Remember Me, page 3
Raewyn picked up the picture, dusted it against her shirt.
‘He’s forty-six years old, he lives alone in the single man’s quarters, he works from dawn till dusk every day of the week—except when he gets drunk as a skunk at the Tawanui pub. Most of his friends are fathers now, some even granddads.’ She glanced out of the window, in the direction of Ira’s place. ‘I know he won’t have children in case he passes on the Huntington’s gene. Breaks my heart a bit. But surely there are women out there who’d settle down with him, love him for himself?’
I was sure there were plenty. The odd girlfriend had come and gone from Ira’s life, but he’d never let one get close.
‘Can’t you save him, Emily?’ asked Raewyn. ‘You were always partners in crime.’
I chuckled. ‘Blind leading the blind.’
Ten-year-old me had blithely assumed that Ira and I would get married one day. I’d thought he was so handsome, with his dark curls, his shining eyes and that confident lift to his chin. I used to daydream about our house, our puppies, the pet lambs we’d feed. None of it came true. My best mate and I never even dated, never kissed, never so much as held hands except to haul one another up onto the roof of Manu’s woolshed.
‘Whenever he can spare a day from the farm, he heads up into the ranges,’ said Raewyn. ‘He claims to be hunting, and he’ll come home with venison, but I know he’s looking for his sister.’
‘Still looking? It’s been …’
‘Twenty-five years this coming June. There won’t be anything left of her to find.’
Raewyn’s gaze was drawn towards a narrow saddle between two peaks, easily identifiable by the livid scar of a slip. I knew Biddulph’s bivvy lay close to that point, just below the bush line. At this distance, the uplands might have been bare rock, shimmering in mirror-bright blue.
I’d been up there. The Ruahine Range is a biodiversity hotspot, one of the last refuges for all kinds of native plants and creatures, including Leah’s giant snail. Our school used to take us on summer camps, yahooing our way up easy, well-marked trails through the rainforest, stopping to snack on bags of scroggin and making so much racket that we barely heard the trickling of the streams or the strange calls of the birds. We’d sleep in a modern hut with gas, foam mattresses and glass in the windows. Our teachers would nag us about not wandering off—they’ll never find you—and not dropping litter. We used torches when we crept out to the long-drop toilet at night, so we never even saw the exploding majesty of the stars.
I’d only once been more adventurous. When I was thirteen, I asked Dad to take me with him on one of his hikes. I was inspired by Ira’s memories of camping with Manu and Leah, and imagined long conversations as we strolled through the bush, perhaps lighting a fire in a cosy hut.
We made a day trip to Biddulph’s, which Dad said was a ‘manageable walk for someone not very fit’. I was so excited. I got ready the night before, and we left early. Well, what a nightmare! All I remember is screaming limbs and lungs as I scrambled up that hellishly steep trail. Dad seemed to dance from rock to rock across a gushing stream, but I fell and was soaked. When we finally reached it, the hut was grim: no fireplace, no water, just a couple of rotting canvas bunks and a packing case for a table. Rat droppings everywhere. I almost cried. I longed to get home to flat ground, a hot shower and a sofa. On the way back down, Dad apologised. I overestimated your fitness, he said. My mistake. I’m sorry.
I felt such a hopeless failure. I hadn’t been good enough; I would never be good enough. Not like Leah.
Raewyn turned from the window. ‘How long can you stay?’
‘Three weeks.’
She folded her arms, lowering her chin so that it tripled. I knew that look.
‘Leave me alone, Raewyn,’ I protested. ‘You can’t expect me to hang about until … I mean, he could outlive me. How about some home help for him? I’ll look into it.’
‘You’ve got a Kiwi passport, right? I bet you can work from here.’
‘Theoretically, for a while. But it’s—’
She was clapping her hands. ‘Hooray!’
‘No, not hooray. I don’t work in a vacuum; it’s a collaborative process. I need to have face-to-face conversations, I need to provide original work, I need—’
She wasn’t interested in my excuses. She pointed out that we had the internet nowadays, and all kinds of snazzy equipment. She often video-chatted with her great-nieces and nephews.
