Peninsula, page 18
Jim will be watching TV in the lounge. She should go around and tap on the back door. And she would have if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of the dusty, cobweb-infested top windows of the wash house. She retraces her steps along the concrete path, back past the garage to the rear of the house. Below her old bedroom, an identical set of windows are limp and unlatched. Scanning the surroundings, she selects a wooden apple box, an heirloom from Di’s father’s apple orchard. Emptied of its cargo of old plant pots, and placed on the concrete under the sill, it makes a rudimentary ladder.
She climbs onto it, weight over her feet. The window yields to her push, revealing a promising gap. One leg twists through the slit onto the inside sill. She scrunches her trunk and head up close and levers herself through the slot, leaning as far forward as she can without toppling to the floor. Last comes her other leg. Safely on the ground, she rights herself, brushes at a few cobwebs and quietly returns the window to its original position.
Emerging into the hallway she can hardly hear the TV above the snoring coming from the master bedroom. As a child, she’d perch on the edge of the bed in that room to watch her mother apply her make-up before going into town. Now the room has an abandoned doll’s house feel, though her parents probably spend more time here than ever before. Di’s head is resting on a light blue pillow. Rachel studies her mother’s pale face, wondering if she is feigning sleep, but the snoring is so loud. Jim’s snoring has got worse too. Once, it was a mild irritation, like a persistent cough, something to make wry jokes about after a night trying to block out the noise. Di’s snoring is an indication she’s breathing.
Rachel continues to the end of the hallway, opens the kitchen door. Three steps through the dining room. Two large cellophane-wrapped cakes and two boxes of medications fill the table. The packet of needles sitting on a stack of mail are new. She pokes her head around the doorway separating the dining room from the lounge.
Jim lies on the chocolate couch. His silver hair needs cutting, there are big bags under his eyes. His face is red with a white undercoat showing through. He’s in his good trousers and jumper, cleanish socks by the looks of it, no pieces of hay falling off them at least. The remnants of his breakfast cling to the coffee table, one of Jack’s old woodwork projects. The breakfast tray is competing for space with stacks of newspapers, bags of cashews and jellybeans, and plastic water bottles. A golf tournament is on TV.
‘Still alive?’
Jim starts. He looks in her direction and his eyes widen. He makes an effort to sit up. ‘How did you get in?’
‘The window. I knocked but you didn’t hear.’ This isn’t true. She hadn’t wished to wake Di, wanted to catch Jim alone before he disappeared to the clubrooms.
‘What window?’ Jim uses his remote to turn the sound down.
‘Bedroom.’ It’s childish, but she’s chuffed she climbed in. She sits down in Di’s clapped-out La-Z-Boy, careful not to disturb the piles of brightly coloured wool and half-finished toys either side.
‘You climbed in. When did you get up?’ Jim asks.
‘Jack picked me up last night. How’s Mum?’
Jim pulls a face. ‘Still alive.’
As a child she’d hated being ill. The way time slowed down, her world reduced to the scratch of the old towel Di folded over her duvet, the faded yellow plastic basin beside the bed in case she needed to throw up. The glass of flat lemonade on the bedside table. Nothing to do except try to sleep or count stains and cobwebs on the ceiling, wondering if daylight would penetrate the curtains before she needed to go for a pee. Listening for the throb of the motorbike engine signalling Jim’s return from the cowshed. She would hear the front door squeak, the thump of his steps down the hallway. A pause followed by the sound of running water in the bathroom as he washed up. More thumps and silence. She wouldn’t be able to resist opening her eyes. He’d be standing in the doorway. ‘Is the patient still alive?’ She would squirm beneath her sheets before replying. Even though she knew he said the same thing to Jack and Willy when they were sick, it felt for a wonderful moment like she was his only child.
‘Golf?’
Jim looks at the clock on the wall. ‘Soon.’
When Rachel, Jack and Willy were little, winter Saturday golf was Jim’s time off the farm and their time with their mother. They would help her make special lunches. Pancakes, bacon and egg pie, fried scones, or their favourite, potato bird’s nest. Years later, Rachel encountered the grown-up version in a restaurant. She eyed the limp, overpriced fritter oozing yellow fat like dishwashing liquid, and thought warmly of Di.
