Starlight Peninsula (25 page)

‘So,’ Eloise said, looking at Klaudia narrowly, ‘how was the retreat?’

Klaudia’s smile was shameless. ‘Very refreshing, thank you.’

Eloise sat silent.

‘How have you been, Eloise?’

‘Oh
fine. Great
.’

‘Is something on your mind? You seem a little …’

‘Terrific. Box of birds, me.’

No sign of the rat out there. Perhaps it was on a little retreat of its own.

Klaudia had a fresh suntan. Her skin was glowing, her eyes were bright. When they’d entered her office, she’d done a little stretching routine before sitting down.

Eloise maintained a neutral expression.

‘Do you have some things to tell me? How is the relationship with your neighbour?’

‘It’s fine.’ Eloise roused herself. Sulking was such hard work. ‘It would be great if I could trust him.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I don’t trust anyone. Well, that’s not true, I trust my colleague Scott and his wife Thee, and my sister Carina. And Silvio. Not a huge line-up.’

‘And me of course,’ Klaudia said, archly.

Eloise waited, with a chilly smile, before saying, ‘I hope so.’

‘You know, Eloise, our sense of trust can develop very early. When we are young children.’

‘Right. Blame your parents.’

‘Unfortunately. Your parents might think it’s unfair, but they are usually to blame for quite a lot! Our turn to be blamed comes when we are parents ourselves.’

Eloise said, ‘While you were away on your
yoga retreat
…’

‘Yes?’

‘My mother was at my house. I burst into tears in front of her. I couldn’t control myself. It was completely unexpected. Really big sobs. And it was the strangest thing, she just looked at me. Intently. She didn’t move, except to drum her fingers very slowly on the roof of the car.’

‘No hug? No kind words?’

‘Her expression — it was like a cat looking at a mouse.’

‘No empathy,’ Klaudia said grimly. She made a note in her file.

As usual, Eloise tried to rein herself in, and gave up. ‘Years ago, when Arthur had just died, I was numb, in shock. I had a moment when I came near to understanding properly that he was dead. I heard my mother coming up the stairs. I must have offended her, because she put her head around the door and said, Eloise, I just want to say, please do not be mean to me. Then she left.’

Klaudia nodded.

Eloise rushed on, ‘In her mind, it was all about her. She had no conception of what I was dealing with.’

‘I see.’

‘It was devastating. Not only no hugs and no kind words, but actually no understanding at all. Just a void. It’s like she lives in a hall of mirrors. Everywhere she looks, there’s only herself.’

She paused. Klaudia was making a noise in her nose. Inhaling, in, out.

‘Just breathe, Eloise. Deep breaths.’

‘My father would say I’m imagining things.’

‘Well, Eloise, all you have done is to say it finally: the emperor has no clothes.’

‘So I’m not mad.’

‘I would say not. You are calling a spade a spade. As I said before, telling our true story has to be existentially important.’

Klaudia glanced down at her notes. ‘Have you heard from your ex-husband lately?’

‘No. But I’m sure I will soon. I’m going to have to move out of the house. Which makes me sad.’

‘Perhaps it will be good for you to live in a less challenging environment. You could find an apartment with a friend. Somewhere cosy.’

‘I love the peninsula. I don’t want to leave.’

Klaudia’s eyes seemed to redden, to turn moist. She drew in a deep breath. ‘But tell me. What do you dream of, Eloise? What would make you whole?’

Dream of? Whole?
Eloise recoiled slightly.
Steady on, Klaudia. Less of the schmaltz. Hold the Americanisms
. She considered how to answer, watching for the rat. His pile of leaves had been swept away.

Finally she said, ‘If the house is a metaphor for the mind, then what I would like is to fill it.’

‘Fill the house? The mind?’

‘Both. With people.’

‘If I understand you, Eloise, this will involve trust.’

Don’t say ‘reaching out
’.

‘It will involve you in reaching out to people.’

Quite the cliché-monger today, Klaudia
.

Eloise said with an attempt at dignity, ‘It is possible that I have difficulty with trust. It takes me on average about seven years to make friends, and even then I can hardly stand it. If things get friendly too fast, I feel as if I’m facing a blinding searchlight. I have to retreat. The only way I’ve become so close to Scott is by working with him every day. And he’s a lovely man.’

Klaudia was inhaling again. ‘Breathe, Eloise.’

Had she raised her voice?

‘Seven years to make friends, you say?’

‘That was a joke. Hyperbole. I also love and trust Scott’s wife. She’s cool. And I loved Sean. I miss him. I miss him and he’s gone off with that drip, bimbo, airhead …’

‘Breathe Eloise!’

