Eighty Days Blue (24 page)

I anticipated the onset of Te Aroha before we passed the ‘welcome' sign informing us we had officially arrived.

The town had always seemed to me to be cloaked in a light that was slightly darker than the surrounding neighbourhoods. I had always felt as though we lived in the shadow of the local mountain, Mount Te Aroha, and its shadow spread far longer and wider than it ought to, over the whole town. The rest of my family thought I was mad; they thought that the light in Te Aroha was just the same as it was everywhere else. I found it oppressive, like sleeping in a bed with the blankets tucked too tight.

The mountain loomed up in the distance, a dark blot on the horizon no matter what the season. It was both the reason for the township and the first route that I found out of it.

I'd climbed it when I was a toddler, with my father. I'd given up somewhere near the bottom because the ground was so muddy and the ascent ahead so overwhelming. My legs couldn't find any purchase in the earth, so Dad had picked me up and put me on his shoulders and carried me all the way to the top.

When I looked out and saw what I imagined was the rest of the world spread out in front of us, I'd felt for a few moments that I was finally free of the shadow that the mountain cast, and from that day on, I saw everything outside the town borders as the Promised Land. I'd left after my last day at school, and never looked back besides the occasional visit.

I was the youngest, and always the odd one out. My older sister, Fran, worked at the local Bank of New Zealand. She'd been in the same job for the past ten years and had no
intention
of leaving. My brother had studied by correspondence through the Open Polytech and had a diploma in engineering, but I was the only one to go to university, even if I hadn't lasted.

I had never been able to explain the itch I had to keep moving all the time. New York was probably the most settled I had ever been, and my comfort there, and in London, probably had a lot to do with the fact that the two cities were always changing and in both places I was surrounded by constant movement, enjoying the peace at the centre of the storm instead of forever running around trying to create my own tornado, just to ease the ever-present boredom of life in a small town.

As a kid, my mother informed me, I had been excited beyond belief by a troupe of gypsies who passed through Te Aroha on a tour of the Coromandel Peninsula. They offered carved trinkets for sale, tarot readings, fire-dancing shows and visits of the brightly coloured customised house trucks they lived in.

All I had ever wanted to do was run away and join them, play fiddle for the fire-dancing girls whom I thought so exotic, with their bare feet on the grass and the gracious swaying of their hips, their hands swinging pois dipped in gasoline with the ends ignited so quickly that they seemed to set the air on fire.

It was just beginning to grow dark when we pulled up outside my family home, the place where I'd lived for seventeen years. We'd always been somewhat short of cash, and not materialistic in the slightest, so it hadn't changed much during that time.

There was now a new carport, the garden had been landscaped, and the fence given a lick of paint. The lemon
tree
in the yard remained, a fact I found oddly comforting, perhaps because its fruit had been gracing the top of my pancakes from the time that I could hold a knife and fork.

The flap in the front door was swinging back and forth, and my mother's two bulldogs, Rufus and Shilo, were growling deeply, their short legs only just managing to land on each of the front steps without toppling them head over feet. My mother was a short way behind them. She'd come racing to greet us the moment she heard the throaty hum of the Toyota coming up the street.

I could see the faces of my sister and father through the kitchen window, both grinning from ear to ear. Fran lived a few blocks from my parents in a small cottage that she had bought together with a friend.

Fran had been determinedly single for years, and there had been no sign of romance on the horizon the last I had heard, though with Benji's announcement, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd turned up at the door with a man in tow and a pair of toddlers trailing behind her. My mother would have been thrilled to hear Ben's news. With my sister and I both claiming to be sworn off romance, she had feared she'd never see any grandchildren.