A quarry truck rumbles past, shaking the room, making conversation impossible for a moment. She wonders about the locked door. Have her parents reached the stage where they feel they need to lock the world out and view it through the TV, or are they worried about intruders?
‘I’ll get Mum.’ Jim raises his voice: ‘You’re wanted!’ Then, more quietly, ‘She’s usually up before now, watches the six o’clock news.’ He inches himself upright, preparing to swing his long legs to the floor so he can start the process of levering himself up from the depths of the couch.
Rachel pretends not to notice.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back later. I’m off for a run, just checking in first.’
‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
Jim has a way of repeating himself. Rachel always took it for granted, found it comforting, until her mother started doing it. It was then she realised it’s a habit associated with forgetfulness, with aging. Maybe other people found it odd when Jim did it as a young man. Visiting her parents intermittently has sharpened her ability to notice little changes, like the spots of mould on the bathroom ceiling.
‘You’re wanted!’
Jim is sat on the edge of the couch now. He waves the remote and starts to explain what is wrong with a particular golfer’s technique when Di appears in the doorway. She looks like her favourite blue heron. Her blue towelling dressing gown has lost most of its fluff and fails to hide her stick legs. Around her slender face rest tight silver curls that remind Rachel of the little metallic balls that used to be popular on iced Christmas cakes. A good way to break a tooth, biting one of those. Di shuffles the two steps to her newish La-Z-Boy, in between the old one Rachel has claimed and Jim’s couch.
Di attempts to set her glass of water on the box of wool beside her chair. Her hand is trembling, so even with the glass only half full there is some doubt as to whether she’ll land it without spillage. Rachel half rises to assist but thinks better of it. Mission accomplished. Di clasps her hands together in her lap.
Rachel is trying to work out whether her mother’s tremor is worse than the last time she saw her. Jim’s eyes dart in her direction then away.
‘I caught a burglar,’ he says.
There is a pause as Di appears to gather her thoughts. She turns to Rachel as if she is a visitor. ‘When did you get up?’
‘Last night. Thought I’d surprise you. Go back to bed Mum. I’m going for a run.’
Di points at Jim.
‘He hasn’t been drinking enough water. I put a bottle beside him but he doesn’t drink. Perhaps he’ll listen to his daughter. ‘
‘She doesn’t eat anything!’ Jim says.
‘Quarry trucks woke me up,’ Rachel says. ‘Have they started working longer hours?’
‘5am, six days a week,’ Di replies.
‘Are there more companies? I remember the green and yellow trucks but not the red ones.’
‘Three trucking outfits, two routes, truck every few minutes.’
Trucks were the reason Rachel and Jack were useless at cycling. Her parents banned bicycles, fearing if the kids ventured onto the road they’d be flattened. When they were growing up the road was gravel, its maintenance a low priority. Winter floods regularly stripped the gravel surface, mixed stone fragments with dust, and deposited the resulting metallic sludge in adjacent paddocks, where it found its way into the creek. The trucks wove unsteadily between potholes as they transported their cargo. Spotting a kid on a bike amid the dust clouds would’ve been difficult.
‘At least there isn’t the dust, with the road sealed,’ Rachel says.
When her parents built their house, they chose a site close to the road rather than opting for a long driveway as was common in the valley. By the time the sealing eventuated, she had long departed the district. In those intervening dust-filled decades they’d countered civic indifference with do-it-yourself solutions. Jim planted clumps of fast-growing bamboo to ward off the grime, other hedges too, though Rachel remembers the bamboo most, partly because remnants remain. The bamboo spread like an enthusiastic protest march, shedding crisp brown leaves that crackled underfoot like empty chip bags and stuck to everything, particularly the dirt. As with any battle, there was collateral damage. Dead leaves clogged the guttering, creating fountains when it rained. No one in the family suffered from asthma, but anyone who did knew not to visit.
One summer holiday Rachel returned to find the road sealed. ‘Finally found enough councillors who live on the other side of the gravel to get something done,’ was Di’s assessment. Willy organised a mock opening ceremony. Jim’s mother was coaxed down the driveway to her mailbox to cut the ribbon they’d strung across the road.
