In the Shadow of the Trees (19 page)

‘You’re too involved. It’s not your work that’s holding you here, is it? It’s that thing out there in the trees. Can’t you see that?’

But of course I couldn’t. I only knew that I was bone tired and that my head still throbbed.

‘Oh, come on Liam. Call the dogs. I’m going back to the cottage to lie in a hot bath and chew aspirins.’

We trudged back in silence. He took me to my door and made me promise to stay put until the morning when we’d talk some more. I soaked for ages, and then found something to eat and some red wine. It took the edge of the unease that was now permanently lodged somewhere under my ribs.

Evening came, but there was still a faint glow on the horizon when I fell into bed and waited for the night to carry me away.

I can see the stars. So many stars. Here the sky has depth. It pulls away from the earth, a vast cavern that goes on and on forever. And the stars are not scattered; each hangs poised in its own appointed place. And they move, such a gentle, barely perceptible vibration, expanding through tunnels of past and future. The most distant light has taken centuries to reach my eyes, a journey beyond comprehension. Lying here, the sky is all I see, as if I, too, were a point of light in the universe among my brothers and sisters, and we are all perfectly balanced in this static dance of space and time.

My hand moves at my side and feels for the surface that supports me. It is hard and rough. My fingers discover sharp ridges, and then trace a meandering surface crack. The rock, it must be the rock in the clearing. I do not remember how I got here. Cold. I am dressed, but only lightly. The coldness is not unpleasant; the chill outlines my skin, defining my boundaries,
reminding me of who and what I am. Otherwise I may relinquish all sense of self and become lost among the heavens.

There’s the Southern Cross. Oh, I wish I had learnt more, learnt the planets and constellations. To call each one by name would make a claim upon its kinship. I know that’s the Milky Way, that swath of opalescence, our own galaxy. ‘A whirlpool of rampant stars.’ I read that somewhere.

How long have I lain here? It could be minutes or hours. My face is wet. I brush my hand over my hair and scatter drops of dew. I am aware of dull pains in my back and shoulders, but the discomfort does not concern me, as if it belongs to someone else.

I reach out to locate the rock’s edge but find, instead, something cold and wet. Not dew this time. This is thicker and clings to my skin. There is a pool of it, all down one side, and I realise my leg has lain in it. Now there is something else, something smooth and string-like and when I try to pick it up it is slippery and slides through my fingers.

Sinew.

Fur.

I know what this is and everything inside me convulses. And the smell. I try to pull away and the stench of the butcher’s shop rises to choke me. I scramble from the rock and slide through more of the mangled, lifeless things. As I back away my stomach rebels and I stand retching, afraid even to kneel for fear of what I might find on the ground.

Then, weak and shaking, I start to run through the darkness, downhill thank God, grabbing branches for support and even so I trip and fall and stagger to my feet again. Onto the car track and then the lake road. Back towards the cottage which is a black silhouette. But there is a light beyond. And I think I hear music, slow and soulful. I am running and tripping, trying to reach it, and I hear myself sobbing his name.

‘Liam, Liam…’

The light becomes brighter, and I call louder.

‘Liam…

‘…Liam!’ The last was a shout. The door was flung wide open as I reached it and stumbled through into the yellow glare of an electric bulb.

‘What have you done to yourself?’

‘It’s not me. It’s—For God’s sake, get it off me.’

‘Here sit down. You say you’re not hurt?’

I shook my head.

‘Then what the hell’s all this?’

He grabbed some cleaning rags to wipe my arms and legs, checking for injuries.

‘Whose blood is this? Looks like you’ve been rolling it. Hey, you’re shaking. You could do with a wee nip of something.’ He poured out half a tumbler of neat whisky. ‘Here, get this down you. Do you want to take your shirt off, it’s a bit of a mess? I’ll find you a clean one.’

He fetched a bowl of hot, soapy water and a facecloth and began to bathe my arms and legs. He was gentle, cautious even, and the water warmed my skin. By then I was shivering violently with cold, or maybe it was shock. A gulp of the whisky nearly choked me but I could feel it burning all the way down, spreading heat from the inside.

‘I think it was the rabbits,’ I said. ‘It was everywhere.’

‘That’s certainly what it looks like. But how did you manage to get it all over you?’

‘They were on that stone slab, the one in the clearing. I told you about it.’

‘And I told you to stay put. You promised. Then you go wandering about in the bush at God know what hour—’

‘But I didn’t, I swear I didn’t. I went to bed, just like I said I would, and I woke up there. Must have been sleepwalking or something.’

‘Jesus, it gets worse.’

