The Predictions (22 page)

“You won’t change her mind,” said Susie. “She’s a stubborn old chook.”

“That’s right,” said Loretta. “We’ve made up the beds and that’s final.”

Tom and Loretta’s cabin was built around a set of stained glass windows salvaged from an old church. It was one of the last dwellings to be built at Gaialands, and for most of our childhood they had lived in a simple wooden shack. Then one day Tom had gone on a trip to Auckland and come home with the windows, which the men had propped up on large wooden joists, the two sets facing each other. Without working to a plan, they had built the rest of the cabin around these windows, using whatever lengths of wood they had to hand, as well as what they had salvaged from the old shack. The finished cabin had four walls, but no two were the same—or even completely straight. Atop the wooden structure was a tin roof, higher on one side than the other, and the outside walls were bright red, with white around the windows. It was straight out of a fairy tale, and like all the homemade buildings at Gaialands, it leaked. Over the long, wet winter months, Paul, the carpenter of the group, spent his days up a ladder, patching roofs.

Going to sleep in their cabin was a strange experience. As a kid I’d never really been allowed inside, especially not at night. Loretta had placed a sprig of wildflowers on the pillow of the double bed, and next to it was an old crib for Zachary, made up with pilled flannelette sheets. Loretta said they had been saving it, just in case one of us decided to come back to the commune to have babies. I was amazed when Zachary
went straight down to sleep in it, but I shouldn’t have been. I was learning that babies were nothing if not contrary.

When Zachary woke in the middle of the night to be fed, I wrapped a blanket around us both and went outside to sit on the veranda. It was a beautiful night, freezing cold, but so clear that when I looked up into the sky, it took my breath away. In between the usual array of stars were a million more, as though each one had exploded into glittering shards. A planet, too, pulsed bold and orange, amid streaks of white and purple space dust. Had it always been so dazzling? Underneath it, I felt very small, awed and lonely. I wondered what Lukas was doing. If leaving him had been the right thing to do, then why did I miss him so much? I kissed Zachary’s face and held him close, trying to soak up his warmth, his contentment.

We went back to bed, Zachary in the crib, and me on Tom and Loretta’s soft, doughy mattress; then later on, after he had refused, for hours, to sleep, Zachary tucked into the nook of my arm, and me, in the middle, afraid to do more than catnap in case I rolled on top of him or he fell out of the bed. A typical night all in all.

Not long after dawn, Zachary awoke, smiling and gurgling and eager to get on with the business of being alive, while I felt like someone had gouged my eyes out and replaced them with old worn cricket balls. We stalked the mess hall, waiting for food, company, signs of life, but the adults no longer seemed to get up with the birds. After what felt like hours, they arrived. Breakfast was porridge, gritty whole oats glued together and eaten in front of a group of eager, caring
faces. How had I slept, how had Zachary slept, had there been mosquitoes, had we been woken too early by the rooster, was the bed comfortable, the porridge up to scratch?

“Yes, thank you,” I said to everything, too knackered to elaborate.

After the breakfast bowls had been cleared away, Susie and Katrina asked if they could take Zachary for a stroll around the orchards and I was so grateful I wanted to kiss them.

Everyone else went off to do chores except Paul, who stayed behind and shyly presented me with a large cardboard folder tied with string.

“We collected all the clippings,” he said. “You know, about
Chea-tah
.” Paul pronounced the band name hesitantly, as though afraid to get it wrong. He opened the folder and began leafing through it. “There’s some from Auckland too, from before you left, about the other bands he was in. And there’s a review here somewhere . . .” He rifled through a few more pages until he found a dog-eared sheet of newsprint. “Here it is. Look, Poppy, there’s your name.”

He pointed to my byline, under the heading, “Rat Piss.” It was a review of one of Lukas’s more obnoxious bands, which I had tried to pass off as the next big thing. I quickly skimmed through it.
Oh dear.
That was the gig where the bass player had urinated into a bottle, onstage, and pretended to drink the contents, to prove what an authentic punk he was. Maybe he really had drunk the contents. He was a bit of a loose cannon. “Crikey,” I said, putting it back. “I’d forgotten about that.”

Paul chuckled. “We were glad when that phase was over.”

