Huia Short Stories 10 (20 page)

Of Good and Evil

Mark Sweet

19

Only after he hears his father's car leaving does he come out of his room.

‘I don't want to go to school today,' he says.

‘Do you feel sick?'

‘No.'

‘Then you must go to school.'

‘We've got swimming practice,' he says, ‘and I don't want anybody to see this.'

He pulls up his pyjama top and shows her his back. The skin is broken in places and crusts of tiny crystals have formed over the wounds.

‘I'm so sorry,' his mother says.

He doesn't tell her he has scratched the welts to make them appear worse.

‘I'm having the Humber serviced today,' she says, as she dabs his wounds with red liquid poured from a bottle onto cotton wool. He winces and sucks in his breath.

‘We must get cracking. The appointment's for nine o'clock.'

‘Can we go to the Farmers' Tearooms?'

‘Yes, of course.'

The Farmers' Tearooms are opposite Tourist Motors where they take the car for servicing. His mother always chats with Mr Robinson, and while they're talking he wanders around the yard looking at the cars for sale. He can't help sniggering when he sees the big sign saying, ‘Rootes Group'.

‘I need to go to Westerman's first,' his mother says, and they walk the block to the big department store. While she shops, he stays by the counter and watches people paying. An old woman brings a stack of sheets and pillow cases and pays with notes. The assistant writes up an invoice, which she folds around the money and fastens with a rubber band before stuffing it into a canister. She places the canister in a tube that curls like a snake away from the counter, twisting across the ceiling, ending in a glass-framed office high above. With the push of a button the canister is propelled inside the tube, and by the time the purchase is wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, the canister has returned with the change.

At the Farmers' Tearooms he insists on taking the lift even though they have only one floor to travel. As he's closing the grated metal doors a voice calls out, ‘Wait for me,' and Mr Grosser's wife, Pauline, squeezes her ample backside through the gap before he has time to prise the gates open. ‘Have you heard about Beth?' she says breathlessly.

‘Yes, it's very sad,' his mother says, ‘but I didn't know her. Did you?'

‘Oh yes, she's younger, but we were at school together. Always a wild one was Beth.'

‘John said it was a car crash. Do you know anything more?'

‘Well,' Mrs Grosser lowers her voice and looks around although there's no one else in the lift, ‘They would say that, wouldn't they?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘She was into drugs, didn't you know?'

‘You saying she OD'd?'

‘OD'd?'

‘An overdose.'

‘Most likely, isn't it?'

‘I don't know. Why not just say so?'

‘Oh, you know Anne and John.'

‘No, not really.'

‘Well,' Mrs Grosser sighs with a heave of her chest and edges closer. ‘Those accusations about John doing things to her.'

His mother's eyebrows crumple, and she shakes her head.

‘Just to get money, of course,' Mrs Grosser says quickly.

Callum heaves the lift doors open and his mother and Mrs Grosser are bound in chatter as they queue at the long servery in front of glass cabinets stacked with sandwiches and rolls and pastries. He chooses a chocolate éclair and a pink lamington crusted in coconut flakes, then asks Mr Van Bohemen for a banana milkshake.

When they sit down at a table by an open window overlooking the street below, he counts the cars passing by and quietly names the makes: Consul, Zephyr, Super Minx, Cortina. His attention is drawn to Mrs Grosser when she says, ‘So sorry to hear about GT. Pete tells me you're putting him into Gonville. For his own good, of course.'

His mother is shaking her head, a sign for Mrs Grosser to stop talking, but she doesn't pick up the cue, and says, ‘So sad when they go senile. My poor old father was the same. The war was too much for him in the end.'

‘Please, Pauline, not now,' his mother says firmly as a waitress brings their drinks to the table.

Mrs Grosser winks and quickly says, ‘That Dutchman makes a good coffee. How's your milkshake, Callum?'

He wants to spit some at her through his straw but instead says, ‘His name is Mr Van Bohemen.'

‘What a funny name. You'd think they'd change it to make it easier to say, wouldn't you? Make it easier to fit in.'

Callum sneers at Mrs Grosser and goes back to counting cars. When he sees Jack Madden's green Zephyr pulling into Tourist Motors he nudges his mother and says, ‘It's after eleven. The car will be ready now.'

