Wake Page 17

  When the aunties and uncles got their cheques they went on binges. They didn’t hurt or even yell at any of the kids—but William and his sister were alarmed by the raucous jokes and the heady stories that seemed a game of gruesome one-upmanship. They were frightened by the arm-wrestling and smashed furniture and all the reddened faces.

  William was sleeping in a packed bunkroom with his boy cousins—three older—two several years younger. Sis was in with the single girl cousin, sleeping in a long room between the roof and ceiling. The cousins could sleep through the noise, because they were used to it—but William was scared, so, Friday nights, Sis would pick him up and take him out, bundled in his bedding, to sleep in one of the wrecked cars. When winter came he took to going to bed in his clothes so he’d be warm enough to sleep once he had to move.

  Then, midwinter, there came a bitterly cold night—the first clear following a solid week of snow which stayed on the ground despite their proximity to the sea. After an evening when the drunken shouting melted into dreams that also shouted at William—that he must wake up!—he woke with his head tucked under the stinky plastic steering wheel of the old Chrysler truck, as usual, though he couldn’t remember his sister carrying him out of the house. He was shivering and his feet were freezing, even in his boots and socks. He got out of the truck and gathered his blankets around him so that they wouldn’t drag through the puddles. He hurried to the house.

  The air indoors was thinly misted, and it made him dizzy. The house was silent. One uncle was on his back on the rug. Another was in a recliner, his head at an uncomfortable angle. All the doors were closed but the air was almost as cold as it had been outdoors.

  William knew not to disturb the adults—they’d still be drunk—but he went to his bed to warm up, and, as soon as he entered the bedroom, he knew something was very wrong. His cousins’ faces were flushed and pink, but they seemed not to be breathing. No one in the house was breathing. William didn’t know what to do—but he did what he first thought he should. He dragged the two smaller kids outside. Then he went back and opened all the windows before climbing into the attic. His sister and his girl cousin were breathing. Maybe. He wasn’t entirely sure. He scrambled back downstairs and searched his uncles’ pockets for car keys, then drove to a neighbour to ask them to call an ambulance. He couldn’t reach the brake pedal properly and had to bring the car to a stop by running it into some scrub.

  What had happened was that his inebriated uncles had been feeling the cold, and had carried the gas barbecue indoors. Within a couple of hours the adults had succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

  One of the little cousins lived—the other might have, except it was too cold where William had left him, wearing only his pyjamas on the open porch. No one told William that though—he worked it out later.

  William’s sister lived—but she never woke up. The last time he visited her in her miserable long-term care facility, he found her curled up in bed. She hadn’t had enough physical therapy and her tendons had shortened, drawing her limbs up so that her fists were bunched under her chin and her knees were tucked up by her stomach, so that she lay like someone sleeping in a cold room. A year after that she was dead.

  William was a big healthy guy. Their mother hadn’t stinted on food—only she’d never taught him and Sis to clean their teeth, so almost every tooth in William’s head was a crown. She sent them to school, but had papered over every window in the house. She’d said, ‘Don’t believe what anyone else says’—but also believed that sinister out-runners of everyone else were creeping around outside all day and night, so that a person couldn’t even hang out washing unobserved, and washing could only be done when it was absolutely necessary and then dried indoors in a room so perpetually damp that its white ceiling tiles were not just spotted but piebald with mould.

  There was that life, with his mother—a life of intricately rationalised disorder—and there was the periodic feckless havoc of his uncle’s household. And then there was silence, his mother gone—living rough somewhere far away—and a house full of stifled people. What had William learned from it all? That sometimes you just had to wait—and sometimes you had to walk away, never letting your feelings follow you.

  Belle took a seat in the back of the dingy. Bub pushed out from the shore, hopped aboard, and let the dingy glide before running out its oars. They were quite close to the Champion before the man heard them and raised his head at the distinctive booming rattle.