‘They were all mangled up on top of the stone and I was lying in the middle of it all—and I don’t know how I got there.’

‘Shush now, there’s nothing to be gained by upsetting yourself. Look, it’s all gone. Drink up, it’ll do you good. You say they were in bits, laid out on the stone?’

‘That’s right, as if someone had torn them open.’

‘It sounds like some sort of ritual offering. Small animals. Quite typical. Maybe using that stone as a kind of altar.’

‘That elemental thing you were talking about, you said it couldn’t actually do anything physically.’

‘No, but it could influence someone to do something. If these
were
sacrificial they would be offered
to
it. Perhaps some sort of appeasement.’

‘It must have been Sullivan, then. He shoots enough of the poor things.’

We were both silent for a moment. I was trying to fit it all together. Then another thought seeped through. ‘Badger. What about Badger? It must have been Sullivan after all, then, and it could have been Badger up there. For Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with the man?’

‘He might not have been in control of what was happening. Any more than you wandering off in the middle of the night. Remember how concerned he was about the dog, yet he wouldn’t have it anywhere near him. That would make sense now, wouldn’t it? Regardless, I think the sooner we’re out of here the better.’

‘You don’t have to stay here, you know. This is my problem. Besides, I’m not sure I believe all this.’

He looked at me long and hard, but said nothing. Then he started collecting up blankets and threw one around my shoulders. ‘Come on. Let’s get you back to the cottage.’

‘What are those for?’

‘Well, it’s obvious you can’t be left alone. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

A
ND
a wonderful bodyguard he turned out to be.

I was woken early next morning by an unfamiliar sound coming from the living area. The bedroom was still gloomy and through the window I could see banks of dark clouds cloaking the rising sun. The air wasn’t as warm as usual, so I shuffled into a sweater before creeping out of the bedroom. And there they were, the pair of them, both snoring their heads off. There had obviously been some dispute over who owned the sofa and blankets. Liam was now spread-eagled half on the cushions, legs trailing on the floor, while Bramble lay across his chest with her nose in his beard. As I passed en route to the kitchen she opened one eye, peered at me, then closed it and went back to sleep.

I made myself some tea, retrieved my boots and went outside to sit on the step. I tried to think about sculpture, but my mind was filled with what had happened last night. All those mangled bodies and the blood. Blood sacrifices, that text had said, blood mingling with the roots of trees. Animal blood, and then human. But that was hundreds of years ago, another time and age, another dimension. Nothing to do with here and now and me. Sullivan’s just an old drunk and a bad shot. Not surprising, with a mother who hung herself and a nutcase for a wife. Who
is this so-called expert of Liam’s, anyway? Come to think of it, who is Liam to go bypassing a security system like that? Yes, that’s another good question: who is Liam?

I shivered and drained the last of the tea. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I was there to work. So I shook the cloth off the wood block and collected some sandpaper and glass. It was moving towards completion—the last, fine details. A couple more days and then I would leave. Liam was right. I ought to get back to some sort of normality, whatever that might be. And then I was touching the wood, stroking the grain and forgetting about everything except line and curve and form.

I must have been working for about an hour before I heard sounds of life from indoors. I quickly threw the cloth over the piece and turned to find Liam in the doorway.

‘Ah, there you are.’ He looked panic-stricken and half asleep at the same time. ‘Thought for a moment you’d gone off again. Are you OK?’

‘Yes, everything’s fine. You two looked so peaceful I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘That’s all right then.’

He stood in the doorway dressed only in his T-shirt and underpants. His hair, which for the last week had been so neatly groomed, stuck out again like demented bedsprings. Similarly his bare legs, painfully thin and white, were strewn with curly, black hairs. But it was his feet that fascinated me. The bones were long and thin with each tendon shown in relief, each joint and knuckle exaggerated into angularity, the toes arching and slightly turned. They were the kind of feet the old masters would paint for the crucifixion. They embodied all of human suffering and strength and humility. Those feet would make any artist reach for paper and pencil.

‘What are you staring at?’

‘Do you know, you have the most beautiful feet I have ever seen?’

‘Oh, stop taking the piss, woman. I’m going to put the kettle on.’

Some people you just can’t talk to first thing in the morning. I set myself to cleaning and oiling chisels while Mr Grumpy took it out on the coffee beans. After a while he reappeared; he had found his trousers and shirt and had made a point of putting his socks on.

‘Here, have some coffee. You’ve been working already? So, is that what you plan to do this morning?’

‘Yes, I thought I could get a few hours in. It’s easier while the weather’s cooler.’

