Carnival Sky (12 page)

‘What’s it like being in my old room?’ Sheff asked.

‘It’s a good room,’ said his father after a pause. ‘Belize didn’t want me to shift, but I was keeping her awake, and Andrew and the nurse come and go all the time now too. She doesn’t need that sort of invasion of her bedroom. All we took out were your books and posters. All we brought in was a La-Z-Boy.’

‘But there’s recessed lighting now too, isn’t there, and Venetians?’

‘Yes, I’d forgotten we did that. All of the rooms are done, and for no other reason than looks. Your mother has a fit of updating from time to time. It’s like spring cleaning, isn’t it? Women get this furious infection and turn things upside down for a few days, and then it passes and you can relax again.’ With deliberation he placed the mug on the trolley beside the bed. ‘We put your stuff in the garage,’ he said, ‘along with all the golfing gear. You don’t play now at all?’

Before Sheff left home, and during the frequent visits over the university years, they had played together. In the end Sheff could outdrive his father, but his short game was never the equal of
Warwick’s. ‘I don’t have the time,’ Sheff said, which was true for the years in which he’d been working, but was no longer. He’d lost the inclination, perhaps because he knew there would be the frustration of being unable to play as capably as once he had.

Warwick asked no more about it, but lay propped on the pillows. His eyes were half closed, but he wasn’t asleep. He gave a smile, at once apology for not saying more, and pleasure to have Sheff sitting by him. Sheff thought of the times he’d been on the golf course with his father: the parched grass, the radiata pines and macrocarpas lining the fairways, the warning swoop and click of magpies at nesting season, and a tidal drift of scattered cloud across the blue bowl of sky. In winter the frozen stillness with frost white as snow on the shadow side of the trees, and the pond iced over. Nowhere else in his country had he experienced such extremes of season. He could recall few specific conversations of personal significance, or originality, just phatic communication and a sense of ease between them. That had always been his father’s way, because of the appalling vulnerability when inner life is broached. Warwick was happy within the practice of his profession, the marshalled figures and the set categories and regulations objectively applied. All he required of other people was goodwill, reason and a little distance.

So the afternoon eddied, with Sheff sitting in the armchair while his father rested, and in the living room the two women talked effortlessly about things Sheff was too far away to make out. His father’s breathing had a drag to it, as if something far heavier than air was forced in and out, and his cupped left hand twitched suddenly on the covers, like a hooked fish flipping on the dinghy boards.

‘I should sell the clubs,’ his father said after the long, relaxed silence. ‘The whole caboodle in fact. The trundler’s almost new. What do you know about Trade Me? Rodney at work tells me it’s by far the best way of unloading stuff.’

‘I’ve never used it.’

‘Sell it all off if you like, and keep the money. But you don’t get
much for second-hand stuff, do you, no matter what you paid for it, or what condition it’s in?’

‘I suppose not.’

They were quiet again, Warwick looking at his son, and his expression changing fleetingly as if mirroring the play of all those things he had stored up to say. ‘I need to talk to you and Georgie about my will,’ he said. ‘It’s all straightforward enough, but there’s some investment stuff you can help your mother with. I don’t want her worrying.’

‘You’ll have it all down clearly, Dad. You always do.’

‘She should be secure enough, and she deserves that.’

‘Do you need me to get anything from the office?’ Sheff asked. He wished to be helpful without signalling that a final settling of affairs was surely due. Warwick appeared not to hear, just gave a slow smile as if in response to a joke already known. Quite suddenly the energy for conversation left him, and he lay in a half-sleep.

There was no further need for Sheff to be there, yet the closeness itself was a comfort. If he reached out he could touch his father’s feet through the one blanket. He did so, and for a time let his hand rest there.

ONCE, AGES AGO, HIS FATHER TOLD HIM
that he was claustrophobic and feared to be in any space so confined that he couldn’t freely move his arms. No worry with heights, or open expanses, he said, but a dread of confinement and suffocation. A classmate had burrowed into the tailings and died that way when the tunnel collapsed, he said. Warwick hadn’t been there, but he imagined it was the worst way to go, more terrible even than fire, or drowning, because you couldn’t fight. Sheff hadn’t thought of his father having such a fear, and the revelation impressed him.

