The Predictions (21 page)

“I meant you,” said Lukas. “I was waiting for
you
.”

“Bullshit,” I said, my head spinning with jet lag, confusion, and months of accumulated sleep deprivation. “You wanted her to come back to bed—not me.”

“Poppy—don’t do this. I don’t even know what day it is.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” I said, getting up from the bed and turning on the bedside lamp. “It’s a Tuesday. You’re in Cologne, you’re fucking your manager, and just so you know, your band is so naff it’s a crime against music.”

Lukas winced. In the light, he looked worse, his lips chapped and skin yellow. He tried to sit up but he was too weak. “Don’t go,” he croaked. “I can explain.”

But I had already gathered up my things, and now I reached into the cot for Zachary. He was in a deep sleep and had been sweating so profusely that even the outermost layer of his clothing was damp. I would change him in the lobby, or in the back of a cab. At the door of the hotel room, I hesitated. Was there any point in reminding Lukas that as a couple we were doomed? Turning to face him for what I imagined to be the last time, I said, “I thought we could outrun it but we can’t.”

Gaialands

1989

W
E CAUGHT THE FERRY
to Coromandel from Auckland, bypassing the roads and landing on the wharf with the fishermen’s catch. It was the beginning of September, that time of year when fierce sunshine can give way to squalls of freezing-cold rain in a matter of minutes. I had been forever removing layers of Zachary’s clothing, then scrambling to put them back on, then taking them off, and so on. More than once, in the middle of one of these absurd costume changes, I had burst into tears, a reminder, in case I needed it, that I was barely holding it together. If anything, the crying jags had gotten worse since we had touched down in New Zealand, as if I had saved it all up until I reached home soil.

We had not dallied long in Auckland, half a day, and disembarking from the ferry in Coromandel, my first thought was that we had traveled back in time. The former gold-rush town, with its gabled storefronts and old-time saloons, had
always been old fashioned. But now, after six years in London, I noticed how dilapidated it was, the once-quaint buildings falling apart and plastered with ugly signs for beer and fishing tackle. Everything was waterlogged, battened down against the weather, and above the settlement the green-black hills glowered with the threat of more rain.

In town, luck was on our side. Huddled in the Four Square supermarket with Zachary, trying to keep dry, I overheard a man in Swanndri and gumboots talking to the store owner about the state of the 309 Road, which he wanted to drive over.

“It’s open,” said the store owner, “but I’d take it easy on the corners if I were you, mate.”

“No worries,” said the man in gumboots. “That sounds about right.”

I asked him if we could get a lift, and when he saw how young my baby was, he insisted on taking us all the way to the gate of Gaialands. He had heard of the commune, and even had a rough idea where it was.

“So it’s still there then?”

“I expect so, love. Coromandel’s the only place left for hippies.”

The man said he was a farmer. He had come to Coromandel to pick up a part for his tractor. He cleared the passenger seat and buckled us in, renegade style, with Zachary strapped across my chest. The only other option would have been to sit in the tray with his dog.

The ute climbed the steep ridge of bush-covered hills that formed the backbone of the Coromandel Peninsula.
The gravel road was wet and slippery, and I wished we could turn back. I hadn’t been in touch with anyone from the commune since we had taken off all those years ago, and my attempt to reach them from London had drawn a blank—no listing, no phone number. I had assumed they’d still be there, but what if they weren’t?

Around the next bend, we came to a section of the road with a bite out of it, where a chunk of asphalt and concrete had crumbled off and washed down the hillside. The stretch of road that remained did not look wide enough to drive over but the farmer kept going, leaning forward in his seat to better see out the windscreen. As we inched along the narrow section of road, I made the mistake of looking down into the crevasse of dripping punga ferns, which ended somewhere far below in darkness and the roaring sound of water.

“Poor buggers in Te Aroha,” said the farmer, wiping his brow once he had safely navigated the cutaway road. “House got washed away—and everyone in it. They found the six-year-old up in a tree. She was all right.”

“And the others?”

“Still missing.”

It was like this every year. Parts of the country took turns being victims of biblical flooding, or in really bad years, flooding and earthquakes. There had been a bad one in the Bay of Plenty while we were away—bad enough to make it to the English newspapers. This year, flooding only. At least the water tanks will be full, we would say.

We made it through the hills, and the landscape flattened out, shaggy fields interspersed with patches of knotty,
unkempt bush. Here and there were clumps of beehives, the drawers painted in pastel colors to attract the bees.