‘I need to do some servicing on the farm vehicles. Do you fancy going into town later, perhaps have a late lunch? We could have a look at that museum.’

This was so obviously a ploy to keep tabs on me. I should have told him to bugger off but…Well, after last night I think all those warnings were finally hitting home. Perhaps I didn’t want to be left alone. Perhaps I couldn’t trust myself to stay in control. Hell, I wasn’t in control, was I? I could fall asleep and wake up anywhere. It could be that I wouldn’t wake up at all.

‘Yeah, OK. Sounds good,’ I said

Anyhow, he wasn’t bad company.

We sat at a table on the deck, right next to the water where the little boats rocked and heaved against their ropes. The sun had struggled through the clouds so the big umbrella was welcome, as were the ice cubes dancing in our glasses. Liam had hesitated over the menu. I got the impression he would have preferred the steak but, after last night, he was being sensitive to my feelings and we both ordered a mushroom omelette. I thought that was sweet of him. Then we both declined dessert and sat back, watching the water.

‘So, what will you do when you leave here?’ he asked.

‘Go home, I suppose. I’ve got an apartment in Auckland. The studio’s just round the corner and I still need to produce that series for an exhibition. I’ll try to develop the theme of the first two pieces. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to move on to something else. What about you?’

‘I’ve no plans. I might stay on a bit. Keep an eye on things.’

‘Look, in case I don’t get a chance to say it, I need to thank you. For trying to look after me, I mean. I know I’m not the easiest person to deal with.’

‘You don’t say?’ He looked sideways at me and raised one eyebrow. ‘No, you’re OK.’

‘Perhaps if this other business hadn’t happened, all this stuff about trees…But you’re right, I need to get away and sort my head out. Funny, that’s why I came here in the first place, to sort myself out.’

‘Young Sir Galahad, was it?’

‘Who? Oh, you mean Jason. Yes. But that’s history now.’

‘Glad to hear it. Come on, let’s go and look at those photos.’

The museum was a modern building with high glass walls. The place was quiet and the photographic archive thankfully empty of other visitors. There was a wide, sloping desktop with enough room for several people to sit side by side. Next to it a tall rack held the books. They weren’t books actually, but large pieces of hardboard, hinged and strung together like giant notepads. Each was dedicated to a subject,
Earliest Days, Development of Transport,
and so on, and each page filled with photographs and newspaper clippings in chronological order. A typed insert beside each picture gave an explanation.

The photographs were spellbinding—sepia memories of people out of time. They all looked so very serious, solemn even. I know photography was different then: it was portraiture, not fashionable to smile. But it wasn’t just that. Their eyes looked
sadder. Life was much harder then, I suppose, and they were the settlers in a new world. Deprivation was to be expected, but perhaps anything was better than the life they had fled. Men stiff and defiant in their high collars and waxed moustaches, ready to tame this land and bend it to their will.

But it was the women who broke your heart. You saw the painful attention they gave to the niceties, the polished silver of a three-tiered cake stand, a cameo brooch pinned precisely against the neck of a starched blouse—the things that laid a veneer of elegance over a life of labour. Out of view they waged a daily war against a sea of mud and drew water to scrub shirts for a family of ten. They were the warriors who fought at the front line. Some admitted defeat and went home, but these women in the photographs, they were the ones who had stayed and claimed a victory. Over the page their daughters, in their long white dresses, posed for the annual regatta. Another page and there were their granddaughters, so brave with their bobbed hair, all dressed up for the tennis club ball.

As each board was turned, crinolines changed to bustles, then to flapper dresses, then back to crinolines again as we tried another book. We were there to search for Sullivans but as yet there were none to be found. In 1860 Michael had arrived, and his mother, Katherine, had joined him in 1865. Yes, there were photographs from 1865 but very few. It was a new and untried medium, and even formal portraits of local dignitaries were rare, certainly not for the likes of newcomers such as the Sullivans. But each year, as the magic black box caught on, the pages became more crowded. And suddenly there she was.

1874 Mrs. Katherine Sullivan

Mother of landowner Mr. Michael Sullivan. Taken to commemorate her second year as Chairwoman of the Women’s Guild. Mrs. Sullivan was born in Ireland and settled
in New Zealand about ten years before this portrait was taken.

She looked elderly, though she would have been only sixty-something, and although seated she gave the impression of being short and rather stout. She perched amid flounces of satiny skirt, brown on the photo of course, but the dress would have been some similar, dark colour. A heavy shawl draped her body. A round bonnet, from which frilled streamers hung over her shoulders to frame her face, was the only concession to frivolity. The photo was too small to discern anything beyond a formal expression. Her back, straight as a girder, and the neat folding of hands, gave nothing away.