The folder held dozens of pieces of carefully folded, yellowing newsprint, and more recent additions on thicker, glossier magazine paper. Paul kept up a running commentary, telling me which album had just come out and how it was doing in the charts. He was an expert, quoting statistics left and right, and I quickly realized that even though no one in New Zealand had known quite what to make of Cheatah, who’d not had any hits here, every step of their progress had been reported in the newspapers as a matter of slightly confused national pride. “I can’t believe they got so much coverage here,” I said. “Lukas is the only New Zealander in the band. The rest of them are English.”

“But he’s the lead singer,” said Paul. “That’s a big deal.”

“Look at this story, though,” I said, reading out a newspaper headline. “‘Cheatah’s Second Album a Massive Flop in the UK.’ Why would they report that?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul. “I guess they need an angle.”

“The funny thing is, that’s what Lukas feels like,” I said. “A failure.”

Paul was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I worried that might happen. He was always too ambitious for his own good.”

“Too ambitious?”

“Yeah, if you want something that much, and you don’t get it—or you get something else—it messes with your head.”

“How do you know all that?”

Paul smiled wryly. “In my younger days I wanted to be an architect.”

“But you built all the houses on the commune.”

“Those are not houses,” said Paul. “They are follies.”

We both laughed.

“Well, you don’t seem screwed up about it.”

“I’ve got Sigi to thank for that. But there were some ropey years, while I came to terms with the fact that I’d never be Frank Lloyd Wright.”

“You were aiming high.”

“And so is our Lukas.”

It hit me then why Paul had kept all these clippings, why he had been so eager to share them. He was tremendously proud of his son. In the last few years, he had probably shown this same folder to everyone who had passed through the commune. I felt guilty. Through all the years, we had not so much as sent a postcard. How would I feel, I wondered, if Zachary cut me off like that?

“I’m really sorry we didn’t keep in touch,” I said to Paul, gently touching his wrist. “We didn’t think about what it would be like for you guys.”

“Of course you bloody didn’t,” said Paul, eyebrows arched in surprise. “And I did the same to my parents. Couldn’t wait to escape their clutches. Mum in her apron, always trying to feed me up, for what I was never sure, and Dad banging on about the rugby. Two years later, he was gone, and Mum was on her own, but do you think that made me visit her more often? Not a chance. I had just met Sigi and we were the only two people in the world that had ever fallen in love.” He put his big, burly hand over mine and looked me in the eye. “So not another word about it, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Before we had found out who our real fathers were, I had always hoped mine was Paul. He was kind, sensible, funny—all the qualities Lukas inherited. It made me happy to think that at least Paul was now my father-in-law—and the grandfather of my son. “Did you know Lukas and I got married?”

“Yup,” said Paul. “We read about that.”

“In the paper?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“Shhh, lass. What did I tell you?”

“I know. But that’s awful.”

“I’m sure it’s here somewhere.” Paul leafed through the folder, then read from a clipping. “‘Expat Kiwi glam rocker Lukas Harvest married his childhood sweetheart in a registry office in Chelsea at the weekend. No details on whether or not the couple wore leather, but we heard a shotgun went off during the ceremony.’” Paul laughed. “Guess they knew about the baby.”

“Let me see that.” I wondered what kind of tabloid had run a story that dreadful. The cutting was tiny, taken from the In Brief column of a newspaper—the
Auckland Star
. Next to it, a postage-stamp-sized photo of Lukas and me in a nightclub booth. My head was turned away from the camera and my hair was so big, so back-combed, that you could only see the tip of my nose. Further down, a low-cut top and cleavage, lots of cleavage, more than I had ever had in my wildest dreams, or even after Zachary was born. I looked again.
Not my cleavage
,
not my nose
. It could have been—even I had been nearly fooled—but it wasn’t me. It was Fran.

I handed the clipping back to Paul and he held another page in front of me, but I couldn’t focus on it. “Excuse me,” I said, getting up from the bench. “I think I need a rest. The jet lag is catching up.”

“Of course,” said Paul. “You must be shattered.”

In a daze, I walked to the orchard, looking for Zachary and the women, hoping the sight of him might cleanse the photo of Lukas and Fran from my mind. I started to panic. Where was he, my precious baby, and why had I let him so casually out of my sight? I walked through the orchard. The trees had bloomed and dropped a carpet of white petals on the ground.

