After the Fall (15 page)

November had begun, and brought us a fine spring day. Muffin lay stretched on her side, snoring in the sun. Sacha came wandering across the gravel wearing a red halterneck top and denim shorts. Ivan’s locket still hung around her neck. As she walked she was filming us with the pocket-sized video camera I’d been given as a leaving present.

‘I’m making a DVD for everyone at home,’ she explained. ‘Uncle Philip’s idea.’

‘Swing me, Sash?’ begged Finn, holding up his arms. Sacha took hold of his hands and spun, long hair flying, until Finn let go and staggered giddily. ‘Whoa! Look, Charlie, I’m a shrunkened sailor.’

‘You feeling a bit happier?’ I asked quietly.

‘A bit. Just got a text from a girl at school. She’s invited me to a party.’

‘Oh, that’s great! Tabby?’

‘Nah. Bianka. Spelled with a k. Says can I stay over at her place next Friday night.’

I’d never even heard of this girl. ‘What’s she like?’

Sacha was fiddling with the camera. ‘Brainbox. Brightest pebble on the beach.’

‘Except you. Careful! I love that camera, it’s so cute.’

‘Bianka’s pretty offbeat. Talks about things like Sylvia Plath and Germaine Greer and how the nuclear family is obsolete.’

‘How true,’ I chuckled, hanging up Finn’s trunks.

‘She writes poetry.’

‘Good poetry?’

‘’Course it’s good poetry.’

‘Is Friday anything special?’ I grunted, reaching for another peg.

‘Bonfire night on her cousins’ farm. Can I go?’

‘Well, of course. Maybe.’

Sacha crossed her eyes. ‘Of course, maybe? Illogical, Captain.’

‘I don’t know Bianka’s family. Are they . . . you know. Are they all right?’

‘Hardly.’ Jamming my camera into her pocket, Sacha reached into the washing basket. ‘Her dad’s a psychopathic mass murderer and her mum’s a gangland hit-woman.’

‘Well, they might be, for all I know.’

‘It’s fine, Mum. The dad works for the planning department. The only real and present danger is that he’ll bore me to death.’

‘Is there a mother, or is the nuclear family obsolete?’

‘She’s got cancer.’

I was immediately overwhelmed by that awkward mixture of compassion and relief that it was somebody else. ‘Oh, poor lady.’

‘Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She had it years ago, and it’s back. She’s had chemotherapy. Her hair all came out in clumps on her pillow. And her eyebrows.’

‘Well then, obviously you can’t go. The last thing they need is an extra child hanging about. And Bianka’s mother might catch something from you. Like . . .’

‘Like Grandma Norris did? It’s okay. They want to live normally.’ Sacha thrust her hands into her back pockets, swaying to some inaudible tune, her eyelashes long and tangled as she gazed down the drive. ‘What d’you think these antipods wear for Guy Fawkes Night?’

Charlie touched her knee, wooing her with his most angelic smile. ‘Sacha, help us make a daisy chain?’

‘Daisy chains are sissy,’ sneered Finn. ‘But I’ll help you pick’em.’

I finished the washing, taking pleasure in the sight of the three smooth faces tilted close together. They were already a little tanned in the spring sun. A giddy fantail flitted around us, whisking in and out and piping cheerfully. Friendly little birds; they stay close to you, like robins, and their tails fan like a magician’s pack of cards.

‘Isn’t this a beautiful place?’ said Sacha.

Charlie tensed suddenly, standing rigid like a meerkat and gazing towards the road. ‘I can see a lorry!’ he screamed, and I heard the distant rattle of the cattle grid at the road gate.

‘I’ll get Dad.
Dad!
’ Finn was pelting across to the house when Kit appeared at a run. ‘The lorry’s coming!’

‘Here we are, old girl!’ Kit put his arm around my shoulder when he reached me. ‘A historic moment.’

Under a mushroom cloud of dust, a bright red lorry nosed its laborious way up the hill and into the garden. The driver, a heavyweight with an eccentric moustache, wound down his window. ‘Bit steep, that bloody goat track,’ he remarked as he backed competently under the walnut tree and cut his engine. It was the kind of understatement I’d come to expect of the Kiwi male.