‘You supported the resource consent for the new quarry?’ Rachel asks Di now, without looking at her.
‘Sara rang and asked us to.’
‘Oh Mum, really?’
‘Hippies in the village were kicking up a fuss, even though it’s them that need the metal for their roads and houses. They’ve turned into Nimbys. Hate quarries, and they hate farmers as well, except for pretend organic egg-farming like what’s going on behind the airstrip. Our hens are more organic.’
Rachel turns to Jim. ‘She didn’t ask you?’
‘Your father doesn’t answer the phone as you’re well aware, but he doesn’t have any objection, do you?’ Di looks at Jim.
Jim shrugs. ‘Sara’s land. Long as I don’t have to listen to her. Talks your ear off. Had a nosey at the quarry last week. Lots of new machinery, big operation, mountains of metal, computers like you use, it’s changed.’
‘It’s like mining. It is mining. Mining greywacke.’
‘Quarries give people jobs. Not everyone’s good at studying. Better they have something to do around here than unemployed and taking drugs.’ Jim has gotten himself into a standing position. ‘Gotta go to golf.’
At the doorway he turns. ‘Old quarry, they wanted to lease some of the acres they sold me over by where those campervans are parked by the creek. Told ’em needed it for pasture.’
Rachel doesn’t say anything. She rises and gathers up her running pack as Jim goes out.
‘What are you having for breakfast?’ she asks Di.
‘I have an Up and Go. I’ll get it.’ Di stands. ‘Afterwards I’ll go on my walk. What did you have for breakfast?’
Rachel is glad she resisted the impulse to tell her mother Up and Gos are not a healthy choice. ‘I’ll have breakfast later.’
Di stands at the front door, watching as Rachel pulls on her running pack.
‘Which way are you going?’
‘Towards the beach, away from the trucks.’
‘You don’t have to live here like we do,’ Di says. ‘Have a nice run.’
Rachel prefers to run off-road, but asphalt is better than risking a sprained ankle on the lumpy paddocks. Back only a few hours and she’s fallen into her old pattern. It’s a convenient way to assess the lay of the land. Now everything is sealed, an effort has been made to ensure floodwater drains off the surface. A ditch separates road from fenced fields. It traps the occasional vehicle travelling too fast and also acts as a collection site for rubbish. The sheer volume of bottles, cans and disposable cups surprises her.
City folk, or people from Hereford? The local beach isn’t a popular tourist destination. Apart from the old campground, most of the ocean front is Māori land with restricted access. One of the few places resisting development. The beach is guarded by fierce rips, and thanks to its exposure to the prevailing nor’easter, monster swells. A place possessed of a feral energy and unadorned beauty that frustrates those seeking regular features and placid water for swimming, fishing and picnics. Not Insta-friendly. As if to underline the point there are homemade signs: No Dogs, No Guns, No Trespassing. Rusted machinery skulks among corrugated-iron shacks and decaying fences. Patches of singed grass and oil stains share real estate with crumpled cans and plastic bags fumed by salt spray and the stench of urine.
On her last visit Rachel noticed recent dune plantings. Probably linked to the walking trail that passes nearby. All the unmodified bush and the best views are locked up behind tall gates guarding mansions and helicopter pads. If walkers realised before setting off that they’d be toiling on a muddy rutted trail through distinctly mediocre corridors of bush, their only reward a few glimpses of the coast through the kānuka and clag, they surely wouldn’t bother.
There’s a feeling that the buildings on the roadside have had the life sucked out of them and deposited in the more glamorous estuary and surf village to the north and the millionaires’ playground to the south. She recalls reading cases at law school challenging the practice of dredging sand from the foreshore to install on Auckland’s eastern bays. Relocation of sand from some remote site to a more convenient spot for people to have barbecues. The thought causes her to increase her pace till her sunscreen melts down her forehead and she has to slow to wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. Monetising sand under the guise of mitigating coastal erosion is nothing new, but when it’s your childhood beach it stings.