ON HIS GOOD DAYS, Warwick was sometimes taken for a drive by Georgie, or Sheff, maybe both of them and Belize as well. He would sit hunched in the front, held by the seat belt, and seemingly unable to alter his posture, or without the will to do so. Not much more than his head was visible at the window, and his toothy face looked out on all with passive indifference. If some place of connection to his life was remarked on, he would nod and give a dutiful, slow smile, but rarely reply. He tended to become involved in minor, stubborn struggles with inanimate things: the twisted collar of his shirt, the slide lever for the air-conditioning.

Mostly, though, he stayed in his own home, where he was close to the bowl in which he was often sick, and to the medication, only partly effective, to relieve pain. Sometimes he fell into an odd, pitiable sing-song groan. Sheff could hear it during the night, and sometimes during the day they would hear it when in the kitchen, or living room, and one of them would go through to comfort him.

Time seemed to slow and the atmosphere thicken. Sheff felt sometimes as if he were wading through the days with the tide against him. Necessary life – eating, defecating, sleeping, dressing – became distanced and pointless, yet had to go on. The end was with them even before it came.

Lucy rang in the second week and talked to each of them in turn.
Warwick was quite buoyed by talking to her, but had a retching fit afterwards. Sheff, the ex-husband, was the last in line and took the phone into his bedroom. ‘He’s not eating much now, and there’s a lot of pain,’ he told her.

‘It’s awful. What does the doctor say?’

‘A few weeks at most.’

‘There’s nothing at all they can do?’

‘Treatment now would only knock him about more, and not prolong things much anyway.’

‘It’s so sad, but I’m glad you and Georgie are there for them both.’

‘Georgie’s great with him, daughter and doctor all at once, and she kids him along. But she can’t be away from work much longer. Dad understands that, but it’s hard for both.’

‘I bet he’s chuffed to have you there too. I’m glad you didn’t go overseas right away.’

‘Yes, so am I. That can wait. Anyway, that’s enough of our worries. The world goes on. How are things for you? Lots of wealthy people from the cruise ships still wanting to see the sights?’

‘It’s been pretty steady actually. It’s always a staff thing: getting good drivers and guides and getting them to stay once they’re up to speed.’

‘Nigel okay?’ Sheff was rather pleased with his own tolerance in asking after him. He disliked the man for himself as well as for being Lucy’s new partner, but what was the point in being a sore loser? It was good of Lucy to ring, and she was entitled to keep a friendship with his folks even though she couldn’t bear to live with him. The longer they were apart the more inevitable that seemed.

When the conversation was over, she might mention Warwick’s sickness to Nigel, and Nigel, having never met him, would make some commonplace response and then go on to ask which of his good shirts should be worn to the dinner party that night. Indifference and connection come quickly at one degree of separation. Lucy used to tell Sheff to put the shirts on the bed and later she would choose for him. His total inability to match a tie with her selection had caused
her spontaneous, affectionate laughter in the good years.

When he came back into the dining room with the phone, both Georgie and Belize allowed a pause for him to say something about Lucy, but as he was silent neither of them prolonged the subject. ‘Nice of her to call’ was all his mother said. Sheff wondered if Lucy had tried to have another child. He was no longer entitled to ask her such personal questions, no longer part of her life. He avoided thinking of her, not because of any defect in her personality, or any of her actions, but because everything of his married life led to, or from, the death of Charlotte.

Thoughts of Jessica were more pleasant. He wanted the company of someone outside the sad household: someone who understood why he’d returned, but who wasn’t a Davy. He decided to ring her. He mentioned it to Georgie, casually so as not to be in any way seeking approval. ‘Well, you don’t know anyone else here much now, and it’s a chance to get out of the house, talk to somebody else. What about some of your own schoolmates?’

‘Moved on, most of them,’ said Sheff.

‘Sure,’ said Jessica, when he rang. ‘Weekends aren’t so good. I’m on call one in three, and during the others I like to be with Emma as often as possible because I don’t see her as much as I should on school days. But I sometimes take Mondays off. We could take a walk around the vast metropolis for old times’ sake, and have a coffee. Would Georgie like to come?’