  Bub pressed on a few strokes then pulled the oars back in and let the dingy drift. There was no sound but that of drips falling from the blades of the oars into the sea. Bub hailed the man. ‘Thank you for yesterday,’ he said.

  The man didn’t answer. He put down what he’d been holding—a can of spaghetti and a fork.

  Belle called, ‘Can you understand us?’

  Bub touched Belle’s arm, said, ‘This is Belle. We’re wondering if you’d like to join us? We promise we won’t put you to work—if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  The man set one foot on the low rail beside him and dived into the sea.

  Belle saw something she didn’t understand. The man entered the water and her eyes anticipated the sight of his hands, arms, head, cleaving the waves, but instead something just ahead of his hands made a wedge of air, so that his arms and head first sank into an airy hollow in the sea. Then his feet disappeared and the water cracked back in a big inward-folding splash. The man surfaced some distance off, wet, the water touching him and bearing him up as water always does.

  Belle shut her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘Hey!’ Bub yelled, and began to row.

  The man accelerated. He struck out towards the shore. He pulled well ahead and by the time he’d clambered out onto the beach Bub had abandoned pursuit. They watched the man hurry away along the shoreline track—with Oscar drifting half-heartedly after him.

  Bub called out, ‘Leave him, Oscar!’ and the boy came down the beach and helped them haul the dingy up past the high-tide mark. Bub stowed the oars and stood, hands on his hips, watching the man jog towards the Smokehouse Café.

  Lily came into view, running. As she approached the man she broke stride and, once he’d gone by, she ran backwards for a few steps, looking after him. Then she continued on towards them. However, when she reached them she didn’t stop to ask whether they’d managed to speak to the man, what he’d said, why he’d fled—instead she gave only a little salute and ran on.

  ‘Do you think she’s always been that hardcore?’ Oscar asked.

  Bub and Belle exchanged a look.

  ‘Isn’t she thinner?’ Oscar said. ‘And she runs like something is chasing her.’

  Belle said. ‘We don’t really know what Lily’s normal training programme was.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Oscar,’ Bub said. Then, ‘I think I might pull the Champion’s batteries and remove my Primus—just to give that bloke the right signals.’

  Oscar gave a great huffing sigh and swung the dinghy around to run it bow-first down the beach, complaining as he did that Bub kept changing his mind all the time.

  ‘Why don’t you go back and fill Theresa in?’ Bub said. ‘She’ll want to know that the guy wouldn’t speak to us, and that he ran off.’

  Oscar looked disappointed. He peered at Bub, then Belle, blushed suddenly and mumbled that—okay—he’d go.

  Bub called after him, ‘Thanks for your help.’

  It seemed to Belle that it was by mutual consent that she and Bub postponed what they had to say to each other until after he’d rowed back to the Champion, disconnected the batteries, placed them in the stern, and stowed the Primus behind his seat.

  Belle held the dingy steady against the Champion’s flat stern. When Bub got back in he was carrying a couple of empty sacks. ‘I feel like a feed of mussels.’ He ran out the oars, aimed the dinghy at the end of Matarau Point and, with se
veral strokes, set them skimming across the water. Halfway there Bub met her eyes and said, ‘Thank you for last night.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Look. I’m okay,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. But if I keep an eye on you that’s not going to make you start worrying about yourself, is it?’

  Bub shook his head.

  Half an hour later they were both in the water. Belle was standing up to her thighs and feeling along a fissure thickly clustered with mussels. Small waves were washing in and out of the crack, causing trapped air to sound a solid, metallic bloop! deep in the rock. The mussels were firmly anchored, and Belle was finding it difficult to slide a hand in among them in order to twist any free.

  Bub had stripped to his boxer shorts and was floating above a submerged rock several metres from where she was. The water was very clear and Bub’s body looked paled and flattened. He was holding on to the rock with one hand and fishing with another, both his forearms concealed in a waving garden of deep burgundy and bright green seaweed. He freed another mussel and pushed up, plumping out as he emerged from the sea, the water running off his smooth brown back. He looked at Belle over his shoulder and showed her what he had, a mussel nearly a foot in length and stippled with barnacles.