Three men swung out of the cab. They had exactly the same body language as the trio of tea swillers who’d packed our house in Bedfordshire, only magically turned into New Zealanders and wearing shorts, socks and dusty lace-up boots. Almost every adult male—from school principal to farmer to bus driver—wore shorts, socks and dusty lace-up boots. You could spot a Jehovah’s Witness a mile off in his pressed trousers and shiny shoes.

‘McNamara?’ asked the driver, removing a cap to mop his brow.

‘McNamara!’ roared the boys.

‘Where to then, young fellas?’ The man unlocked his container doors and threw them open with a grand gesture. ‘Let’s get you good people unpacked!’ He was mobbed by Finn and Charlie, and I could have snogged him myself. It was like having Father Christmas pull up in a big red lorry. It took the three men hours to carry everything inside. I thought the piano was going to give them all hernias but they refused Kit’s offer of help. The twins were thoroughly unhelpful, officiously guiding furniture into the wrong rooms. Everyone dived headfirst into boxes with whoops of recognition as toys and clothes and the coffee machine emerged. Sacha and Kit carried a sofa bed and her portable telly straight into the smoko hut; she cranked up the volume on her stereo, and the poor old walls pulsated to the jungle beat of Ke$ha and Katy Perry. I dare say the sheep wished they had earplugs.

Halfway through the morning I brought out coffee for the men. The twins had found their bikes and were pedalling around the walnut tree, though Charlie’s stabilisers kept getting stuck in the ruts. It was then that I noticed Sacha balanced on a fence, deep in conversation with the junior member of the team, a man mountain called Ira. Ira’s complexion was a deep bronze; I assumed he was Maori and was partly right, though I later discovered there were Scottish and Samoan ancestors too. A heavy cluster of dreadlocks hung down his back and he had a calm, lopsided smile. I reckoned he’d be in his mid-twenties, and he looked as though he spent all his spare time lifting weights. Complicated tattoos with interlocking patterns rippled all the way up those impressive biceps. Perhaps most arresting was his voice, a gentle bass with an accent I couldn’t identify. It was Kiwi, but different. The overall effect was quite startlingly luscious. If I’d been twenty years old, I’m sure I would have behaved very badly indeed. I delivered his coffee and loitered nearby, feigning interest in the washing.

‘There was a mountain lake,’ he was telling Sacha in his peaceful rumble. ‘Up here, in the hills. A bottomless lake with rippling green waters. And three taniwha made their home there.’

‘Ah! Taniwha.’ Sacha had been reading our guidebook. ‘Demons. Dragons. They live in water.’

‘They do.’ Ira’s delivery was quite stylised. He was clearly an accomplished storyteller, yet I felt he was repeating the tale almost verbatim. Oral tradition, I supposed, at its very best. ‘Well, as they grew bigger the lake became too small for them. It made them grumpy. So these three taniwha fell to fighting. They fought and fought, and their tails lashed and cut great gashes in the hillsides. You can see the battleground all around . . .’ He turned in a circle, holding out his arms. ‘Eventually they broke right through the side of the lake. So the water drained away into the sea, creating the river, here . . . this river that runs through your land.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘Two of them stormed away down the river. They fell into the sea and swam off joyfully, free at last. But the third one was stranded. He was too weak to push himself through the narrow gap. He lifted his great head and cried out in sorrow, but he couldn’t follow. His brothers left him behind.’

‘Aw! Sad.’

‘He’s still there—look, that long ridge, running along the edge of the valley.’ Ira pointed, and Sacha moved closer to gaze along his muscled arm. ‘You can see the bones all along his back . . . those rocks.’

‘I can?’ She squinted into the white light. ‘I can! It
does
look like an enormous lizard.’

‘The others were overjoyed to find themselves in the sea, and made themselves new lairs.’

‘And perhaps they’re still out there.’

‘They’re still out there, all right. Sometimes they fight. When the sea’s rough, that’s them rampaging around.’

‘And maybe they visit their old home.’

‘They do. They cloak themselves in water and move up the river. And that’s how this whole area got its name.
Torutaniwha
.’

‘It sounds like a different word when you say it.’ Sacha was right. The name sprang to life as it rolled off Ira’s tongue. It wasn’t imitable.