‘Maybe,’ said Sheff, but had no intention of asking her.

So they met. Monday afternoon. Sheff took his father’s Commodore, noting with a touch of unjustified irritation that it was almost out of petrol. He put in eighty dollars’ worth on his way to Jessica’s place. She retained the family home, a low house of pink summerhill stone set back from the road and behind silver birch trees, with a concrete patio and ranch-slider doors. When she answered his knock she had a phone to her ear, and motioned Sheff inside, then into the living room. She was explaining to someone that a mutual friend had failed
to pass on a message. To give her privacy Sheff wandered into the kitchen he could see through the open door.

It was no tidier than his own, and had a faint smell of bread and Marmite. On the fridge door were pages of colourful, childish drawings, held by magnetised alphabet letters and a bright ladybird. There was also a small, blue certificate awarded to Emma Hutton of Room Five for showing consideration towards others. Sheff visualised his own fridge, the door entirely blank, and little inside except milk, cheese and beer.

‘Apologies,’ said Jessica, coming to join him. ‘It’s rude of me, but the phone went just before you knocked.’

‘I was looking at your daughter’s drawings,’ he said.

‘Yes, she’s seven. I pick her up from school at three, so we’ll have to be back before then. But the café isn’t far. We can walk if you like.’ Jessica hadn’t gone to a lot of trouble with her appearance. She wore jeans, a white shirt and black sneakers, and her dark hair was held back with a simple band. He admired her lithe movement and the belt neat above her hips. If she wore make-up it wasn’t obvious.

‘Does she look like you?

‘More like her father, most people say. Well you knew him, but then both of us are reasonably tall and dark-haired. She’s quite a bubbly kid, and I don’t think I was ever that.’

‘I imagine it’s been tough on you all?’

‘In what way?’

‘I mean that you’re divorced, yet there’s Emma as the link between you. You can’t just wave goodbye and go your own way. Lucy and I could please ourselves. We’re okay with each other, but there’s nothing binding us now.’

‘Oh, she sees plenty of her dad. We’re all cool about it. What is it they say? An amicable split?’ Yes, it was what they said, but surely in most cases the amicable came after the split and not before.

Sheff remembered her ex-husband, but only as a boy. Kevin Hutton, who had double-jointed thumbs and a shrill whistle as his
primary school accomplishments, and at high school was very good at maths and cricket, and had a temper you didn’t wish to arouse. ‘Anyway,’ continued Jessica, ‘let’s go and have this coffee, or it will be time to pick her up.’

They walked down the quiet, warm streets to the old part of town, and sat at a wooden table outside the café. When Sheff was a child, mostly people went into such places to eat and drink behind windows and doors. The footpaths were to walk on. No one had ordered espresso or latte, or eaten gnocchi, or pesto. And even now that they did, it was sometimes with a provincial self-consciousness concerning such acquired continental ways.

He saw the town around him with that half-recognition you have when meeting an old friend after many years. Most of the buildings conformed to memory, although shrunk from boyhood’s perception, and with occupancy often changed. The lighting shop now sold computers, the bookstore had become a video parlour, and where he had once sat in the ornate barber’s chair for short-back-and-sides were orchid blooms, bright ceramic pots, artificial greenery and scented lavender and thyme. The brass plate for Prescott, Prescott and Swann still shone; however, Southern Realty’s window continued to display house photographs, Kinnaird’s old stone building was still a dentist’s surgery, and the cramped bric-à-brac and stamp collector’s den, always seeming the most precarious of businesses, was still hanging on.

The town was noticeably busier and more prosperous, which Jessica said was because of the success of viticulture and tourism. ‘That and people starting to get out of the cities to places like this. Funny, isn’t it? Wanaka’s just racing ahead. Even overseas folk. Once the idea was to retire to the city, but now there’s professional people who find it fashionable to do the opposite. There’s even a mini dairy boom based on irrigation, and that’s good for our business, I must say. Cockies use vets a lot more these days – it’s just part of normal farming practice. We hardly saw a cow as kids, did we?’