‘Hello, love,' she said, her arms tight around me. She was wearing a cream apron well used and covered with splotches of food stains, overtop a pair of jeans and a pale-pink sweater. She'd put make-up on for my arrival, just the lightest touch of mascara and blush. My mother had let her hair go grey, though it was still thick and long. She had never been one for vanity. She was a bit plumper than she had been when I last saw her, but it suited her, as did her grey hair. I always imagined her like a tree, just continuing to grow peacefully in whatever way nature intended. I'd
never
heard her say a negative word about herself, nor to my knowledge had she ever been on a diet, which was probably why my sister and I both had fairly unshakeable self-esteem.

Fran was the only one of us with short hair. She'd cropped it when she was a teenager and dyed it bottle blonde in the biggest rebellion that had occurred in our family before I dropped out of university and moved to Australia, and she'd kept it cropped ever since. We looked nothing alike, I thought, but other people said that our mannerisms were the same. Even having spent several years apart, we could still finish each other's sentences and pick out each other's clothes.

Fran was like a pixie, tiny and lithe with a sharp nose and a wide smile. She rode a bicycle and wore heavy plastic frames, even though she had perfect vision. She looked like the sort of girl you would see cycling around London's Shoreditch, and the fact that she'd opted to stay in Te Aroha was always a mystery to me. Initially, I had thought she stuck out like a sore thumb, but she'd been here so long that the town had sort of enveloped her until she seemed like part of it, like a barnacle on a ship.

Fran's hug was stiff and quick. She'd never been comfortable with affection. With all the talk of the Brits being standoffish, I had been surprised to find that they were much more tactile than the Pakeha in New Zealand, for whom it wasn't common to greet friends with anything more than a smile or a gentle teasing.

My father stood behind them both, waiting patiently. He was still in his overalls, a uniform that I had so rarely seen him out of, it was like a second skin, as familiar to me as seeing my mother in an apron. He picked me up off the
ground
with his hug and held me for so long I thought I might fall asleep in his arms like a child.

The door opened again and another shape loomed behind them the doorway.

Mr van der Vliet. He wasn't as tall as I remembered, though he was just as thin and still hanging on to the last wisps of hair either side of his head. He must be in his eighties now, but his eyes were as hard and bright as ever, his expression as piercing as a magpie that's just alighted on a silver spoon.

‘Well done, my girl,' he said, as I gave his hollow cheek a soft kiss. He patted me gently on the back.

He didn't live near my parents, or socialise with them on a regular basis, so he must have come over just to see me. I suddenly felt as if I would burst into tears.

Fran saved me from that eventuality.

She cleared her throat. ‘We should probably go inside, guys. No point standing out here, is there? Even the dogs are getting hungry, the greedy bastards.'

My mother must have been cooking for weeks, as the table looked close to collapse under the weight of all my favourite foods.

‘For the last month I've been cooking in batches and freezing it,' she said proudly.

The vegetables were from the garden, which my father kept a close eye on, and the meat from a local farmer. Dad had apparently swapped some truck tyres for an entire cow, the corpse of which was cut into pieces and stored in our big chest freezer in the shed.

We had L&P and Speight's beer to go with it, and hokey-pokey ice cream on homemade apple fritters for dessert, followed by Pineapple Lumps. I noticed when I
went
to fetch the salt and pepper that the pantry was filled with three different sorts of Vogel's bread.

‘We weren't sure what you'd miss most,' Mum said, ‘so we got everything.'

Her eyes were getting misty, but she was still smiling.

‘I'm never going to be able to eat it all before I have to leave,' I protested.

‘Oh, yes, you will,' she replied. ‘I'm going to make you.'

‘There's food in New York, Mum.'

‘Not like your mother's cooking, though, is it?'

‘No, that's for sure,' I said, giving her shoulders a squeeze as I slipped back into my seat.

Benji saved me from more nagging, though I knew her gentle ribbing was just a sign she missed me.

‘So, sis, tell us about life in the big city. What's it like being famous, eh? Do you get your own dressing room?'

I laughed. ‘Nah, it's much less glamorous than it sounds. I love the performing, but get sick of the hotel rooms and living out of a suitcase.'

