the pool were drained of colour in the powerful light and the gardener, moving slowly along the top of the hedge with his clippers, sent flashes off the metal of his blades.

‘It's as if you've given him siblings,' Simon said. ‘When he takes Soon and Starfish in hand and orders them around, it's like he's learning how to deal with younger brothers.'

Roza said, ‘I suppose I should have another child. David'd like to.' She got up and paced along the edge of the pool. Johnnie called out but she ignored him and said, ‘Do you ever have the feeling you're trying to work out
how
to live?'

He thought about it. ‘Do you mean, working out a way to live that's bearable?'

‘That's exactly what I mean. I suppose it's to do with having been a disgraceful addict. Now I'm sober and go to my meetings, the question is how to live. Before, I was trying
not
to live.'

‘Do you still feel like that? It's been a long time.'

She stopped and looked intently at him. ‘They say I'll always feel like that.'

‘Oh yes, I suppose so. Once an addict . . . etcetera.'

‘There's so much to drive you crazy in life — I mean, having to spend time with Juliet. I want to tie her to a pole under the noonday sun and leave her to cook.'

‘Goodness.'

‘Stake her out on the beach and leave her to fry.'

‘Roza!'

‘Mum, watch!' Johnnie shouted.

‘Well done darling, good dive. And then there's Ed Miles — I feel him sidling around me. That's what he does, he comes up beside you and never looks at you directly, but he says something that gives you a chill, because it tells you he's watching. Ed can sniff out anything. He was the perfect choice for Minister of Police.' She crossed her fingers. ‘He and David have been
like that
from the beginning; he was the one who encouraged David to go into politics, before Graeme Ellison did. He just lives for David. It's almost creepy. He doesn't care about anyone else. Especially not Juliet,' she added. ‘He's appalling to her.'

‘He does have rather X-ray eyes.'

‘It used to make me so anxious, that I'd ended up married to this huge entity, the party. I felt they were all spying on me. I stopped trusting David. I thought if I threatened his chances he'd be ruthless. But he was tied to me; he couldn't get rid of me. And when I'd realised he needed me, we reached a balance.'

She was in an unusually frank mood. Simon didn't want to put her off, and only nodded. Johnnie shouted again, but she went on.

‘Have you noticed the way David shows disfavour? He doesn't say anything direct; it's always something subtle, like suddenly using someone's proper name instead of the usual nickname, or leaving them out of a meeting, or seating them a long way away. He gives them the frost, and then some sanction or demotion — or it just turns out to have been a warning. When the signals are subtle like that it keeps people on edge. They watch him; they're straining all the time to read him.'

Simon hesitated. He was David's guest, and he sensed Roza wouldn't welcome criticism, no matter how freely she talked.

He said, ‘He's not like that with me.'

‘No, because you're not part of the team. You're family. No need for terror tactics with you. Besides, have you noticed how much he likes you?'

Simon hid his pleasure. ‘I hope he does.'

‘There's one particular thing about you. You're so articulate, you sound terribly educated. David loves that. He wishes he could sound like you.'

‘Really?'

‘Mm. Mind you, I love the way he talks. It's the only thing about him that's innocent.' She frowned, considering. ‘He's really taken to Elke.'

‘Oh. Yes. That's nice.' He looked away.

‘He's quite delighted that Elke and Johnnie are so alike. It makes him feel as if she's related to him, because she's related to his son. Blended families are complicated, aren't they? It's strange to think someone can be related to your son but not to
you
. It's sort of counter-intuitive. So he feels a bit like her father now.'

‘She's quite spoiled for fathers.'

‘He could never replace you,' she said quickly. ‘He just feels warm towards her. You know, protective, like he feels about Johnnie. And the other kids.'

Simon said, ‘Blended families, yes, they're complicated. When I met you I had a strange feeling I loved you, because I already loved Elke. You reminded me of her, before I knew you were her mother.'

‘So you felt like I was family.'

In a way, he thought. I felt like you were the mother of my child. And there were some specific rights I was missing out on . . .

‘That's a funny face you're making.'

But she was talking to the boy, who'd tired of her ignoring him, and had a mouth full of water ready to squirt her.

‘Don't you dare . . . oh, you horrible brat. Monstrous child. Mummy will have to
beat
and
slap
you.'

Simon thought, Everything she says to the child is satirical. She is endlessly playing a game. Does she play like that with me?

He sat in the afternoon sun watching her, the mother of the child that was his, the mother of the child that was not.