‘Toru means three,’ he explained. ‘Three taniwha, see?’

I moved a little further away, because Sacha had spotted me and given the bugger-off-you-interfering-old-bat glare.

‘How come you know the story?’ she asked.

‘Because I was brought up in Torutaniwha. That’s why the company sent me on this job, so Frank and John wouldn’t get lost finding your place.’

‘And what about this farm?’ Sacha clasped her hands around her knees. ‘Patu—no, can’t say it. What does the name mean?’

‘Patupaiarehe?’ Ira shuddered in dramatic horror. ‘Weird creatures. Fairies of the mist.’

‘Wings and wands?’

‘Ooh, no! These fellas are eerie.’

‘Do they look like people?’

‘Strange, supernatural people, with pale skin and red hair. They lived— live—deep in the forest among the clouds. You know how clouds cling to the mountaintops? Well, they lived in there, but they came creeping down in the mist or the darkness. They stole things. Sometimes they slipped into people’s houses and put a spell on them so they seemed to be dead. And their cousins the ponaturi—sea fairies—tore humans apart and ate their flesh.’

‘So they’re bad news, these patu . . . fairies?’

‘I wouldn’t want to meet one on a dark night. And it’s on dark nights that they made themselves heard. A lonely traveller would hear the ghostly music of their putorino—wooden pipes—and the hair would stand up on the back of his neck. The putorino can wail, but in the hands of the patupaiarehe it sang like a flute. The music hypnotised the listener, bewitched them, made them follow. Many were never seen again.’

‘Like the Pied Piper,’ suggested Sacha.

Ira clapped his hands. ‘Maybe he was one of them! The patupaiarehe were known for luring beautiful girls into their clutches. Even if she was allowed to go home, the girl would be under a spell forever. The abductor had only to call and she would return to him.’

Ira’s boss yelled from the lorry. ‘Oi, Ira! Telling stories again? Smoko’s over. Give us a hand with this washing machine.’

Sacha dropped down from the fence, took Ira’s mug and walked alongside him. ‘So how come this place has the creepy name?’

‘You’ve got me there.’ The young man hopped athletically into the back of the container. ‘I’ll ask my nana, she knows all the stories. Anyway, d’you think you can come?’

I whirled around, my ears flapping like Dumbo on take-off.

‘Sure.’ Sacha handed him her mobile and he added his number to her contacts. It was a done deal. A date, presumably. She could do worse, I thought, if she was after a springtime flirtation. Quite an antidote to Ivan Gnome. This one was altogether more eye-catching, and he knew how to tell a good story. On the other hand, he was far too old for her.

It was early afternoon before the container was empty. Ira strolled over to speak to me as his workmates climbed into their cab.

‘Hi, Mrs McNamara,’ he began quietly.

‘Martha.’

A heart-lifting smile. ‘Martha. Thanks. Look, Martha, your kids told me they’d like to go riding.’

I glanced at Finn and Charlie, hanging by their knees from the tyre swings like a brace of drunken bats. ‘I’m sure they would.’

‘My uncle breeds horses, and he does trekking. He’ll take them down the beach. If you want to go tomorrow, I can come along.’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but I’m sure your uncle’s busy?’

Embarrassment flickered across Ira’s handsome features. ‘First time out is for free.’

So
that
was Sacha’s date. I was the victim of a plot, and I’d fallen for it like a prize mug. Sacha was probably the mastermind—she was nuts about horses—but they were all three in it and they’d co-opted Ira, too. It was the oldest trick in the book: get the parent to agree in principle before mentioning the price tag; and rope in a visitor to do the dirty work.

‘Tomorrow?’ screeched Finn, dropping to the ground.

‘That’s between you and your parents.’ Ira winked at Finn before hopping into the cab.

‘See yer tomorrow!’ Finn grabbed his bike and pedalled recklessly alongside as the lorry lurched away down the hill, gears grinding.

‘It was Ira,’ said Sacha. ‘Riding along the beach that first day, remember? His uncle’s our neighbour, and his farm stretches all the way to the sea.’

I felt Charlie’s gentle hand in mine, and picked him up. We stood waving until the great red box disappeared behind a green gauze of willows.