Jack Madden is talking with Mr Robinson beside a brand new Chrysler Valiant, and Callum likes the way Jack smiles when he sees them.

‘What a lovely surprise,' Jack says.

‘You going to buy it?' he asks.

‘What do you reckon?'

‘It's the V8. Five litre. Really good car,' he says.

Jack Madden ruffles his hair, and he doesn't pull away.

‘That's it then,' Jack says to Mr Robinson. ‘The young fella likes it, so I'll order one now.'

‘What colour you gonna get?'

‘What do you reckon.'

‘Silver, definitely silver.'

‘Done,' Jack says.

Mr Robinson seems pleased and says, ‘We'll go to the office, shall we, and do the paperwork?'

‘Sorry,' says Jack, ‘I have to get out to the beach. I'll come back Friday, if that's OK. Same time.'

‘That's just fine,' says Mr Robinson, ‘I'll have everything ready for you then.' Turning to Callum's mother, he says, ‘All's well with the Humber, Mrs Gow. I'll get you the keys.'

The Humber is parked at the front of the yard. The tyres have been blackened, the paintwork and chrome trim cleaned and polished.

‘Callum,' says his mother, ‘Could you go with Mr Robinson for the keys, please.'

Glancing over his shoulder he sees her standing very close to Jack, and when he returns his mother is twisting a strand of hair in her fingers. By the way she's looking at Jack, he knows she likes him, a lot.

‘Callum dear,' she says, ‘Jack's asked if you'd like to go out to the beach with him.'

He hesitates because uppermost in his mind is the need to tell his grandfather about the plot to put him in a home.

‘I have to pick up my crayfish pots,' says Jack, ‘Could do with some help.'

‘In a boat?'

‘Yeah.'

‘OK,' he says.

20

As soon as they leave Tourist Motors he asks Jack to pass by Caroline Road so he can warn his grandfather, but Jack says, ‘We're running late for the tide already. How about I take you on the way back?'

‘You promise?'

‘You bet I promise. And I never break my word, ever. OK?'

‘OK.'

The drive takes them under mighty cliffs, and he spots white tufts dotted on rocky faces high above them. He knows these cliffs well, and often he follows the goats along their hoof-worn trails. He likes to explore the caves scarped into the cliffs, mostly alone, but sometimes with neighbourhood boys; the Mackintosh brothers, Ian Jones, and Brett Thompson.

When alone he simply watches how one billy always leads while another follows the herd, and when they stop to graze the billies place themselves as sentries on the fringes.

With the boys, he is part of a pack. They harass and chase the goats, barking like mad dogs.

On the other side of the road and across the river, a whitewashed homestead is shimmering in the midday sun. He's surprised Jack doesn't know the story of the house being moved up the river from Clive on a barge, and in the process, being freed of the ghost that had haunted its occupants for years. He's intrigued when Jack tells him about the man who hanged himself after he ran out of money building a big concrete mansion named Craggy Range.

They haven't stopped talking since leaving Hastings, and he appreciates why his mother likes Jack Madden. Unlike his father, Jack seems happy, and he can ask him questions he could never ask his father.

‘Why would he kill himself just because he ran out of money?'

‘There's probably more to it,' Jack says. ‘It's just that sometimes problems get so much for some people they see suicide as the only way out.'

‘Do you know about Granddad's friend Ralph Gibson who killed himself in the First World War?'

Frowning, Jack says, ‘No I don't, but it was a terrible war. The trenches, the gas, appalling conditions. My father was wounded at Gallipoli. He was lucky really because he got sent home, but he never really recovered. Sometimes he'd stay in bed for days.'

Encouraged by Jack's seriousness, he says, ‘Granddad talks to Ralph, and Mummy and Daddy want to put him in a home. They're going to get Dr Stockby to say his mind has gone. It's not fair.'

‘Maybe it's for his own good,' Jack says.

‘No, it's not,' he says emphatically. ‘Granddad's old. That's all.'

‘Do you want me to have a word with your mother?'

‘Would you? She might get angry.'

Jack smiles, his chest heaves and he says, ‘I think I can handle that.'

‘Are you ready?'

‘Ready for what?'

‘To be the first to see the sea,' Jack says, pulling himself up in his seat and peering wide eyed over the bonnet of the car. ‘Fir—'

‘First to see the sea,' he shouts.

