Edwin and Matilda, page 6
‘I loved my father very much. We were very close,’ he eventually replied.
He expected his answer to be absorbed into the deep shadow of silence but instead he heard Matilda respond, ‘I would like to have been close to my father.’ She coughed, choking a little, and then continued, ‘I’m not, though. He lives in China – with his partner and her family. She – his partner – is not my mother. I’ve never met her and I haven’t seen him for ages – years.’
Her reply raised questions in Edwin’s mind but the tone in her voice discouraged him. The subject, he guessed, was now closed. Returning to safe ground, he remarked, ‘Of all the rivers I’ve crossed, I think the Clutha has the nicest bridges.’ He began to list them: Balclutha, Beaumont, Alexandra, the red bridge at Clyde, the old bridge at Cromwell … only the bridge at Albert Town let them down. It was ugly, no question about it.
Matilda listened as he spoke, and when he finished she said, ‘I used to want a house with a drawbridge.’ And at that she turned away, facing the window once more and the tussocklands beyond.
Sometimes the patients would give concerts. They had so little to keep them occupied they would stage plays, musical recitals, poetry readings … anything to take their minds off the long hours of inactivity forced upon them. The healthier ones were encouraged to work in the garden; they would grow enough vegetables to feed everyone – staff and patients. Others would work on the small farm or in the sheds, doing everything from blacksmithing to mechanical repairs. The sanatorium was largely self-sufficient, you see. The people who were too sick to garden or work simply stayed in bed. Month in, month out they remained in bed – never moving from one day to the next. It was terrible for them. They had so little in the way of life. Life was stagnant.
But the concerts! I remember the concerts. Lights would be strung across the patients’ dining hall and draped along the eaves. We had our own hydro-electric scheme, our own electricity supply. I tell you, we lived in our own small world. The lights would go up – long rows of them snaking and dipping the length of the main building. Sometimes, in summer, the concerts would go on far into the night. In fact they weren’t concerts as such, but dances. I was too young to take part but whenever there was a dance I would find my way back to the main building and I would stand outside and look in and watch the healthier men and women dancing together. So many of the patients were young – no more than twenty or thirty – and I would watch them moving, as if in slow motion, from one end of the community room to the other. They glided, travelling in loose circles around the room like ice skaters – like the ice skaters at Naseby.
At first I used to think I was the only one outside looking in, but then I would glimpse another figure standing by himself, his body obscured by the deep shadows of the trees. It was a man – I could see that straight away. He had his back turned to the hall and was looking out over the plains, the light from his pipe flaring every now and again as he smoked. It’s hard for someone from the city to understand how black those nights could be: that the lights from the dance hall could be the only lights for miles around. The blackness was warm, soft, I thought – like velvet. That’s how I always pictured it – velvet nights filled with the sound of music. And my father, a dark shadow, standing by himself looking out across the emptiness.
SIX
As Edwin walked from building to building he felt the gulf between them and his memory of the sanatorium widen. His image of the place had been so clear, so precise in its detail, and yet time and time again he took himself to a site he remembered only to find he had been mistaken. It was not the blacksmith’s workshop that stood in the shade of the shelterbelt, as he remembered, but the slaughterhouse. The women’s pavilion had exchanged places with the men’s. These were such huge lapses in memory it seemed to Edwin that none of his recollections might be correct. As he wandered around the site he began to feel increasingly desolate: why was nothing as he remembered it? The emerald green lawn that had fronted his own house, the vibrancy of which had contrasted so markedly with the dull, sunburnt tussock slopes of the surrounding hillside, was now burnt and straw-like. Yet it was around here that he had stood beneath his sunflowers. He knew there had been sunflowers.
And not just sunflowers but roses, too. There had been an archway: an arch made by the man who worked alongside the blacksmith. Ted. Ted had made his mother and father a frame for their climbing roses and there had been a picnic the day it was placed in the garden at the foot of the path, by the gate. Edwin was sure of it. The arch, the brick gateposts, the concrete path and the bird-bath: there had been a bird-bath in the centre of the lawn. The blackbirds used to splash around in it – he could recall his mother laughing as she watched them, saying, ‘Look, Edwin, they’re washing before dinner.’ It was a kind of a joke she had – that the birds would wash and then fly over to the vegetable garden and tug at the newly planted rows, tearing up whatever had just been sown. He remembered – he was sure he remembered – that his mother never made any attempt to discourage the birds. She didn’t cover any of the fragile plants with netting but, rather, seemed to enjoy watching the result of her hard work being uprooted and discarded. It was almost as if she only ever planted vegetables so that she could watch them being destroyed by the birds.
He remembered now that he had once made her a scarecrow for her birthday. He had managed to persuade one of the women in the laundry to part with a threadbare nurse’s uniform and he had turned it into a scarecrow. He had made the head out of sack and had stitched eyes and a mouth onto it. The rest of the sack had been cut into strips, which he had then carefully sewn on to the top of the scarecrow’s head for hair. It had taken him a long time and the result was somewhat ghoulish. That white nurse’s uniform, which reached almost to the ground, the head with the staring eyes, and loosely embroidered grinning lips. The hair that blew, wild tendrils, in the wind.