‘Felix has given his whole life to others,’ she declared. ‘Will nobody give anything back now?’
When I mentioned Eddie and Carmen, she flapped a dismissive hand.
‘We both know they’re not going to turn their lives upside down for him. Even if they wanted to offer him a home, I can’t see Rhonda or Richard being very happy. And anyway, poor Felix! Imagine being bossed about by Carmen all day.’
There was a desperate edge to my laughter. Rhonda and Richard were my sister- and brother-in-law. My siblings had both, inexplicably, persuaded good people to share their lives. It was the old story: I was the portable spinster whose role was to come home and be a sodding nursemaid.
I was too tired to argue. I’d fight my corner tomorrow.
‘Let’s see how we go,’ I said.
THREE
Dad knocked on my door that evening, long after we’d said goodnight.
Sometime in the past twenty-five years, he’d slapped magnolia paint over the top of my bedroom wallpaper, covering the patches I’d ruined by sellotaping posters everywhere. Apart from that the room was pretty much unchanged from my childhood. Cobwebs still clung to the mellow rimu boards of the ceiling; here was my three-quarter-sized bed with the flowery quilt, my sheepskin rug, my bookcase—All Creatures Great and Small, What Katy Did, The Hobbit. Even my lava lamp.
Raewyn, bless her, had made the bed. I was sitting cross-legged on it, a towel around my wet hair, sending a message to Nathan. He was always a far better student than his mother. He graduated in psychology, and promptly set off to teach English in far-flung places. I missed him, but I couldn’t complain. He had the travel bug, same as I did at his age. The downside? His girlfriend had tagged along. The dreaded Ella.
His reply was cheerful: Hey Mum, good to know you got there in one piece! We’re on a bus to the old port. Sleep well, love to Grandpa X
The knock on my door was confident and brisk. Dad’s voice was confident and brisk to match.
‘Emily? You still awake?’
He stood in the corridor with a manila envelope in his hand. No confusion, no blankness. He looked a lot fitter than I felt. His eyes were still clear, his jawline firm, his complexion had the same fresh bloom as ever.
‘Got everything you need?’ he asked, glancing into the room behind me.
‘Everything’s great. Raewyn even put flowers by my bed.’
‘Oh, good.’ He held up the envelope. ‘Something for you to look after.’
‘What’s this?’
‘Keep it for me, will you? Please, please, don’t open it until the event mentioned on the front. Until then, I’d rather you didn’t let anyone know of its existence. I will undoubtedly forget I’ve given it to you. I’m afraid I’m going doolally.’
‘No, Dad!’
‘Oh, of course I am.’ He waved away my denial. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? It’s a bastard of a thing.’
‘It might not be what they think.’
He placed the envelope in my hands.
‘It is what they think. I know you mean to comfort me, but I’d rather not lie to myself. You’ll keep this to yourself, and unopened? The contents could do a great deal of harm if they emerge too soon.’
‘Sure, Dad. I promise. I’ll guard it with my life.’
There’s a child in all of us, and mine was flattered. My father was confiding in me! That was a first.
‘A great deal of harm,’ he repeated.
‘Why don’t you just burn it?’
‘Because truth matters. History matters. Not alternative facts, not lies.’ He nodded at the envelope. ‘You’ll know what to do with it, when the time comes.’
‘What’s in here?’
But the conversation was over. He thanked me and wished me a good night’s sleep. I watched him stride off down the panelled corridor towards his own bedroom—hands in pockets, head high, as though he was back in his heyday.
I closed my door and examined the envelope in my hand. Its flap was stuck down with masking tape. On the front, Dad had written in blue-black ink—fountain pen, not a biro:
NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL AFTER MY DEATH
After that, it’s open season.
F.K.
Probably his will. Maybe he was leaving everything to his beloved Kauri hospice. Perhaps he’d bequeathed the Arapito land to Ira? That would make sense. Our hundred or so acres had been leased to the Parata family forever, and Ira did more for Dad than any of his own children. It would be hilarious to see the twins’ faces when they found out.