From the top of the hill she has a clear view to the beach, though she won’t run as far as the shoreline today. Cantering down the hill generates the same joyful feeling of climbing through her old bedroom window. A kind of awe at what her body can do. She thinks about her parents, how they are anchored to the farm. Her work is in her head. It goes where she does, as variable and intangible as a spring breeze whose presence is felt in rippling flags of toetoe or a pool of pink petals at the base of a plum tree. A portable existence. Di is right, she doesn’t have to live here.
From the bottom it’s a long, undulating slog to the tiny township where she and Jack nearly went to school.
It was raining the morning the Education Department lady turned up, otherwise her mother would have sent her and Jack outside. Di made the woman a cup of tea and set her down at the dining room table. Rachel and Jack were in the lounge, listening while pretending to play with their toy farm. The beachside school needed its roll bolstered in order to remain open. Benefits included less travel time, lots of individual attention for better learning outcomes, socialisation across a range of ages.
‘My daughter is shy,’ Di said. ‘Took long enough to settle her into Hereford Primary. I would prefer not to change her again.’
‘Your two seem cute as buttons. You’ve done a fine job considering your isolation. She seems outgoing and well-adjusted to me.’
They could hear the condescension in her voice, as sour as marmalade.
Di spoke in the slicing tone she normally reserved for when someone dared to venture inside with their muddy gumboots on. ‘She’s at home with her twin brother, I would hope so. And how does the teacher ensure they learn when there are pupils from five years old to twelve in the same class?’
They didn’t have to go to the small school. The lady must have found some more pliable families in other valleys. Rachel and Jack continued to make the half-hour bus trip to Hereford. It wasn’t that Rachel wouldn’t have adjusted to a small school, but it would have made returning to Hereford for high school harder. She had seen it when kids arrived from the remote schools. They were picked on, bullied, forced to battle for acceptance. Di had protected her then, as she’d done countless times throughout her childhood. Rachel wishes she could protect Di now, Jim too.
She’s nearly at the school. A woman in a bright red headscarf waves from the side road opposite. Tui. Rachel hesitates but there is nowhere to hide. She jogs towards her.
‘Rachel! I’d recognise those legs anywhere, same as your mother’s. You must be ready for a rest if you’ve run over that hill. Come in for a coffee.’
Rachel searches for a graceful way to refuse.
‘Don’t worry if you need to be back, I can always give you a lift. Defeats the whole exercise purpose I know, but you’re as skinny as a scratch match, won’t do you any harm.’
Rachel smiles to cover her awkwardness and follows Tui into her house. She hadn’t realised Tui lived next to the school.
‘Sit down there my dear. Jug will boil in a sec. Peaceful at the moment, Hori’s up the coast fishing. How are your mum and dad, pleased to see you I bet?’
‘I hadn’t seen them for a bit, they’ve aged I guess.’
‘Oh, they’re getting old all right, but they’re keeping active, your dad with his golf and tinkering around on the farm, your mother walking all around the place and helping me with baking and sewing for the hospice.’
‘Do people buy the dolls?’
Tui winks. ‘Oh, they do. We donated some to Starship, Gemma’s niece works there. They were short of soft toys. Anything homemade. Di makes real quirky ones, lime-green hair with gold flecks, some with gold earrings, all blinged up. She’s mostly doing woolly hats and scarves at the moment, good for winter.’
‘She walks along the road.’
‘Yeah, I heard. My grandson works at the quarries. He’s told her it’s not the best place to exercise. Here you are running along them, setting your mother a fine example. You Carltons always on the go.’
Rachel blushes and shivers at the same time. She reaches into her pack for her jacket.
‘Ever think of moving back?’
She pulls her jacket over her head. The nylon feels clammy against her arms. She wishes she’d driven to the peninsula to run. ‘It’s all right for a visit, I mean the coast is beautiful. But it’s changed. Too many people, tourists, and all the Aucklanders who’ve moved up too. It would be okay if you didn’t know what it used to be like. Some things are better I guess.’ Rachel pauses. Nothing ‘better’ springs to mind, but she wants to say the right words so as not to appear negative or, worse, pretentious. ‘There aren’t any jobs I could do.’ She doesn’t add, although it hovers in the air between them, that she’d prefer to keep her distance from her parents.