Sheff enjoyed sitting with her. He was tired of being by himself,
or with male companions. It was a relief also to be away from his family; freed briefly from the sad focus there. But it was more than that. He liked being close to her, even though he knew little about her adult life, and hadn’t much bothered with her when she was Georgie’s girlhood friend. As they talked he endeavoured to define for himself what it was that attracted him. It was all there physically. He would have quite happily taken her through the café to a storeroom at the back and made love standing against the shelves. But it was more than that, too. She was at ease, he decided. She was at ease with herself and the world, when so many around her were ill at ease in one way or another.

‘What do you deal with most?’ he asked, putting from his mind the storeroom, the tremulous tins on the shelf, the urgent muffled voices, the ultimate crescendo of pleasure.

‘As a vet? Stock mainly, as I said. There’s a lot of artificial insemination and progeny testing. Flock improvement’s all about science now. There’s always town people with pets, of course, but that’s not a significant part of what we do.’

‘Little old ladies with cats and dogs, though, surely.’

‘Birds are the worst. I dislike birds, especially budgies and canaries. They’re buggers to diagnose, and sicken and die so readily. And birds have a dry, unpleasant smell. Have you ever noticed that?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a result of skin parasites and being caged.’

‘Poor buggers.’

‘It’s natural, I suppose, your job influencing how you observe the world. You probably haven’t noticed, but working dogs run at a slight angle to their forward direction. Perhaps that way their legs don’t obstruct each other. You register little things like that.’

Sheff was interested in people’s vocations, and not merely because his profession often required it. How you made a living affected how you saw the world, and how you saw the world affected the manner in which you made a living. In spending so much time with Georgie in
recent days he had become aware of how her personality was shaped by her occupation. And now Jessica with a similar concern, except that malpractice, or negligence, surely had less serious repercussions. He imagined he would’ve been very different as a person had he chosen some other career: more committed to things apart from his own pleasure and comfort, and less critical of subterfuge in the manner information was presented to him. ‘I suppose the advantage is that animals can’t talk back,’ he said.

‘But they can be stubborn and bloody-minded. And sometimes quite heart-rending, too. Dogs and horses especially. They seem to have grown closer to us emotionally over thousands of years.’

Their coffee came, and Jessica stopped talking while the girl was with them, and when she had gone began a different conversation. ‘How’s your father?’

‘Dying,’ said Sheff, and then because that was so abrupt and sounded uncaring, ‘Nothing much else can be done for him. There are secondary cancers everywhere, and any more treatment would only prolong his suffering.’

‘I didn’t realise he was so bad. He seemed quite cheerful when I came with Georgie.’

‘He makes a hell of an effort for our benefit and anybody who comes, but it’s a sad and brutal struggle.’

‘When I used to come over as a kid, I thought your parents were so cool,’ said Jessica quietly. ‘Belize had label clothes and your dad would come back from work in his suit. They would sit outside and have a glass of wine before dinner. Sometimes your father would go through his private mail there, and I was amazed at how many letters he got – a pile of them at his elbow. We never got much mail at home, and my dad wore a suit only to weddings and funerals. Belize used to give us shortbread and little cartons of juice. Your father had some joke-shop buck teeth. He wore them at one of Georgie’s birthday parties. You must remember that?’

He did. His father slipping away and then coming back into the
room with his golfing cap pulled down low and the preposterous teeth with swelling, pink gums, and leading the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’. He recalled it so well perhaps because it wasn’t typical of Warwick, and had been done as a special effort to ensure Georgie’s party was a success. Amusing at the time, but in recollection sad, because it brought to mind Warwick now, his own teeth become a joke quite without humour.

Jessica’s talk of their youth returned it to him more clearly. He was in the place of that experience, and the more he revisited it, the more he felt the ache of what they had to go through in the present. The careless family life of boyhood served as backdrop only to emphasise the lurching shadows now about him. ‘Last night he told me that sometimes when he’s lying there for hours, he feels he’s levitating, rising inexorably towards the ceiling. The cocktail of drugs, I suppose,’ he said.

‘The best thing is that he has you and Georgie with him now,’ said Jessica. ‘Anyway, look, I’d better start back in time to pick up Emma.’