“Poppy!” called a woman’s voice. “Over here!”

Under a tree at the edge of the orchard, Susie and Katrina lay sprawled on the ground, and between them, Zachary, cycling his legs in the air.

“We’ve had such a lovely time,” said Susie, tickling Zachary’s tummy and making him giggle. “We were just saying how nice it was to have a baby here again.”

“We’ve decided he looks like his dad,” said Katrina. “Especially around the eyes and chin.”

“He’s got your mouth though,” added Susie.

I scooped up Zachary. “He’s hungry,” I said, taking off with him clutched to my chest.

It was hard to find anywhere to be alone on the commune. I had forgotten that part. Even the huts, which in theory were private, had such thin walls and such drafty windows that it was more like being outside than in a house. In the old days, when I needed time to think or just wanted
to be on my own, I had walked off into the forest, hid behind trees, ignored the call of my name.

Someone was calling it now, from the direction of the mess hut, where ten minutes earlier, the cowbell had rung for lunch. I wasn’t hungry, nor did I want to have to explain to anyone why not. I just wanted to be left on my own to calm down.

I hid in Tom and Loretta’s cabin, where I lay on the bed in fetal position, after settling Zachary in his crib. A few minutes later came a knock at the door.

“I brought you some lunch,” said Sigi. “I’ll bring it in, shall I?”

She bowled on in with the tray. I was lying with my back to the door, and she walked over to the bedside table, rearranged whatever was on it, and set down the tray. “Chickpea casserole,” she whispered. “So much nicer when it’s hot.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, trying to sound half-asleep.

“Are you unwell?”

“No. Just tired.”

“I’ll fetch my herbs—make you a fortifying drink.”

“Thank you but I’m fine.”

I sensed Sigi hovering by the bed for a moment, then she went over to Zachary’s crib, where she made clucking noises and rustled the sheets and blankets, probably trying to tuck him in. He had been sighing before that, drifting off to sleep, but now he roused himself and started cooing and giggling, wide awake. Not only would he not sleep now, but also because he hadn’t napped, I wouldn’t be able to either, and the pair of us would be grizzly and fractious all afternoon.

“Please leave him,” I said irritably, sitting up and glaring at Sigi. She gave me a wounded look.

At dinner, the adults asked all the questions they had been too polite to ask the night before. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood, experiencing their loving inquiries as unwelcome intrusion. I wondered if they had started to suspect I was back at the commune because things had soured between Lukas and me. Perhaps they had guessed it the moment I showed up.

“Tell us where you live,” asked Loretta. “Is it in a very posh part of London?”

“It’s very small, a garden flat.”

“And your neighbors, do they bother you?”

“We haven’t met them. People keep to themselves.”

Loretta’s sigh was world weary. “They’re used to seeing famous people in the neighborhood.”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“How long will you be here for?” asked Katrina. “You’ve come such a long way, you may as well stay for the summer.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Maybe.”

“If you’re here for the solstice,” said Sigi, “we should celebrate. We could invite Nelly and her husband, track down some of the others.”

“Do you think they would come?” said Loretta.

“They might,” said Tom. “If we knew where to find them.”

“Is Nelly still in Opua?”

“Yes,” said Susie, her birth mother. “She’s the only one who keeps in touch.”

I thought of Nelly’s prediction, swarming with offspring and love hearts. “How many kids does she have now?”

Susie chuckled. “At the last count, five. She told us Ned has one too. But we don’t know who the mother is. We think he’s still in Wellington.”

“Is that where Meg is?” I looked to Sigi. She had tried so hard to make up for lost time with her daughter, once everything was out in the open. I hoped for her sake that Meg had stayed in touch.

With an unhappy look, Sigi said, “I don’t know.”

Katrina added, of Timon, “I don’t know where my son is either.”

The room fell into a gloomy silence. No wonder they had been so pleased to see us. I tried to remember everyone’s predictions, as if they might hold clues to their whereabouts, but the only card I could recall with any degree of clarity had belonged to Fritz. No one, since I had been back, had mentioned him, and I wondered if they thought of him the same way they thought of the rest of us, as yet another kid who had left home and never come back.