Living As a Moon (11 page)

Even the return to the motel was a reminder of that. Everything just as she had left it, everything her own feminine possession. No one present with whom to share her reservations concerning the meal, or her observations of the conversation of men. She rang Greta, and after a lengthy talk asked for the boys to be put on. How similar their voices were, how cheerfully off-hand, and how preoccupied their attention with a forthcoming school concert in which they were goblins in brown leather suits. ‘They sound happy, in great form,’ Margaret said when talking again to her daughter.

‘Kids are so resilient,’ Greta said. ‘They miss Dad, though. I can tell that. They’re missing you even more, so don’t stay away too long. They wanted to show you their costumes tonight. What’s it like there?’

‘It’s still hot.’

‘Drive carefully tomorrow.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing the old bach. If it’s still there, of course.’

‘Be careful driving into Christchurch,’ said Greta. Admonitions, assurances, warnings given to your children are all returned in time as the roles reverse.

In the morning Promise gave her advice on the weather and clothing. ‘Stinking hot later,’ she said. ‘That car of yours got air-conditioning I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cotton, or linen, that’s the only thing,’ she said. ‘I drive a lot with bare feet myself. Your feet are great regulators of body heat I read somewhere. It’s restful somehow in the heat.’ She didn’t say anything about sunscreen, or dark glasses, or a hat. Margaret imagined her in twenty years: even thinner, even darker, like a teak hat-stand. ‘Why don’t you call in on your way back?’ Promise asked, as if extending private hospitality.

Margaret enjoyed the drive over the Lindis Pass and into the Mackenzie Country. Until his illness Peter had done most of the open road driving, destination always the priority. Margaret was more leisurely, letting the big car loaf along a little under the speed limit. Traffic was light, and most vehicles went past, disappeared and left her at peace to enjoy the landscape and her thoughts. She and Peter had never developed the habit of listening to the radio, or a CD, while driving, and even though without his company, she preferred not to have that distraction. He had been a good talker and receptive listener. Some of her friends complained their partners never listened, never paid them attention. Her marriage had had its stress points, of course, its deficiencies, but consideration and engagement were habitual. Neither of them had sulked, neither of them took pleasure in inflicting pain. Peter was socially adept, and his talk stimulating and well informed, in contrast to the banal exchanges of many people they knew. He said that one of the things he noticed overseas was the higher level of conversation among professional people: the energy put into it as a tribute to those with whom you talked. It was one of the things she missed, having her own opinions and experience tempered, but not overwhelmed, by his incisive intelligence. Only about feelings had he not a lot to say.

The dun landscape was considered barren by some, but Margaret felt at home there. Flat country with little evidence of stock, or people. Some wilding pines, nothing that reached up far, and so the great, blue arch of the sky seemed to take up more of the space of the world. Most of her life had been set in Christchurch and then Invercargill, but her father’s family had owned a fishing bach at Lake Alexandrina, where she had often spent holiday time before she left home. As she headed there again, turning off just before Tekapo village, and driving at the foot of Mount John, she experienced a strong sense of return. Not much seemed to have changed — the road was still unsealed and the land unimproved — but her response arose from more than that. Since Peter’s death she had felt a compulsion to revisit her past, emotionally as well as physically. It was a natural and healthy part of grieving, she told herself, and would pass.

The car swayed on the rutted dirt track to the cluster of baches and trees at the south end. She remembered her father and grandfather joining with others occasionally to make ad hoc repairs on especially rough sections of the road. She remembered wintertimes with snow lying over the bare country like a pelt, and water pipes frozen in the bach, but mostly it had been as now: summer heat and the burnished rose hips like gems in the scattered wild briar.

Margaret put on her peaked suncap, and walked to the lake edge. There were more willows on the shoreline than she recalled, but little change otherwise. On the still water she could see two dinghies, one close enough for fishing rods to be visible. No power boats were allowed on Alexandrina: that was one of the things her grandparents had loved about it. It was a quiet place and what sound there was carried a long way — the slap of oars, a voice from the baches, perhaps a car starting, or the discordant call of ducks, perhaps the percussion of a man clouting shoes together to dislodge dirt from the treads. Often no sound at all except that occasioned by the movement of the air.