  ‘Aren’t those ones always tough?’

  ‘We’re going to make chowder. If you heat them gradually and cook them for a long time they stay tender.’ He put the mussel in his sack and ducked under again, showing Belle the soles of his feet, which were broad, with deep, arched insteps.

  It took Bub fifteen minutes to fill his sack. He swam to shore and emerged, his closely curled hair audibly sizzling as the seawater ran from it. He picked up Belle’s sack, which was only a third full. ‘That’ll do,’ he said. He went and stood in the narrow strip of sun at the top of the beach, shaking his arms and head, then hopping on one leg to dislodge seawater from his ears.

  Belle pulled her shorts back on, with difficulty, since her skin was wet.

  Bub said, ‘I’m just going to stand here a moment and dry off.’

  Belle came and stood beside him in the sun. She tried not to let him catch her looking at him. The curls against his neck kept pulling straight with the weight of each fresh drop, then springing up again. As she watched, surreptitiously, Belle could see his hair apparently recoiling against his skull as it shed water. He had gooseflesh on his arms. She wanted to shave the drops from him with the flats of her hands. She wanted to warm him up.

  ‘So many mussels,’ Bub said.

  Belle giggled. ‘And very shapely,’ she said.

  Bub looked surprised then burst out laughing. They laughed together for a bit then Bub said, ‘Yeah—well,’ stupidly. Belle thought he was going to say something like, ‘Let’s talk about this,’ which is what men had always said to her. Belle was twenty-seven. She’d had boyfriends, but not for years. The men she’d liked would always come out with some version of, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ Or they seemed disbelieving. Of course Belle’s problem was that she would insist on declaring herself—frank, and self-respecting, but somehow defended. She didn’t know how to brush up against a man; tuck in her chin and thrust out her chest; stand twisting her curls. Somehow all those skills had passed her by. She wasn’t one of those very fierce women who are only ever pursued by masochists and egotistical conquistadors. It wasn’t that she frightened men. Her problem seemed to be only that she had somehow set up a sexually neutral personhood between herself and them. It wasn’t a shield. It wasn’t there for any reason. It didn’t have any biographical explanation—Belle hadn’t ever been hurt. It was just the way she was, she supposed, friendly, egalitarian, reliable, neither repulsive nor attractive, but simply without a charge.

  Belle was waiting to hear Bub say that they should talk about it, then he surprised her by saying, ‘If I give you a squeeze, I’ll get your shirt wet.’

  ‘Oh.’ Belle thought about this for a bit, then turned to him and put her arms around him. She was immediately damp and momentarily chilled. But the chill was superficial and, after a moment, everywhere they touched they were warm. Bub smoothed her hair and gazed into her eyes. ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘God, you’re tall!’ she said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s—’ She laughed. ‘It’s great!’

  They stared at each other—eye to eye—she was a good ten inches shorter than him but the beach was steeply sloped. It was wonderful having permission to stare.

  Bub said. ‘Mostly when you get to know people you have to go through all that “What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do? Who are your people?” stuff. But I know what you’re like. What you’re really like.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Belle agreed. She moved her gaze and squinted past his shoulder at the sun. ‘How long will your chowder take?’

  ‘Well,’ Bub said. ‘First you have to chop plenty of onions and garlic, and fry it so it’s soft. Then put in a little saffron. Or turmeric, but saffron’s better. The mussels have to be steamed open. You rinse them to get out any barnacles and tiny crabs, then you chop up the big ones, and put the whole lot in water with some salt and pepper on a low heat—so that the liquid doesn’t get hot before the solids. That’s what makes mussels tough. You simmer it for a couple of hours. Then you add potatoes, bite-sized, and cook till the potatoes begin to get that peach fuzz look. And that’s it.’

  ‘You just gave me the whole recipe.’