Around another bend was the tiny shop that marked the entrance to Gaialands. At the sight of the wonky letterbox, the swinging wooden sign with its curly hand-painted letters, I nearly cried with relief. It was so familiar, so unchanged, exactly as I hoped it would be. On our way down the bumpy driveway, my heart expanded with anticipation.

We passed the workshop, where a man in silhouette—was it Paul?—tinkered on a tractor engine. He looked up as we drove past, but I couldn’t see his face. The kitchen hut came into view, and a woman was out the back, hanging up washing. When we got closer, I saw it was Katrina. She had hacked off her long, auburn hair, except for a plaited wisp that ran down her back. She scowled at the approaching ute for a moment before her expression changed to one of pure joy.

By the time we had parked by the meetinghouse, in a patch of overgrown dandelions, she was running down to meet us. She pulled open the passenger door of the ute and leaned in.

“Poppy! It
is
you.” She clocked Zachary and squealed with delight. “Oh my goodness! A grandchild!” She reached in and took the baby off me, holding him in the air so she could get a good look at him.

“Katrina, meet Zachary,” I said.

She leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, then changed her mind and went for a full hug, squashing the baby between us. “Come here, girl. It’s so good to see you.”

One by one the adults appeared from the fields, orchards, and outbuildings and gathered in a little group around us. Susie, Hunter, Paul, Sigi, Tom, Loretta—they were all just as delighted to see us as Katrina had been. Zachary was passed around and marveled at, winning each heart with his bashful smile.

I was taken aback by how warm and open they all were, so different from the yuppies we had left behind in London. If they had ever been miffed about us all abandoning the commune, they didn’t show it—just as I was confounded by how pleased I was to be back.

Once Zachary and I had been hugged by everyone and made to feel welcome beyond any doubt, we all went into the mess hut for herbal tea and a slice of the raw date loaf I had been told was cake as a child. It tasted worse than I remembered—a dense log of bark and brown goo.

I had prepared what to say, if they inquired about Lukas, but other than confirming Zachary was his son, they didn’t pry, though there must have been so much they wanted to know. I was surprised to see them all enjoying downtime in the middle of the day—they had always been so busy, so industrious—but they were older now, and there weren’t so many mouths to feed, so it made sense they had slowed down.

Zachary fell asleep on Katrina’s lap. Sitting in the simple mess hut, with its worn wooden floor and wholesome smell of oats, I let go a little, and allowed myself to relax for the first time since he had been born.

I noticed, around this time, that I hadn’t seen Elisabeth.
Of course she might have gone for the day, or been working in an outlying field, but I thought someone would have fetched her by now. And then there was the cake: she never would have made one
that
bad.

“Where’s Elisabeth?” I asked. “Is she away?”

With apprehension, a few of them glanced at Hunter.

“Elisabeth left Gaialands,” he said. “It was not long after the last of you children had gone.”

“She left when we did? But—” I was going to add “But she didn’t even like us,” then stopped myself. “What happened?”

Hunter cleared his throat. “She had her reasons, I’m sure.”

“Your poor father,” said Katrina. “She left without a word. Just packed up and left in the middle of the night. A friend picked her up.”

“Where did she go?”

“We don’t know,” said Loretta. “The city, maybe?”

“The worst of it,” said Tom, “was that she took her bloody recipes with her.” He held up a glob of cake. “No offense, ladies, but the grub round here hasn’t been the same since.”

“Feel free to step into the kitchen,” said Susie, teasing. “There’s plenty of room for one of you buggers.”

“No, no,” said Tom. “I know when to stay out of it. The last thing we need is to burn down the kitchen.”

Everyone laughed, but underneath the friendly banter was a hint of tension that I did not remember being there before. In the old days, the women had known their place, which was in the nursery, laundry, or kitchen, and they had certainly never made jokes above or about their station. Per
haps it wasn’t the women who had changed so much as Hunter. He had once been a bear of a man, fearsome to us kids, but since then he’d shrunk, or had the stuffing knocked out of him, and he seemed less intimidating, docile even. And hadn’t Katrina openly referred to him as my father? That would never have happened before.

Susie patted Hunter’s arm to get his attention. “I wonder if your girlfriend will visit this year?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Hunter. “She’s just a dear friend.”

Susie winked at me. “Just a friend, eh? A dear friend who sleeps in your hut?”