And the smell of landscape and lake, not town, compounded of rocks and soil, plants, insects, and damp margins under sun, wind and rain, but always in keeping with the season it accompanied.

Their bach was in the second row, and little changed. Originally an army hut with a corrugated iron extension. It had been repainted, but in a shade of blue that would in time be bleached to the colour she remembered. A man of about her own age was pottering about a boat and trailer close by. Boundaries were indeterminate and the small buildings clustered on open ground. The man asked if he could help, and Margaret told him the blue bach had once belonged to her family. ‘John and Georgina Simmons own it now,’ he said. ‘They’re not here much, because he has his own electronics business in Christchurch.’

‘The Wallace family had your place when I used to come for holidays.’

‘I bought it from them fourteen years ago. She died while they were travelling overseas, and he’s got past the fishing. He comes up just occasionally for old times’ sake. A decent old bloke, and full of tales about the lake. My name’s Philip, by the way.’

‘Margaret,’ she said. They didn’t shake hands. ‘Nothing much seems to have changed.’

‘It’s the regulations. No new places are allowed to be built because of the lack of a sewage system. They’re tough as hell on making any renovations and there’s still no electricity. It’s a bit different at the outlet. Things are more upmarket there.’ He was a tall man with an office face, and spoke well. He wore jeans and a light grey jersey with no shirt underneath. An accountant, or a dentist, she supposed, maybe a polytech lecturer. ‘Is this your first time back for a long time?’ he asked.

‘Longer than I care to say.’

‘There aren’t many quiet lakes now. That’s the thing we like about Alex. The power boaters, water skiers and tourists all hang out at Tekapo, and we’re pretty much left alone.’

‘What’s the fishing like now?’ Margaret asked.

‘You still get some good rainbow. Great eating. The old guys say brown trout were a lot more numerous years ago, but now rainbow seem to do better.’

‘I’m just going to walk round the place. That okay?’ she said.

‘Absolutely fine,’ said Philip, exercising neighbourly authority. ‘Nice to meet you,’ and he turned back to the boat and trailer. During their conversation they had remained a full twenty metres apart, but that seemed quite natural.

Margaret walked round the building. The rough tussock grass still grew to the sides, worn back only in tracks to the door. The long-drop outhouse was gone, no doubt replaced with a chemical toilet. Little else external had changed. The wooden door of the bach, large and with ribbed panels, always seemed too grandiose for the place, and had been bought from a wrecker’s yard by Margaret’s grandfather. There was a tin lean-to at the door, and on the enclosed side hung, or leant, the typical paraphernalia of the place — oars, rowlocks, thigh-length waders, rods and tackle bags at head height, kids’ toys, parkas, a cane basket, faded sunhats with set creases, a small wooden box that had once held tea and in which messages, or oddments, could be left, and three rusted horse-shoes nailed high for luck.

The smell of the place was just the same: the smell of implacable sun on wood, tin and fabric, of a place closed up for much of the time, of the trees and grass surrounding it, and faintly of fish and stale food. She didn’t press her face to the window, not because it might seem intrusive, but because she didn’t want to see any change there that might conflict with what she’d known. Inside for ever would be the old sofa, the two crowded bunk-rooms with faded quilts, the stone fireplace and the wooden table with tatty, yellow contact on its surface. Her father reading by the window, his glasses well down his nose: her mother giving some implausible description of a stranger met on her lake walk, or wondering aloud what simple meal she could concoct. And Margaret with them, but having at times the strange feeling that she was already looking back, already being silently swept past them into her own life.

Philip gave a wave as she walked from the bach back towards her car. She imagined him mentioning their meeting to his wife. Strangers were rare. He would say he met a woman whose family had owned the Simmons place, and who had known the Wallaces, and his wife would ask her name, what she looked like, say he should have found out the surname. All more to pass the time than any true curiosity. Philip’s description would make no mention of clothes, apart from the sunhat perhaps. Men make a physical inventory, not all of which is passed on: assessment of age, figure, sex potential. His wife would be fashionable perhaps, as befitted the spouse of a professional man, and tolerating the solitude and remoteness of Alexandrina because she knew he needed the break. Margaret found herself speculating more about the partnerships of others since Peter died.