  Bub looked sheepish; then resolute. ‘I’m not going to say, “Let’s go somewhere.” Sorry, Belle, I don’t know what you expect.’

  ‘I don’t know either.’

  Bub said, in a rush, ‘And that’s what I love about you. You never say something just for effect. You have the patience to actually pay attention to what’s going on with the other guy.’ Then, ‘Yeah,’ he said, as if he’d finally worked something out to his satisfaction.

  One of the bags slumped with a rattle as a mussel moved, perhaps sealing itself off more firmly.

  ‘I’m a geek,’ Belle said. ‘That’s why I’m not saying let’s go somewhere.’

  Bub put his salt-sticky palms against her cheeks. ‘It isn’t that I’m shy,’ he said.

  ‘No. It’s how long chowder takes to cook.’ She gave him a sceptical look.

  ‘No, seriously, it’s—it’s that this is serious. I’ve been rattling about since Dad died. Champion’s a trawler, but I haven’t been trawling because I’d have to hire a guy to help with the nets, and I don’t want anyone else on the boat. And I can’t sell Champion because that would be like selling Dad. And, anyway, I shouldn’t sell my quota because it’s a living, and I’m lucky to have it. So I’m burning my savings slowly in fuel and sundries, and catching a few fish then selling them as if I’m only going to sell to people who care about fish, or who care about me. I’m not making business decisions. It’s like I’m trying not to—not to be in the world.’

  ‘As if you’re saying the Kaddish for your father,’ Belle said.

  ‘That’s Jewish, isn’t it?’

  Belle nodded.

  ‘Well, yes, it is like something religious. As if it’s something to do with a tapu. But that’s just me. I mean—it isn’t really anything like that. Dad was Pakeha, anyway. It was Mum who was Maori. She’s been gone for over ten years. When she got sick, I basically ran away from it. I joined the army. I’m only just out. When Dad got sick I came back and fished with him, then for him when he was having chemo. Then he died. And it’s like I’ve been in a nothing, just drifting about as if I’m under a curse because of all the stuff I should have done for Mum and didn’t. And what I couldn’t do for Dad anyway.’

  Belle was so moved that, without quite meaning to, she interrupted him. ‘Did your dad do that stuff for your mum?’

  ‘He did. And her brothers and sisters. And my cousins. Everyone did what they should. Things were seen to pr
operly, so I don’t get why I’m stuck.’

  ‘You’ve been grieving for your dad,’ Belle said. It was obvious to her.

  Bub blinked at her. The thick flesh on his forehead didn’t so much furrow as form deep uneven rumples. ‘But Dad and I got to say goodbye. He had a rough time, but he was brave and patient and never lost his sense of humour. He made it easy for me.’

  ‘And still—’ Belle thought, but didn’t say it. And still, death, like the icy phantom of fable, had reached into Bub’s brave, kindly father, and pulled him out of himself.

  Bub was biting his lip. His eyes brimmed. ‘Belle, the way I feel about you is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages. But I’m scared that it’ll be the last thing too. I just can’t bear to bury another person.’

  She told him to shhh and stretched up to kiss him. She kept kissing him, not coaxing, only tender. She trembled from the strain of being up on her toes. Eventually he took her weight and they leaned together in the sunlight, in a warm fug of evaporating seawater.

  When Bub was putting his footwear back on he remarked that he wished he could show her something.

  ‘You know, you can change your mind about that at any time,’ she said.

  ‘Now you’re just being lewd, as Kate would say.’ Bub shook pebbles out of one of his boots. He pulled dry gorse prickles off the bottom of his socks. ‘Have you ever looked at the old pa site?’ He jerked his head at the slope behind him.

  ‘The Department of Conservation maintains the track, so of course I’ve looked at it.’

  ‘Right,’ Bub said, and Belle worried that—once again—she’d stopped him from saying something he needed to. She watched him grooming his sock. He was thorough. ‘How many pairs of socks do you own, Bub?’