‘Living out of a suitcase?' Fran said. ‘Sounds right up your alley. You're never going to come home for good, are you?'

‘I will one day.'

Mr van der Vliet was the next to help me out of an awkward spot. ‘Where are you playing next?'

‘Well, I was lucky to get a free week here first. Then I'm going down south and working my way up. Christchurch, then Wellington, then Auckland and flying out again a day after the last concert to Melbourne, then Sydney. But only a few days in each. A bit of a flying visit. I'm playing with local orchestras on each occasion, part of the selling point,
and
it also keeps costs down, so I'll be spending a fair bit of time in rehearsals.'

Fran burst out laughing and poked me in the ribs. ‘“On each occasion,”' she repeated in a mock-English accent. ‘Listen to it. When did you get so posh?'

One of the dogs barked his agreement in the corner.

Mr van der Vliet ignored them both. ‘They're working you hard, then?'

‘Yes, very much so, but I know how lucky I am. Most violinists only dream of it.'

‘I read that you were playing with the Venezuelan conductor Lobo?'

‘Yes, Simón,' I replied quickly.

‘Are you blushing?' asked Fran, who'd been watching me closely. ‘What's going on with the conductor, then? Tell us.'

‘Nothing, honestly. We're just friends.'

‘Oh, God, don't move to South America,' my mother interjected, her hand flying to her face in shock. ‘New York is far enough away as it is!'

‘Venezuela is closer to New Zealand than New York is, Mum, but don't worry, I'm not moving there.'

‘Who are you living with in New York, then? Do you have a home to go to on your breaks?'

‘I was flatting with a Croatian couple who play in the brass section, but I moved out when the tour started. I just crash with friends when I'm back for the odd night, and do my washing at the laundromat.'

I was staring at my food, becoming more and more uncomfortable as the conversation wore on. I wasn't really sure why I didn't want to tell them about Dominik. I could easily have mentioned that we were dating, without adding
that
I liked it when he tied my wrists behind my back or made love to me with his hand wrapped gently round my throat, just like every other person doesn't discuss the details of their love life in polite company, even if they didn't get any more kinky than doing it at the foot of the bed.

My father barely said a word all night, though he didn't once drop his beaming smile. He had nabbed a guest ticket to every concert that I was playing, planning a bit of a tour of it himself, he said.

My mother couldn't make it to all of them, though the whole family would come to watch me play in Auckland, at the Aotea Centre on Queen Street. ‘Someone has to watch the dogs,' she said apologetically.

It wasn't until I crawled into my neatly made-up single bed in the same bedroom that I'd had throughout my childhood that I began to feel desperately lonely.

I had become so used to traffic rushing by at all hours that the sounds of the city were as soothing to me as a CD of whale song or the rolling waves crashing on the shore, and here there was barely a noise outside. The intense silence was suffocating, as though I was trapped in a sensory-deprivation tank.

I opened the window, despite the rain that had begun to fall again outside, and kneeled on my bed, staring into the dark. I expected to see stars, but there were none tonight.

Usually the sky was full of them in New Zealand, the air so clean that they shone like beacons.

People said that I was a traveller, but how could anyone from my part of the world be anything else? The desire to seek out new things beats fast in our veins. I could understand why we come back home, of course. I'd never shake
my
love for the place, no matter how long I was away, but I could never understand the people who didn't want to leave at all.

I wondered if Dominik was the same. If he'd come to New York just for me. If we'd ever really be able to be together. On the one hand, it seemed doomed. I wasn't sure if he'd ever really forgive me for leaving him behind and going on the road. On the other hand, I couldn't stomach the thought of being without him. I had tried all sorts of things to mimic his company, most of them daft or dangerous, or both.

I'd lately avoided tying the rope round my throat in private, because the implications frightened me so terribly, and the fact that my fear turned me on scared me even more. Even Dominik wouldn't like that, I thought, though the chances of me tripping over on something, catching the rope and strangling myself were virtually nil.