Tekapo village had altered more radically, though she was familiar with that from occasionally passing through. She had lunch there, saw the new buildings that increased popularity had encouraged, and watched the Asian tourists swarm out from the buses for their photo opportunity by the lakeside chapel. She checked a slight disdain. It was no different from her own overseas bus tours: traipsing in a temporary congregation behind the guide to see the tower at Pisa, the Cappadocian caves, or the Greek monastery on a rock, and being more vitally concerned with food and lavatories, the petty vendettas within the party, than the postcard views. The things that remain most vividly in mind are those trivial revelations and incidents not mentioned in the brochures at all. Like the young American who propositioned her at the Gare de Lyon, in Paris. She had been waiting by the cases while Peter went to find their platform. The American must have been twenty years younger. Tall, well built, but with a face rather devoid of character. He put his backpack close to his feet as he sat down. ‘A madhouse,’ he said, and Margaret agreed. Maybe he was Canadian: she wasn’t good with accents. ‘Would you like to fuck?’ he said. Whenever she thought about it, she was sure he said only the one thing before that, but perhaps the impact of the question blotted out a few inconsequential comments. He must have been on something surely. ‘I was told every French woman fucked, and I haven’t scored in a month,’ he said.

‘No. I’m waiting for my husband,’ she said. He didn’t speak again, gave her just a quick glance, picked up his pack and ambled away through the throng. She was amused rather than shocked, and told Peter when he returned. She could tell that, rather than being affronted, he found it arousing. He put a hand on her hip there amid the crowd, as if he wished to cover her immediately in an act of possessive sex. For most men sex is something of itself, with no necessary connection to love, trust, procreation, even familiarity.

As Margaret had her sandwich, lemon slice and coffee at Tekapo, she wondered if that was to be the way of it now she was alone: slipping into the past rather than engaged with what was around her. Once her grieving was over things surely would be different, and after all the whole trip was an exercise in nostalgia in a way. So better to let it flow and then be done with it.

Before leaving Tekapo she sent texts to her son and daughter. ‘Make sure you check in, Mum,’ Greta had said, ‘otherwise I’ll worry.’ Margaret thought of the boys, the elder just at school. They would remember nothing perhaps of this part of their lives: her affection, the times together. That was one reason she needed a future. It was important to her that she have some place in their lives, leave an impression of her love that would be with them always.

In the late afternoon she came into Christchurch, the slanting sun and traffic making the driving unpleasant for the first time on her trip. The city was familiar, though, and she knew of a motel close to Deans Bush: off the main roads and not far from where they had lived when Greta and Andrew had been growing up. Motels were more convenient than hotels when you had a car in the city, and more private, once you had your key, your pottle of milk and the curtains drawn. She checked the bathroom, always her point of assessment — size, facilities, cleanliness, the quality and quantity of the toiletries. Sachets were inferior containers: she was pleased to see phials. Her only disappointment was the proprietors’ names. The man hadn’t introduced himself, but on the reception desk was a small stand bearing, in white letters, ‘Janice and Bruce Roberts’. So far away from the exoticism of Promise.

The house in Puriri Street was more recent in her past than the bach at Lake Alexandrina, but when she went there in the still, warm evening, Margaret found it had altered more. The side patio had been enclosed to make an incongruous conservatory, the Marseilles tiles replaced with long-run iron, and the cherry trees mutilated by savage cutbacks. She parked a little from the gate and stayed in the car so she wouldn’t attract attention by loitering at the entrance. As at the lake, she had no wish to go inside, and could furnish everything there from memory. Even in its existing form the house seemed brimful of her life, shimmering almost with barely suppressed experience. How could other people move and breathe there without awareness of earlier possession? The big windowed lounge late on Christmas Day with bottles of gift wine, chutneys and olive oil standing by a chair, a black bin liner crammed with bright wrapping paper, the ravaged plates of nuts, cherries and chocolates, the extinguished, floating candles on the stained cloth of the extended table, the strings of Christmas cards along the pelmets. Andrew’s presents gathered together by another chair, not yet taken to his room. The lesser detritus from the crackers still lying on the carpet — cardboard coins and strips from their construction, the dice, miniature whistles, tiny yo-yos, and keyrings that constituted the gifts. Peter’s discarded shoes and book, by the sofa he rested on. Greta watching clichéd television repeats. The pine branch Christmas tree drooping, but still spangled, the camera on the coffee table with images already drifting into the past.