‘Damn, you beat me,' Jack says as he pulls off the road. He stops the car and points to the beach far below. ‘Still some force in those waves,' he says.

The beach stretches in a wide grin of white sand and waves peel onto the shore in orderly procession. Jack has waited two days for the sea to calm since an unexpected southerly blasted up the coast soon after he set his crayfish pots.

Memory of the storm still lingers in the sea, and Jack shows Callum how to read the pattern by counting the sets of waves as they reach the shore. ‘See,' he says, ‘seven or eight waves together, then a lull. That's when we'll go for it.'

The approach to the higgledy-piggledy cluster of baches is down a steep and narrow roadway cut into a limestone cliff. The surface of the road is corrugated into compact welts running across its width, and the Zephyr groans as it shudders towards the narrow bridge. Cottages perch on the banks of a stream. Tall grasses and wild flowers lap around their fringes. Curtains are drawn.

‘Doesn't anyone live here?'

‘It's a summer holiday place. Haven't you been here before?'

‘Never. We don't go to the beach much. Dad doesn't like it. He says sea air wrecks everything. We go to the lake.'

‘Taupō?'

‘Yes, we've got a house there. Right on the lake. It's really nice. It's got a hot pool.'

‘No hot pools here,' says Jack, laughing, as he pulls the car up beside a faded blue fibrolite wall. ‘Just lots of cold water. Come on.'

Jack's fingers run along the lintel. ‘I could do with a hand getting the gear out,' he says, unlocking the door.

The gear is an outboard motor, oars, and life jackets, stowed in different places around the room: oars strung up so they hug the ceiling, the outboard resting on a rack beside the door. ‘The life jackets are under the bed,' Jack says.

Callum lies on his side, and when he pulls out a life jacket, a blue metal butterfly falls with a tinkle beside his cheek. He scoops his mother's hairclip up and puts it in his back pocket as he gets to his feet.

‘Found them?' Jack calls.

‘Yep.'

‘Would you bring the oars? I'll get this engine hitched up.'

The boat, cradled on a trailer hooked to a rusty tractor, seems very small. He estimates it's no more than twelve feet long. He taps the sides; it's made of tin. Jack is attaching a fuel line to the outboard; its shaft and propeller sit in a bucket filling with water. ‘Do me a favour and turn the tap off,' Jack says. ‘We'll give her a whirl.' With half a pull of the cord the engine snaps into life. ‘Let it warm up a bit so she doesn't stall on us.'

Jack tells him to stand on the back of the tractor and hang on tight, and he rides the bumps by bending his knees, bowing his head to the rush of sticky salt air stinging his eyes.

On the beach, the crashing waves drown the thudding of the tractor engine, and when Jack swings in a U-turn, he jumps down onto the sand and follows the boat backing into the water.

He holds the boat while Jack parks the tractor and trailer up the beach. The tide is coming in.

‘OK. You hop in and stand up front. You're the eyes,' Jack says as he pushes the boat into deeper water. ‘Wait for the lull, then count the next set. Seven to eight, remember. Then we go. OK?' Jack tugs the starting cord and twists the throttle.

‘OK.' The sea is a confusion of tumbling white water as tougher waves rush to overpower weaker ones ahead. Beyond the surf the sea is flat, but soon the calm is disturbed by a rising wave, then another, and another, and when he has counted eight, he shouts. ‘Go, Jack, go now.' And Jack engages the engine.

He staggers but deftly finds his balance, quickly squatting as the boat speeds across the foaming water. Already the sea is heaving up the first wave in the next set, and by the time they meet, the top of the wave is beginning to flutter. Spray whips his face as the bow pushes over the top, and skidding down the back of the wave, he turns to look at Jack, who meets his thrill-filled laughter with a bonding smile.

Jack has set his crayfish pots on the edge of a reef where slick black snakes of kelp sweep the water like a submerged Medusa shaking her head. Two orange buoys, set a few feet apart, tease the thrashing hair.

‘First pot,' Jack says, pulling back on the throttle and scooping the rope up with his spare hand. He hauls until the wire mesh cage smacks against the boat. ‘Whoopee!' he yells, ‘Look at that, will yer, Callum.'