An incorrigible devil on my shoulder suggested peeling back the masking tape and steaming open the envelope. Go on! I was a dab hand at letter-steaming; I routinely held Carmen’s mail over the kettle when she was a teenager. Her love letters were hilarious. One outstanding effort, from a jug-eared lad called Zach, quoted Shakespeare. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? When Carmen caught Ira and me in hysterics over it, she burst into tears and burned it in the fireplace in her room. I must have been such an annoying younger sister.
But I wasn’t ten years old anymore. I slid Dad’s envelope into my suitcase and climbed into bed. As I turned off the lamp, I made a mental note to thank Raewyn for making my room so welcoming. I owed her.
I’d forgotten the extreme remoteness of my old home. A plover screeched in the enormous darkness; a sheep coughed, hacking like the pack-a-day smoker I used to be. The house creaked as its wooden structure cooled down.
I was six when we left Leeds. I bade a snotty, tearful goodbye to my very, very best friend ever … what was her name? Poppy? Penny? Nope, it’s gone … and we flew all the way across the world to this strange settlement, huddled under the mountains, where the shops shut all weekend, where children went to school barefoot and dogs were workers, not pets. Back then, the bright lights of Tawanui consisted of the milk bar and fish-and-chip shop.
At first we lived in a damp rental house in town, arranged by the Health Board, but my parents soon bought Arapito. Back in the late 1970s, both house and land seemed amazingly affordable.
‘Space to breathe,’ exulted Dad, the first time we all walked across the paddocks to the river, clutching our towels.
‘Too much space,’ said Mum. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘Can I have a horse?’ asked Carmen.
‘Hey, Emily,’ said Eddie one night. ‘D’you know the story of Arapito homestead?’
We were sitting beside the wood-burning stove in the snug. Mum was collecting Carmen from pony club. Dad, of course, was out at work. He was always at work. House calls, meetings, emergencies at the hospice.
‘What story?’ I asked, because I hadn’t yet worked out that my brother was an idiot.
‘Mr Izzard.’
‘Who’s Mr Izzard?’
Eddie shone a torch up from under his chin as he spun his tale. The eleven-year-old boy became a ghoul, with a glowing face and empty-skull eyes.
‘Hilary Izzard,’ he said, ‘lived in this house years ago. His wife died of a fever on the passage over from England. In those days they used to throw the dead bodies overboard.’
I was open-mouthed. ‘Why?’
‘Because they didn’t have fridges and things. They chucked Mrs Izzard into the sea and the sharks got her. Mr Izzard saw the water turn red, like tomato ketchup. He was really upset, but he came and lived here and farmed this land. And then his only son was killed in the First World War, and finally all his sheep died.’
‘Why did they die?’
‘A disease took them out. The whole flock. He was the unluckiest man in Tawanui. He went to town and paid all his bills. Then he came home and hanged himself in this very room. See that nail in the beam, right above your head? That’s where he tied the rope. It was a week before they found him, and he was mostly maggots by then. They cut what was left of him down and took him away to be buried in the town cemetery. His grave’s by the gate. Hilary Izzard.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I whimpered, wriggling away from underneath the nail in the beam.
Eddie dropped his voice to a guttural rasp. ‘He never left this house. People hear his footsteps. People hear the rope, still swinging. That’s how come we bought it so cheap.’
For years I lived in terror of that restless spirit. I’d seen Hilary Izzard’s grave in the cemetery, and our old house never stopped breathing and shifting as it cooled and warmed. I used to hide under my flowery quilt, listening for footsteps in the corridor or the rhythmic creak of a rope as a decomposing body turned in the wind.
Eddie had made it all up, of course. Years later I did a school project on local history, interviewing men and women who were born in the nineteenth century. No Izzard had ever lived in our house. The Hilary Izzard in Tawanui cemetery was a grandmother-of-many, who died peacefully at the age of ninety.
As sleep began to swallow me, I heard Dad making his way to the bathroom. Steady, calm footsteps, not the ghost of a grieving farmer. It was a profoundly comforting sound. He was still my dad, after all.