He had got up very early on the morning of his mother’s birthday and gone to the garden by himself to ‘plant’ the scarecrow. It had been his secret: everyone had known he was up to something – he had been unable to hide his growing excitement – but no one had guessed exactly what he was doing. He remembered the way the scarecrow had wobbled about on its central stick as he carried it from the shed behind the house to the garden. It had been so top-heavy that he had found it difficult to walk and he’d kept tripping as he made his way to the lettuce bed. In his mind now he could visualise what he must have looked like: an image of a procession of the Ku Klux Klan came to mind. Of course he had no idea that was how he looked back then. It was one of his proudest moments: the first thing he had made entirely by himself for his mother. He had no memory at all of her response.
Glancing up from the patch of grass by his feet, Edwin had a sudden desire to find Matilda. No sooner had they arrived than they had parted, his vague intention to show her around the derelict buildings coming to nothing. Now, however, he felt a strong urge to find her. The past hour of exploration had left him feeling hollow. Rather than reconstructing his childhood in its entirety, he had found himself remembering only bits and pieces, insignificant events punctuated by gaping holes. He had the feeling that if Matilda was with him, he might be able to remember things more clearly. Acting as a tour guide showing a visitor a site of special interest, he might have been better equipped to describe the place in a logical, methodical manner.
But, he realised, he was still feeling somewhat ambivalent about what he wanted to remember. If that was the case, Matilda might provide a buffer between the present and his memories. That was it: he could be the type of guide one encounters in a historical village – someone who can describe every detail, fragment by fragment, while knowing nothing at all about what really went on.
Edwin looked around, suddenly annoyed by his apparent reluctance in this search for his mother. He had come here, he thought, to reignite his past, to rediscover his mother and the brief life they had spent together. Hadn’t he spent years anticipating this moment? He had planned for this day ever since he asked May to translate that article in the magazine – a feature on the community at Franz Josef, the people who lived and worked there, supporting the tourist industry, making their mark on the land. His mother, it turned out, had been one of those people: one of the first women to guide visitors onto the glacier. His mother, a tour guide. Just as he now wished he could be, he thought bitterly.
He looked back towards the car, hoping to find Matilda, but she was nowhere in sight. He felt a flash of irritation. Why on earth had he dragged her up here in the first place? His past had nothing to do with her; she played no part in his story. He hardly knew her – she was a girl forty years his junior! What had he been thinking of? Deciding to return immediately to the car so he could drive them both back to Ranfurly, he began to hurry, stumbling over the tufts of grass and tussock underfoot. As he approached his car he saw a figure standing next to it. It was not Matilda’s slight, angular form, but that of a middle-aged man, a man nearer his own age, dressed in brown trousers and a polar fleece jacket. Edwin hadn’t expected to come across anyone else at the sanatorium, though now that he gave it more thought he realised some of the smaller buildings did not look entirely abandoned, and his own former home had also looked maintained.
The thought that he might have to explain his presence to someone irked him. Already he had made a mess of his visit and he felt little desire to linger now that he had made up his mind to leave.
He heard the man call, ‘Hello!’, waving his hand in greeting as he approached. ‘Hello.’
Edwin hesitated, surprised by the note of welcome in the man’s voice. He had expected the man to appear suspicious, maybe even hostile, at finding a stranger on the property.
‘Are you looking for someone?’ the man called, walking up to Edwin. ‘Because I think I’ve found her …’ He spoke in a quieter voice, pointing with his hand in the direction of the main building. ‘She was asleep on one of the lounge chairs – gave me one heck of a fright. I thought she was a ghost!’
Later, as he replayed his response to the man’s remark, Edwin realised how bizarre his behaviour must have seemed. He had been caught off guard, that was all. When the man – Richard – had said, ‘I thought she was a ghost!’ Edwin, too, had thought Richard had found a ghost. For a brief moment he had believed Richard was referring to his mother – not Matilda. He’d realised his mistake almost straight away, but there had still been a moment, however brief, when he had believed that his mother – or the ghost of his mother – was lounging on one of the low-slung deckchairs that used to line the pavilion’s corridor. And he had thought she was waiting for him.
In fact, that wasn’t what Richard had meant. The woman was Matilda. He had found her outside the building known as ‘The Diet’ – the kitchen and dining area – asleep on a modern-type chair, the type sold in any of the cheap outdoor furniture chains, not one of the original lounge chairs.
Edwin followed Richard into one of the smaller staff houses and there, sitting at the kitchen table, looking awkward, was Matilda.
‘Here she is!’ Richard’s voice seemed unnaturally loud in the almost empty room.
