Starlight Peninsula (9 page)

She picked it up.

The microwave pinged.

There. A bit of food, a calming drink. No problem. With her plate of hot curry and her drink, she settled carefully into a chair. It was like … It was like being on a plane, with the pilot’s voice on the intercom: Slight technical problem, folks. Nothing we can’t handle, but we’re going to have to change our course …

And so she sipped, and gingerly ate her packaged meal, and plaintively sought more drinks, and didn’t look at the night out there, at the teetering height of the sky, the pitching blackness of the air.

Eloise woke, but nothing was clear. The previous hours presented themselves as a series of images.

She had virtually no memory of leaving the chair and going to bed, only a fragment to do with climbing the stairs. At 3 a.m. she had sat up and looked at the clock, and in the darkness she had seen something move. Then she was locked in the bathroom, sitting hunched on the edge of the bath. She saw the mirrored door of the bathroom cupboard opening, her image sliding quickly away, then swinging back. Her face shuddering, then still. Her eyes big and dark, spooked. But then she had left the bathroom and was lurching across the dark living room, pushing down a curtain that was billowing up in the night breeze. She was fighting down the curtain and closing and locking the ranch slider, which had been standing open.

This yearning for touch, for someone to anchor her. She was lost, the night was all splinters and shards. And then the information came to her, as if the darkness had shifted just for a moment, revealing what lay behind. The door had been deadlocked when she’d arrived home. But when she’d last left the house and fled to Carina’s, she had not deadlocked the door.

Carina and the Sparkler were sitting on stools at the kitchen bench, their work spread out in front of them. Giles, a structural engineer (a builder of bridges), was away, in the Sudan or Somalia or Niger, Eloise hadn’t quite paid attention to which. The Sparkler was leaning over her maths book and Carina was typing on a laptop with extraordinary speed, occasionally looking over and saying things like, ‘Christ, what does that even mean? Turn the fraction upside down maybe?’

‘You
suck
at maths.’

‘Ask Eloise.’

‘I suck even more.’ Eloise, who was lying on the sofa, spoke from under a cold flannel. Silvio had settled himself across her feet and she was tentatively enjoying the weight and heat of him, although not
the smell. His eyes were uncanny: yellow flecked with brown, weirdly intelligent. He was a strong presence. Earlier she’d stroked his head and he’d pulled away as if irritated, and she’d felt hurt. When he draped himself over her feet half an hour later her spirits lifted. Really Silvio, old boy? So I’m not that bad?

‘You all suck. Total
suckedness
.’

‘Just get on with it. Put something down. God, homework’s a drag.’

Silence. Eloise lay low, occasionally turning the flannel on her brow. The doorbell chimed. Silvio leapt off her feet and hurled himself into the hall with an explosion of barks. The noise was unbelievable.

Eloise sat up, taking note. He was good, Silvio: he was mild and friendly but big enough, with a deep enough bark, to sound like a proper guard dog.

The door opened. They heard, ‘Ooh, you’re a big softie. Lick me to death will you? Ooh, hello, all.’

Demelza entered, with a jingle of keys. ‘Carina. If you could just …’

Carina rose without a word, and went out to retrieve the car from where it had been left in the middle of the road.

Demelza’s eyes fell on Eloise. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

Eloise sat up. ‘Just visiting.’

‘Pardon? What are you
muttering
about? And what’ve you got that thing on your head for? Ooh, hello, Sparkles, darling, I’ve brought you a present. Look, it’s for your room.’ She presented her granddaughter with a plant pot, from which a small cactus reared up, furred with prickles.

The girl took it with care. ‘Thanks. It looks like an evil gherkin,’ she said.

‘That’s all right,’ Demelza said. She sniffed. Her gaze moved to Eloise again. ‘Look at you, your hair all on end. What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You been living it up?’

‘No. Want a cup of tea?’