Klaudia waited.

Eloise found she was actually not breathing at all. She gripped the arms of the chair.

‘Okay. I’m breathing.’

‘I think you are a little anxious today.’

‘I am a bit tense. There are things … I can’t really say. I decided I wanted to ask some questions about Arthur’s death. Because I failed him.’

‘You did not fail him.’

‘There are so many things I could tell you …’

‘Please do tell me. We are completely confidential here.’

‘I can’t.’

‘It helps to share, Eloise.’

‘I’ve been back to Arthur’s flat a couple of times. I took someone there. Not my neighbour, another man. We drove in my car, he’d been running, it was hot because the air-conditioning doesn’t work in my car. He was sweating, I could smell him, sweat and aftershave.’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know. I keep thinking about it.’

‘You were attracted to this man?’ Klaudia gave her sly smile. In the studiously light tone she used for teasing out information, ‘This hot guy …’

Eloise frowned. ‘He’s quite old.’

‘Old guys can be attractive.’

‘I can’t explain what I think about him.’

‘Go back to the memory.’

‘I can’t, really. Klaudia, do you believe in Collective Consciousness?’

‘I am not sure. Probably not.’

‘You know we were talking about ESP. The girl in the bus stop is crying. One explanation for ESP is Collective Consciousness.’

Klaudia paused, considered. ‘I believe in things that do not require a belief in the supernatural. The girl in the bus stop is explicable without mysticism. You received data into your subconscious, which fed it to your conscious mind without your remembering how you’d received it … Is something wrong, Eloise? Do you have a pain in your head?’

‘The cups.’

‘I am sorry?’

‘Simon said “missing items”. Our blue cups were missing.’

Klaudia’s expression was polite, open. She waited.

‘Our coffee cups were missing from Arthur’s place. A special pair of blue mugs that I bought for the flat. I never saw them again. Arthur couldn’t have broken both while I was away.’

‘Okay …’

‘They were definitely not there.’

Silence.

‘Maybe someone had a coffee with Arthur that morning. And then took the cups to hide the fact.’

Klaudia scribbled notes on her pad. She considered. ‘Isn’t it just as likely that the police took them? Perhaps to test.’

‘They did take some things away. But they showed them to me. I saw their exhibits. There were no cups. I remember they asked me if anything was missing from the flat and I said no.’

Another failure
.

‘They may not have shown you everything they took.’

Eloise stared out at the garden. ‘Arthur’s family cleared the flat, but I went in there before them with the police and took my own stuff. I would have taken the cups if they’d been there, as a memento. They were special. I took a few kitchen things that belonged to me. I’ve had the sense someone was in the flat with Arthur just before he died, and the cups are missing. Can it be a coincidence?’

Klaudia dropped her voice very low. ‘I wonder if it would be better to look to the future, instead of beating yourself up over this.’

‘But you’re a great believer in digging up the past.’

‘You must not blame yourself.’

‘My past as a crime scene,’ Eloise said in a glazed voice.

‘Do you think you are perhaps trying to construct an explanation of what happened as a way to avoid fear?’

‘Fear of what?’

‘The unpredictable nature of life. That someone we love could be here one minute and gone the next, and only because of a random accident. Sometimes when we find life brutal and frightening, we try to construct explanations that make it easier for us to deal with emotionally.’

‘So I’m making it all up.’

‘I am just trying to think it through with you. Perhaps this mystery visitor is a symbol, perhaps he represents Chance or Death.’

‘So Chance or Death went off with a couple of blue coffee mugs.’

Klaudia smiled, shrugged. ‘Okay, I don’t know. I’m thinking aloud. What I am concerned about is the amount of energy it is taking you to control all these negative thoughts. If we could talk about breathing …’ She placed her fingertips lightly on her desk and began a spiel. ‘When we express certain thoughts, if we could begin with a deep, in-drawn breath, and then speak while breathing out, but only for as long as that breath lasts …’

Eloise listened. You had to love Klaudia’s voice. So lilting and softly accented, so kind. She loved Klaudia, and yet what was the point of that? What was Klaudia doing? Sitting there with her pretty blonde hair and her kindness and her crafty smile, making you love her, and yet you couldn’t do anything with your love — your hopeless transference. You couldn’t send it back. Maybe Klaudia was supposed to be teaching Eloise to love
per se
— to expand her repertoire, love other people beyond her small circle of Carina, Scott and Thee, the Sparkler. (And possibly Nick?) Was
that
what she was doing? So far, though, Eloise had only widened the circle by loving Klaudia, which was comically pointless. It was all very confusing.