The women laughed heartily, and Hunter stood up, clearing his throat and clumsily gathering up the dishes we had used. He would never have stood for being mocked in days gone by, and I waited for him to give the women a ticking off, but he didn’t. When he had left, Susie leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Ever since Elisabeth left, he’s had annual visits from Shakti. You remember her, don’t you?”

“A little,” I said, though the opposite was true.

“Turns out she isn’t a dyke anymore,” said Susie. “She converted.”

“Now she comes to see Hunter,” said Katrina. “Mostly in the summer but this year she dropped by in the winter too.”

“We reckon she’s trying to get knocked up,” added Susie. “Happens to us all.”

“Even I looked at men twice at that age.” Katrina glanced apologetically at Loretta. “But of course I was happy to use the turkey baster.”

“I should bloody hope so,” said Susie, tickling Katrina at her waist.

“How old is Shakti?” In the past she had been only older than me, but now I wanted to know by how much.

“Over forty,” said Sigi. “But she looks good for her age so it’s hard to tell by how much.”

“Better than the old boilers around here,” said Loretta, and the women cackled, really cackled, like they did when no men were around.

Later in the day, after Loretta had taken me on a tour of the slightly damp vegetable gardens and the new and improved composting toilets, she and Susie started fussing about where Zachary and I would sleep that night. I said I didn’t care, that I’d be happy on the woodpile, I was
that
tired, but the two women wouldn’t hear of it. They went off in search of the most suitable place, while I went for a wander of my own, arriving after a time at the children’s hut.

At the door, I hesitated. The two women were inside, in the midst of a heated discussion.

“It’s too dirty,” Loretta was saying. “Look at all the cobwebs. And over there—rat droppings.”

“She grew up here,” said Susie. “She won’t mind.”

“She’s got a baby now,” said Loretta. “And they’re used to staying in fancy hotels.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He’s famous,” said Loretta. “Of course they do.”

“We didn’t bring them up to have airs and graces. And besides, where else can they go?”

“They can have our place—mine and Tom’s,” said Loretta decisively. “It won’t be as good as what she’s used to, but at least there’s no rat poo.”

I had been on the verge of announcing my presence, and insisting that we sleep in the children’s hut, when I realized how awkward it would be for the two women if they knew I had overheard their conversation. Instead I crept back to the mess hut, where Katrina had been minding Zachary. He had woken up crying and hungry, and I sat down on a pile of cushions to nurse him, watched closely by Katrina. After a time I noticed she wasn’t just admiring Zachary but was staring at his mouth on my breast.

Zachary chomped on, oblivious, and half a minute later, Katrina snapped out of it and gazed wistfully at me. “Do you know?” she said. “Breast-feeding you kids was the happiest time of my life.”

“Really? I find it kind of tiring. Especially in the middle of the night.”

“Well, that’s because you’re the only one doing it.”

I was curious. “Isn’t that how everyone does it?”

“We ran it more like a co-op. When the babies were hungry, whoever was nearby fed them. At night, we took turns on duty, so everyone got a good sleep.”

If I had ever known this, I had forgotten it. “You fed
all
the babies—not just your own?”

“You kids shared everything, including breast milk.”

I looked down at Zachary and tried to imagine someone else feeding him. “I don’t know if I could do that. It feels too intimate.”

“Well, it is,” said Katrina. “But that’s why it was so wonderful. I felt so bonded with all you babies—not just the ones I had given birth to.”

“And everyone went along with it?”

“Yes, in fact it was easier for the women, like Loretta, who couldn’t breast-feed, and Elisabeth, who didn’t enjoy it. They didn’t have to do it.” Katrina stared off dreamily into the distance, her eyes filling with tears. “It was the most magical time at Gaialands. We were one big happy family. There was so much love.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Katrina smiled. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, it doesn’t take much at my age.” She reached over and patted Zachary’s head. “Just try to remember that saying: ‘The days are long but the years are short.’ Blink and your kids have grown up and left home.”

I thought I knew what she meant, but I also couldn’t wait for Zachary to grow up, so I could talk to him. The fun would really start then.

Susie and Loretta appeared in the doorway of the mess hut. “We’re putting you in our cabin,” said Loretta. “It’ll be the most comfortable for you and the baby.”

“Where will you sleep?” I asked.

“In the kids’ hut,” said Loretta. “Tom and I don’t mind a bit of dust.”

“I wouldn’t mind it either,” I said, hoping to disabuse them of the idea that I had come back from London posh. “You should have seen the squat we lived in. Besides, I feel bad about kicking you and Tom out of your beds.”