Although it had been years since he had last stood in this kitchen, Edwin knew it well. It had belonged to the matron – the woman who had for several years fulfilled the role of surrogate mother for him. Her name was Ida – it was a joke among some of the younger, healthier male patients. ‘Look out!’ they’d laughed as she’d approached. ‘It’s Ida from Ida Valley!’ In all other ways they’d treated her with a great deal of respect. She was their link, they knew, between the hospital and the outside world. It was Ida they would approach whenever they needed permission to leave the sanatorium for a day or weekend. The stronger patients knew they could rely on her to put their case forward; she would make an approach to the doctor – Edwin’s father – on their behalf. Often the request would be turned down, but such was the level of respect for his father, no one complained. That was the thing back then, thought Edwin: people didn’t complain. Not because they weren’t unhappy – some of the men had been desperate to return to their homes and earn a living once more – but because there was such a sense of community, a belief in a common cause. Their attitude struck Edwin as somewhat old-fashioned now, but he remembered those patients and the feeling of goodwill and respect that existed between them and the staff.
Catching sight of Matilda, Edwin thought he could detect a hint of anxiety in her expression. He guessed that having found her, Richard would have tried to establish what she was doing at the sanatorium and he could imagine the effect his questions might have had: her awkwardness as she tried to explain what she was doing. It dawned on Edwin then that he ought to have told her about his childhood and his reason for visiting this place. But she hadn’t asked. It was as if Matilda regarded a trip to a run-down sanatorium with a man she barely knew as the most natural thing in the world.
Edwin didn’t know what to make of her.
PART TWO
matilda
ONE
Matilda had enjoyed being up at the sanatorium. She realised that although she had never been there before she had been aware of its existence. It consisted of a large group of buildings – over twenty buildings, she thought – and they must have been visible from the house back in Ranfurly. Now that she thought about it, she knew she had noticed them before but she had not bothered to ask anyone about them. She’d been too taken up with other things: first the wedding, and then the matter of returning the few gifts they had been given. She’d also had to sort through her and Jacob’s household goods, deciding what was hers and what belonged to him. In the end she’d given him everything. She hadn’t wanted to keep anything except the video camera. That was hers. She needed it in order to make her documentary. That was what she was going to do. Even if it turned out to be the worst documentary ever made.
The entire contents of the house – Jacob’s house – were as good as gone. She hadn’t known how to tell Edwin but she had already moved out when he arrived. She had just called by to sort out a few final things before returning to the motel where she had been staying. She hadn’t felt particularly concerned about where she would go next: she had money, and besides, she was a hard worker – she would do anything. The piano had been worth more than she thought; even the furniture had fetched a reasonable price – being ‘genuine art deco’ it was quite sought after, apparently. She also had her savings. She’d been working full time for around four years and every week for as long as she could remember she had put money aside and spent as little as possible on herself. She’d created a special account long ago: an account she referred to as the ‘When everything turns to shit account’. And everything had turned to shit.
She hadn’t been surprised when Jacob called off the wedding – she had always thought he would. She didn’t blame him. The only surprise was that it had taken him so long. He was such a good man – deep down – that he hadn’t had the courage to leave her any earlier. He’d let things slide, probably out of guilt. She realised that her very presence in the house must have made him feel guilty; that for weeks or months he had known he couldn’t go through with the marriage and yet he’d been unable to tell her. Instead, he’d spent every day feeling increasingly awkward because he had known something she hadn’t, and he hadn’t said anything for fear of hurting her.
Perhaps if she’d been a better person she would have ended it herself. It seemed sometimes that she was only testing him anyway. Seeing how long he would stick by her. It was a cruel thing to do to a twenty-three-year-old. Looking back she saw she should have put him out of his misery, but for once she had allowed herself to hope that her life could be normal, without drama. She’d hoped that the wedding would go ahead and that they would be happy together. Yet, if things hadn’t worked out she wouldn’t have fallen apart. It sounded ruthless but if marrying Jacob had turned out to be a disaster, she could have lived with the consequences. It wouldn’t have killed her. In some ways that was what she had wanted: the chance to make the same stupid mistakes as everyone else and not be destroyed by them. And, although she didn’t particularly care about fitting in, she did want to engage in a world where she could stumble without falling off the cliff.
However, it was Jacob who had left her. He was the one who called off the wedding and it was the right thing for him to do. She understood why he had done it. He was too young to take her on. He had his whole life ahead of him – and despite what her doctors and counsellors encouraged her to believe, she didn’t. So he left her. And she respected him for it.
She hadn’t expected to feel so lonely, though. In the weeks following the non-wedding she had slowly drained; she was like a cracked tank, her contents seeping onto the dry ground, where they turned to mud. Soft, oozing mud that eventually dried and turned to dust. It was only now – now that the house was sorted out and everything was in storage or sold – that her body had attained complete hollowness. She felt tired.
That was why she had stretched out on the lounge chair. She had wanted to rest. Her body seemed to have lost some – or all – of its strength and she’d needed just to sit down for a minute. It wasn’t as if she felt worried about her future – after all, she’d already accepted that it was pretty much a done deal. No, she was tired. And pissed off that she’d left her video recorder behind. She should have brought it.