Klaudia now said, ‘I will email you some information about t’ai chi, Eloise.’

She roused herself. ‘T’ai chi. Right. You’re going to have me down the park. Waving my arms around in slo mo. With the old slopes.’

Klaudia looked at her, levelly. ‘Slopes?’

‘Sorry,’ Eloise said. ‘Bad choice of words. Wrong of me. But I just can’t see myself doing t’ai chi. I mean, on the peninsula …’

Klaudia said softly, sorrowfully even, ‘Eloise! You still express yourself with a degree of idealised aggression.’

‘Aggression? Me? I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

‘But these dismissive jokes you make. This tough stance you assume. Do you know the words from Taoism: “The soft water breaks
the stone”? There is a flip side to this harsh way of expressing yourself. It is that you direct the harshness towards yourself.’

‘I know, I remember. Don’t beat yourself up. Treat yourself well, all that.’ Eloise sat back, and Klaudia resumed her spiel. They both looked out at the garden. The rat, Eloise now felt, would be lying on its back in the grass, chewing a stalk and dreamily watching the clouds.

She fixed her eyes on the photo of the soulful brown dog on Klaudia’s desk, and her mind went back to the hillside behind Arthur’s flat. The concrete deck, the silver water bowl, the wisteria vine growing over the open back door. Arthur crossing the deck, kicking the water bowl, making the water slop over the side, a beam of refracted light, painfully bright, playing on the weatherboard wall. Arthur carrying two blue cups, bringing coffee to a person who sits at the table on one of the frayed, faded deckchairs, a person who has left a space, a black outline cut in the harsh light of that stunned and reeling morning, when the mesh of expected life was ripped away, leaving all senses raw, open, receiving.

Eloise said in a slow, dazed voice, ‘The person in Arthur’s flat that morning. All this time I’ve thought maybe it was a woman. That Arthur was having an affair. But it was a man.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The smell. Aftershave. Arthur never used it.’

I must tell Simon.

‘Can you smell the fennel? Did you know fennel masks scent for dogs? When I was a kid in Cape Town we knew if you hid in the fennel, police dogs couldn’t find you.’

‘Smells can be a reminder,’ Eloise said. ‘You can get nostalgia from a smell, or it can make you remember a bad time, like when you were sick.’

Nick bent a branch out of her way. ‘Maybe, but memory’s unreliable. The mind plays tricks. Where there’s a gap in the data, the brain invents stuff to fill it in, and labels it as memory.’

They were walking through scrub at the far edge of the dog park, Nick leading the way and slashing at the bush with a stick. They were both hot and tired, their voices slow.

‘If you and your sister, say, each wrote a memoir, it would be full of different impressions of the same events. And different takes on the same
people
, because people behave towards individuals in different ways.’

They came out of the scrub and waded through the long dry grass towards the creek.

‘I’m an only child,’ Nick went on. ‘My mother left me in South Africa with my father and came back here. I always felt she’d abandoned me. So I was actually surprised when she left me the house. I was going to sell it straight away, but I’m starting to get attached to it.’

‘Do you miss Cape Town?’

‘Only sometimes. Once, back home, I was driving in a bad part of town, and I came to a barricade made of burning tyres. There was a group of youths dancing round it. I knew if I got out of the car, I’d be in deep trouble. So I drove through it.’

‘How exciting.’

‘It wasn’t exciting. It was depressing. Too much violence. I’d like to have kids one day, and not feel like I have to live in a fortress.’

‘Kids?’

‘Sure. You?’

‘I don’t know. Do you know anything about encryption?’ Eloise said.

‘Not really. Except it means spooks can’t read your emails.’

Eloise said, ‘I love your accent.’ She frowned. What a ridiculous thing to say.

‘Thanks. I wanted to tell you, I saw the wolf. It was in the back of an SUV in the supermarket car park. I heard it, too — howling, just like you said.’

‘Finally! So, was it a husky?’

‘Well, maybe part. But I think it’s at least part-wolf. It’s huge.’

‘I told you.’

‘I believed you.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘Shall we go back via the pub?’

‘Definitely.’

But when they reached the top of the peninsula, where a new fashionable bar had replaced the terrible old Starlight Hotel, Nick got a phone call. She waited, shading her face against the evening sun, while he wandered along the roadside, kicking at tufts of grass.

He came back, rubbing his head, making his hair stand on end. His eyes were bloodshot from the hot sun. ‘Been summoned,’ he said. ‘Search and rescue.’

‘Who’s lost?’

‘Two women went for a walk in the Waitakeres. They haven’t come back.’

‘Can’t you have a drink first?’

‘Certainly not. It’s a serious business.’