•
Four in the bloody morning. Wide awake under a sheet, sweating, maddened by the whine of predatory mosquitoes. I’d forgotten how those little vampires could make a summer night a misery. My feet wouldn’t keep still, my mind turned whooping somersaults.
The next moment I’d thrown off the sheet and was feeling my way down the porch steps, hobbling across the drought-stricken lawn, my toes curling upwards as prickle weed jabbed my soles. I could dimly make out Mum’s croquet set on the porch, the white posts where we used to tie the tennis net, those spiky-headed cabbage trees in the paddock. I knew every shadow, every glint of the moonlight.
As a child I used to lie flat on my back on the trampoline on this lawn, blinking up at the blaze of the Milky Way with its dark holes and hazy patches of stardust. I clearly remember looking for God up there. One night, Dad came home late from a call-out to the hospice. He must have spotted me in his headlights as he drove up. I expected him to head straight inside, but he didn’t. I heard the car door shut, his steady footfall approaching the trampoline.
‘Stargazing?’ he asked.
To my astonishment and delight, he swung easily up beside me and lay on his back, just as I was doing. As always, he kept a good foot or two of space between us. I’ve no memory of him ever properly hugging me, or any of his children—or his wife, come to think of it. The best he could manage was a fleeting arm around the shoulders. I’ve no memory of sitting on his knee, or holding his hand. He didn’t do those things. He rarely touched people at all, unless they were his patients. But this night, he lay near me on the trampoline, both of us staring at the sky.
‘Have you ever wondered what the name of our mountains means?’ he asked. ‘The Ruahine Range. Rua-hine. Wise woman. And they do seem wise somehow, don’t they?’
‘I feel as though they’re watching me,’ I said, and he said, yes, he felt that too. My dad understood me! I was euphoric.
He knew all about the night sky. He knew about so many things. His memory was astonishing. If he read something once, he remembered it. He pointed out the constellations and named the planets. He explained that in Māori legend, Orion’s belt was a perch upon which birds would alight in order to eat the brilliant star, Rigel—though they called it Puanga—which, he told me, was as bright as forty thousand suns. ‘See there? See how it could be a perch for a bird?’
Ever since then, I’ve thought of Dad when I look up at Orion’s belt.
‘And Betelgeuse,’ he added, pointing. ‘That’s a red supergiant. It’s used up all the hydrogen and it’s burning stuff like carbon and helium now.’
I couldn’t see which one he meant, but I pretended I could. I wanted this to go on forever, my father treating me like a proper person, showing me these things with exotic names. It was one of the very happiest moments of my life. It still is.
I desperately wanted to say something clever and worthy.
‘And what’s that one?’ I asked, pointing. ‘It’s moving.’
‘Um, that’s a plane.’
I felt so stupid.
I wanted to tell him that looking at the universe made me feel like a feeble, flickering match that could be snuffed out at any moment. I wanted to tell him that I felt lonely and frightened when I lay here, and that was exactly why I did it. I wanted to ask him if it had the same effect on him, whether he ever felt lonely. But I was afraid he’d think me even more stupid, so I didn’t say another word. Soon he got up, remarking that it was past my bedtime.
We never stargazed together again. But I took that moment, wrapped it in tissue paper and stored it away. I kept a few treasures like that: moments when I’d felt almost close to my father. From time to time over the years I would get them out and look at them.
The trampoline was long gone now. It had a good innings which finally ended when Nathan and his cousins—Carmen’s kids—put their clod-hopping little feet right through the mat. Instead, I stretched out on the dry grass where it used to be, and watched Orion stalking across the sky.
In three weeks’ time, this night would be just another memory. I’d be on my way back to London. Even if I saw Dad again, he wouldn’t know me. And I would never have known him.
FOUR
The music of early morning in Arapito: that lyrical, liquid quardle-ardle-wardle of magpies in the garden. They sound mellow, but it’s a different story altogether if they think their young are under threat. One time, Ira and I were playing on the woolshed roof when a black-and-white shadow dived in from nowhere, pecking and scolding as we scrambled to escape. Ira ended up with a bleeding cheek.