‘I don’t think we’re going to learn much from this lady,’ Liam said. ‘Do we know what happened to her?’

‘She lived to about eighty, probably died of natural causes. I found her stone in the graveyard, not far from Michael’s monument. I know this doesn’t help us much but it makes her real. Let’s keep looking.’

The next thing we spotted was the house. It was the verandah that gave it away, framed by the familiar carved posts and wreathed with jasmine. But there were people, a family portrait.

1904 The Sullivan family celebrate the arrival of baby Thomas

Mr. David and Mrs. Mary Sullivan are seen here with father, Michael Sullivan. The house, which still stands on the present Sullivan estate, was built by David and Mary at the time of their marriage, two years prior to the birth of their son.

A woman sat on a chair cradling a baby hidden within the
layers of a lace shawl. She wore a high-necked, white blouse and a full-length skirt, her hair piled on top of her head in a concoction of elaborate curls. Two men stood behind her; the hand of the younger one lay on her shoulder. The other stood to one side, an elderly man in a tightly tailored suit, thumb hooked in waistcoat pocket in a parody of nonchalance. They all looked as relaxed and comfortable as French aristocrats on their way to the guillotine.

‘So that’s him, old Michael himself.’

‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘And Mary. It couldn’t have been long after this was taken that she joined Anne up on the hillside. And which one of them was responsible?’

I looked at the men’s faces: perfect masks. One of them was probably her murderer. This woman was the victim in some repeating nightmare and the truth of it slammed into me as though I’d hit a concrete post. Pneumonia, or so the doctor had said, from wandering the hillsides in a rainstorm. I had stood by her grave, walked the same paths she had walked. They say she took to wandering through the hills looking for Anne. Had she felt something watching her as I had? Who, or what, had really killed her?

‘As you say, it brings them to life.’ Liam drummed his fist on the desk. ‘But it tells us nothing.’

‘We’ll keep looking, though there aren’t many books left.’ With an effort I kept my voice steady.

‘What’s this one?
The Worker’s Day.
They weren’t what you’d call a working-class family, were they? Still, nothing lost by looking.’

These people seemed more relaxed but no happier: road menders still in their waistcoats with their sleeves rolled up, aproned shopkeepers behind counters stacked with lye soap and tins of cocoa. There was a gang of labourers lounging in their break time; one of their women, caught in the relentless brewing of tea, was bending to hook a kettle over an open fire.

We turned a page and found the house again. No trails of jasmine this time.

1902 Moving-in day

Handymen deliver furniture to a newly built house. Although furniture manufacturers had set up business, the most treasured pieces would have been brought over from the old country. The furniture seen here was the property of Mrs. Katherine Sullivan, imported from her husband’s estate in Ireland, now to grace the new home of her son and daughter-in-law.

Two workers in flat caps posed by a horse-drawn cart. I don’t know much about horses but this one looked uncomfortable, head hung down and ears flattened. The cart was piled high with chairs and tables, hallstands, a brass bedstead…

And there it was, the glint of sunlight on the glass, the twisted branches curving round the frame. I grabbed Liam’s sleeve so hard I nearly tugged him off the chair.

‘That thing in the trees. I know how it came here. It wasn’t Michael who brought it. It was his mother.’

Of course it all came out then. It had to. I was too shaken to drive, so Liam took the wheel while I told him about the mirror. I told him about the dreams and the lost hours, of waking up in front of it, or waking up somewhere else. I told him about finding myself in the bush with half the day missing. And I told him about the Watcher and how it could think at me. And it wasn’t until I heard myself saying all of this that I realised the enormity of what was happening. Through it all he kept his eyes on the road, chewing his bottom lip and saying nothing, I could see the skin over his knuckles stretched white as he gripped the wheel.

When I’d finished, he said quietly, ‘Now, is there anything else you haven’t told me? Because if there is I’d better hear it now.’

Back at the cottage Liam examined the mirror. ‘Well, I can see that it’s old,’ he said, ‘but you’d know more about that than I would.’

‘Yes, very old. But the dressing table isn’t. That’s oak too, but a very different wood, I’d say not more than two hundred years. But the mirror…I’ve never seen wood like it. I’m sure it’s oak, but so finely grained. You can’t usually get that depth of detail. And it’s hard as iron. I don’t understand it.’

‘And I can’t see how they got the glass into it.’ He ran his hands around the frame, feeling with the tips of his fingers. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any join.’