‘It’s very inconsiderate of them. These women.’

He said, ‘Will you walk back with me?’

‘No, I’ll go via the supermarket.’

‘Shall I ring you if it gets called off?’

‘Yeah. If they’re found dead, give me a call.’

He kissed her cheek. Eloise waved and watched him go. Then she headed for the bar. Just one for the road, because he’ll be away all night for sure, and Silvio’s gone home, and there’s a wind making a whine in the power lines, blowing dust along the peninsula road, and last night I dreamed I was watching violence in a crowd, people being attacked with knives; I was watching from a distance but before long the attackers were coming for me, and I woke so poisoned with adrenaline my whole body ached and burned.

She had a couple of wines, then walked back through the dust, under the high-pitched keening of the wires.

Back home, in the stillness of the stone house, it was a relief to get out of the wind, to close the windows and watch leaves and dust whirling across the lawn. She talked to Scott on the phone, but then he had to go. Carina was writing a feature and needed to be left in peace. If only she could ring Klaudia, summon her for an urgent house call. If only she had old Silvio draped across her legs. With no appetite for the ready-made curry in the fridge, she fixed a drink and lay on the sofa, reading.

Eloise’s cell phone rang. It was her mother, and she let it ring. She lay on her back, looking at the ceiling. What would Arthur have done? He wouldn’t have lain here, reading, drinking. The first thing he would have done was put everything down on paper.
I think things out by writing them down, Eloise. Getting them straight in my head. Sometimes I don’t even have a thought until I’m writing it
.

Get it down: I talked to Kurt Hartmann about Arthur. I told him about Rotokauri and Ed Miles. I told Simon Lampton what I’d done. Simon understood that I am trying to honour Arthur’s memory, to make up for the shabby, perfunctory way he was treated by everyone, including me. Simon also understood that Arthur could be insensitive, that he barged in. He shouldn’t have asked about Mrs Hallwright’s
adopted child, but he only did it because he was driven. He believed in an ideal: the ruthlessness of the artist. He would have called it a romantic ideal. Art before everything. Art the greatest imperative. He loved the Woody Allen movie
Bullets Over Broadway,
remember, where the wannabe artist is soft and irresolute, and the true artist is a gangster so ruthless he shoots the bad actress who’s ruining his play. What would Klaudia think? She would probably say Arthur was aggressive.

But Klaudia is not an artist.

Eloise looked at her glass and found it empty. She refilled, drank, turned the page.

When Arthur was dying, I was on my way to the flat. At what point did he hit the concrete, and his soul go flying out into oblivion? At the moment I was getting in the taxi at the airport, or when I was sitting in the back seat, staring mindlessly out at the beautiful morning? When Arthur looked up at the sky and took his last breath, did he know he was going to die? I can’t shake the belief: someone visited him on the morning he died. I believe, with little or no evidence, that it was a man. I think someone took our blue cups. Maybe it was the police. But if it wasn’t the police, then who? The cups could only have been taken in order to hide something.

It’s time to pull myself together, to assemble a record of my own.
She drove through the streets on the eastern side of Mt Matariki. Outside Simon’s house she sat in the car and twisted the rear-view mirror towards herself. Confronting the close-up: sunburnt face, smudged eyes, hair plastered down on one side and sticking up on the other. She made some brisk adjustments, and got out.

At the door, no hesitation. She rang the bell and waited, eyeing the matted fronds of a nikau palm in the garden below. There were footsteps, heels clicking on the wooden floor. A woman opened the door and regarded her silently. Tanned skin, fine lines under the eyes, full symmetrical mouth, cosmetically whitened teeth. Behind her the wide hall, the glossy wooden floor, the sound of a television.

‘Is Simon Lampton here?’

No answer. A manicured hand resting on the door frame. Blue eyes, looking her up and down.

‘I’m Eloise from around the corner. I just wanted to talk to him about banging into his car the other day.’

‘His car?’

‘I dinged his car, at the corner. It was my fault. We were both in a hurry so he said just call around some time and we’d talk about it.’

Silence.

‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘He didn’t mention it. He’s at the hospital at the moment. I’ll let him know you came. Where did you say you live?’

‘Just on the corner. I backed out of our drive and … It was only a tap. He was incredibly nice about it, said it was nothing. I just wanted to check. Anyway, I’ll come back later.’

She drove, keeping to the speed limit.

At home, she lay down on the sofa and carried on reading.

But the wind. Listen to it out there, screaming. She drifted off, then woke tingling with pins and needles, wondering where she was. She slept and woke again. Hours had passed. A fixed idea had entered her mind.