‘I don’t mind.’ Demelza lowered herself into a chair and sat pushing her hair off her temples in quick movements. She was wearing a short skirt and a tight jacket. She crossed her shapely legs, now mottled with age, and flexed her feet in their high-heeled pumps.

‘Your father’s under the doctor. He’s not himself. I’ve had the locum pop in, she’s been wonderful with me. So attentive and kind.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I understand it’s the lungs.’

‘What about them?’

‘I don’t know. They’re not right, is all.’

‘Was there anything specific mentioned?’

‘Hark at you. Goodness me. It’s his
lungs
, chuck. Mind you, I’ve not been right myself, with the hot weather. It comes to us all, doesn’t it, the stomach troubles.’

Eloise presented her mother with a cup of tea.

‘What’s this then? A mug? It’s terrible isn’t it, the way I am: so fussy. Only wanting the best china, me. Now, Sparkles, how are you dear? Enjoying school? Doing your homework are you? Ooh, your mother never did her homework. Mind, she practically never went to school. Played truant the whole time. I don’t know how she managed to get any qualifications at all, to be honest.’

Carina came in with the car keys.

‘Thank you, dear. Did you leave a window open for Gerald? He does get so hot. Carina, if you could just … Goodness, Eloise dear, what’s that you’re wearing? What a lovely jacket. Look at that. The colours. You do always manage to look so elegant.’ She looked pointedly at Carina, who stood holding out the keys, in her jeans, her faded hoodie.

‘Look at your sister’s lovely jacket, Carina. I suppose she does have to maintain standards, working in the television environment. That
Roysmith, mind, he’s all hairdo, that one. If you ask me. Right
clotheshorse
. All style and no substance.’

Eloise closed her eyes. Carina dropped the keys on the coffee table.

‘Anyway, I just thought I’d pop around, since your father and I never see you. You’re always so busy, I don’t know. Your brother comes and sees us all the time. He’s been wonderful with us. Let’s see, he’s reconcreted the driveway, done the lawns, painted Terrence’s study, and that’s just this week. Let me tell you about a fascinating book I’ve been reading. You’re welcome to borrow it if you wish.’

‘Want some pasta? There’s a lot left over.’

‘Full of garlic, is it? Why don’t you make a nice shepherd’s pie?’

‘It’s only got a few capers in it.’

‘I don’t eat capers!’

‘Do you want a muffin then?’

‘I don’t eat
muffins
!’

Eloise opened a high cupboard in Carina’s basement and reached for the old sports bag. Down here in the homely, cobwebby space, with the bikes and the humming clothes dryer and the smell of hot laundry, it seemed possible to take a look at the past.

She unzipped the bag. And look: the fashions of yesteryear. That jacket, those shirts. She’d never worn them again. Could you believe you needed to wear that colour? Or that cut? She drew out a pair of dated shoes, an ornate belt. Unlike Carina, who didn’t much care, Eloise had a strong fashion sense. The once-valued items now looked clumsy, absurd even.

Underneath the clothes was Arthur’s cardboard folder.

Most of the file was the typewritten script of Arthur’s play, a political satire that had been put on at a small theatre. It was funny and original and got some excellent reviews. He’d been discussing a run in a bigger theatre and had been improving and editing parts. The script was
covered in notes. She flicked through it. There was also a screenplay for a satirical TV show he’d been working on with a group of writers.

Just Arthur’s current work, then. Time to go and have a glass of wine.

Under the screenplay was a thin pile of handwritten notes. Here was Arthur’s small, cramped scrawl that she’d always found hard to read. It sloped backwards, perhaps because he was ambidextrous. He wrote with his right hand but batted left at cricket, kicked a ball with his left foot. She bent to decipher the handwriting.

Notes for The Night Book Screenplay
.

Back then, he’d been working on a film script about a National Party politician. He was interested in the prime minister, David Hallwright. He wanted to write about society: rich, poor, high, low, good, corrupt.

He said, ‘I want to write about money. To do a
Père Goriot
. I want to create my own Rastignac. A man who comes up against society, is horrified by its cruelty and then says:
I am ready for that world. I will not lose. I will not go back
. But I don’t know any rich people,’ he’d added. ‘I need to find some money. I want to get into Hallwright’s world.’

Was
The Night Book
the name of the screenplay Sean had mentioned when she first met him?

She lifted the handwritten pages and found an envelope; inside was a stack of photos of Eloise and Arthur. A trip they’d taken to the South Island: Eloise on a rock, waving, Arthur on the Cook Strait ferry, the stormy sea behind him, the two of them in front of a motel on the West Coast.

She sifted through the pictures. A day of rain, and they’d walked beside a river banked with grey stones and come upon a melancholy, sinister scene: a pile of severed deers’ feet, left by hunters. The rain falling into the slow river, the grey stones, the hunters’ gruesome leavings. She remembered a tree fallen across the riverbank, its roots thrust up into the air. Rusted farm machinery in a paddock. The wooden motel in the distance under a giant bank of black cloud, its
windows glowing through the watery dusk like a Jack o’ Lantern.

Here was Eloise sitting on a bleached log, on a rocky beach. One of Arthur throwing stones. She turned up a photo of him sitting on a rock against a bank of intensely green bush. He was wearing his old oilskin. His hair was slicked down with rain, his potent gaze fixed on her. That look he could give you, his startling eyes.

Arthur.

In the first shock of his death, random phrases came. Arthur’s died, but he’ll be all right. Something has hit Arthur so hard that he’s died. The thing was, you couldn’t understand it. These odd phrases came to you out of the confusion, and you tried them out in your head.

She drew out a Polaroid. It was a faded picture of a girl sitting on a bench, looking away from the camera. There was a background of sand, lupins and marram grass. The girl looked to be early teens, Maori, thin and pretty with glossy black hair and intense, pale eyes. She turned the photo over and found a name written in Biro on the back:
Mereana
.

Eloise listened. The dryer had stopped rumbling. She could hear Demelza talking upstairs, and Silvio’s claws clicking as he crossed the wooden floor.

Mereana. There was a memory, but she couldn’t retrieve it. Now she heard her mother preparing to leave, asking where she was, an inaudible reply from Carina, and the Sparkler’s high voice. The front door opening — Carina would be out in the street, positioning Demelza’s car.

The front door banged again and her sister started making bedtime commands: teeth, pyjamas, book.

While Carina and the Sparkler were arguing in the bathroom, Eloise took the file to the spare room. After she’d got into bed, Silvio poked his nose around the door, and with surprising grace leapt up, turned a number of times and settled himself hotly, with an emphatic sigh, against her body.

The handwritten pages were dated just a few weeks before Arthur died:

That summer: Arthur was preoccupied, full of enthusiasm one moment, silent the next. He always had too many ideas; she’d thought he should concentrate on just a few. He was usually working on three or four projects at once.

Eloise paused. These people were real and so were the connections between them. Everyone knew about Roza Hallwright and the daughter she shared with the Lamptons. Back then, there were magazine pieces about it, also about Rotokauri, the luxury compound north of the city, where the Hallwrights went during the summer break. But Roza Hallwright a recovered alcoholic? A drug user? That wasn’t common knowledge. Had Arthur uncovered a secret, or had he invented it?

There was a soft knock. Carina stuck her head around the door and said, ‘There you are, Silvio. Want me to drag him off?’

‘No. He stinks, but I’m touched he finds me acceptable.’

‘You can stay here as long as you like, by the way.’

‘Thanks. Sorry.’

‘No, honestly, the more the merrier.’

‘Well, thanks.’

Eloise thought, for the thousandth time, how much better she would be if she was like Carina. How much saner, cleverer, kinder.

‘Just kick Sil off if he gets too hot,’ Carina said.

Eloise wanted to say,
I love you and I’d be dead without you
. But not wanting to be uncool said, ‘I will.’

She went back to reading Arthur’s notes.

The names: there was something about the names.