In the yard, dust flew into her eyes. The estuary was full and frothing with grey chop that glimmered in the lights from the last house on the peninsula. The tide was running, the wind churning the surface into waves.

She unlocked the boot of the Honda and felt around under the carpet.

At the intersection she jammed on the brakes, bringing the Honda to a shuddering stop. She had been driving too fast; it was lucky the road was dry. In front of her, beyond a slalom of traffic cones and cordons, workmen in day-glo jackets were supervising the progress of a giant truck, on which rested an entire wooden house. She watched as it inched by like a ship travelling along a canal, all rigged up with lights, the men scurrying around it in their hard hats, continually rearranging their rolling cordon.

A policeman waved her on.

It was night; he was at a hospital; he must be doing obstetric work. So she had driven to the City Hospital, the obstetric centre, where she remembered Carina had had the Sparkler. She left the Honda in the car park and went to the lobby. A security guard directed her. In the bright white light the corridors stretched away, branching off in a series of further hallways and rows of closed doors. She crossed through hushed, dim halls, entered areas that were suddenly busy. She reached a station manned by personnel, and was stopped; asking for Dr Lampton, she was told it wasn’t possible to see him.

Another security guard directed her to a waiting area. She waited, then went forward, past the desk and reached another set of corridors, another desk. Again she was stopped, and directed to a different waiting area. This time a woman in a baggy pink cotton outfit pushing a trolley said, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ Eloise said. ‘I’d like to speak to Dr Simon Lampton. He said he’d have time for a word.’

‘Oh? He’s just about finished up. What’s your name?’

‘Eloise Hay.’

The woman pushed her trolley up the corridor and Eloise poured herself a cup of water from the cooler. Breathe, Klaudia would have said. The icy water settled in her stomach; Simon appeared and the sight of him cut off her breath. He looked tired, unshaven, and furious.

‘What are you doing here?’ He hustled her into the empty waiting area.

‘Your wife told me you were here.’

‘My
wife
.’

‘I went over there earlier this evening. I told her I was a neighbour, that I’d banged into your car and we’d agreed to talk about it.’

‘But what do you want? You can’t come here.’

‘Simon, Arthur’s file …’

‘What? Christ, don’t start getting upset. I’m at work. Have you got your car? Go and wait in the car park. I’m about to go home for a while. I’ll come out.’

‘Will you?’

‘Yes. Just give me about half, three-quarters of an hour. Don’t make a fuss, just go.’

She went back to the car and waited, listening to the radio.

After an hour he came out of the foyer wearing a jacket with the collar turned up. He walked through the lines of cars, looking for the Honda, saw her, opened the door and got in.

He sniffed. ‘Have you been drinking?’ he said sharply.

‘Yes.’

‘Great. So you don’t care about killing people.’

‘I’ve only had a few.’

‘I’m a doctor. I’ve seen the consequences of “a few”. People die, Eloise.’

‘Like Arthur.’

He turned to her. His eyes were dark with exhaustion or anger.

She rested her hands on the steering wheel. ‘Simon, Arthur’s file is gone. The one I showed you. His notes. My photos. I hid it in the boot of the car and it’s gone.’

He hesitated, rubbing his hands nervously across his jaw. ‘Are you sure? Maybe you forgot where you put it.’

‘No. I hid it in the car and it’s gone. I think a man’s been following me. He could have seen me put it in there.’

‘What man?’

‘A tall thin man with black hair. He has a dragonfly tattooed on his hand.’

Silence. Simon seemed to be trying to decide on something. He ruffled his hair, fidgeted, checked his phone a couple of times.

‘A dragonfly. And who do you think this man is?’ His tone was steady, but he was on the edge of something.

‘I don’t know. A guy visited my neighbour one evening and said he was a policeman. It could have been him.’

‘Why would a policeman follow you?’

‘I don’t know, Simon. I’m so tired and confused. I can’t sleep. I get drunk because I hate being alone. I don’t know who to trust, and I’ve lost Arthur’s file. The only important thing I had of Arthur’s, and I couldn’t keep it safe. I wanted to make up for failing Arthur, and I’ve only made things worse. His notes. The photos. All gone.’

Simon was peering out through the windscreen, watching a security guard cross the lit forecourt outside the lobby.

Eloise said, ‘What if my neighbour, Nick, took it? Remember you met him, the guy with the red T-shirt. I like him very much, but I don’t know whether to trust him. He says he’s a black belt in karate, he says he does search and rescue; once he got sent out to find half a woman, since only half of her had turned up, and they had to pull the other bits of her out of a drain. Klaudia says I have to reach out to people and
trust them but I don’t even know who
she
is …’