Somebody Loves Us All (28 page)

‘It’s a true thing to say.’

‘But Paddy, the people you’re talking about are
adding
a language to their existing knowledge.’ She slumped back in her seat, the energy of her outrage expended. When she spoke again it was softly. ‘It’s different with this. What’s happened to me? I’ve suffered a … subtraction.’

‘But you still speak in a sophisticated way, don’t you, as yourself. That hasn’t changed or been subtracted. Mentally, you’re the same. You can communicate me with me just as you’ve always done.’

‘Can I?’

‘And you can understand me. We can talk at our normal level.’

She nodded slowly, stroking the serviette again with both hands.

‘Say “reading”, “I was reading my book”.’

She pronounced the word.

‘Hear that? It’s uvular.’ He opened his own mouth and pointed his finger inside. ‘The back of your tongue is touching your uvula. It’s where you make that slight trilling sound. You’ve changed from the English “r” sound, which isn’t usually trilled. Say “jew”.’

‘Shoe.’

‘Okay, your tongue, the blade of it, which is here—’ he showed her his tongue, ‘—goes up just behind your teeth, hits the alveolar ridge, while at the same time the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate, roof of your mouth. We call that a postalveolar articulation. In French, je. Je suis fatigué. See? Small movements of the tongue and palate. So what’s happened to you is really something quite superficial, in the sense that certain aspects of your communicative style, the things going on in your vocal tract, have been altered, while the essential core remains in place. The voice is one of the easiest mechanisms to fool around with, to manipulate. Actors do it all the time. Imagine if you’d been paralysed by a stroke and couldn’t move your arm. That would have been a nightmare of rehab and no certainty that any of it would work. All we’re talking about is
the position of the tongue, the lips, the soft palate and so on. Easy. I can help with that. It’s what I do! And if it’s not with me, because it might be better with someone else, I can arrange that. I can recommend someone. There are exercises and routines. Software you can use at home. It can all happen in private. Like your game. It would simply be another computer game for you. We can work something out.’

While he’d been speaking, his mother had kept her eyes fixed on the table. She now raised them and regarded him with a look of such gentle pity he was startled. She’d reversed in a flash, completely and mysteriously, the flow of emotion and for a moment he couldn’t think what the meaning of this look could be. Surely he should have been pitying
her
. As a kind of reinforcement of this feeling, she reached across and put one hand on top of his, smiling at him reassuringly. She triumphed wordlessly. Without questioning or challenging any of his statements, he understood that she’d gently removed herself from their power. The effect was that his arguments suddenly seemed gestures of hope not for her but for him. Paddy appeared as well-meaning and ineffectual as anyone turning up with a message of cheery revival in the house of someone whose sense of life had shifted profoundly.

He still thought she was wrong. She was stubborn, afraid and wrong. Yet it made no sense to pursue things further then. Besides, he saw one way in which she was right and it stopped him. He’d spoken to her not as if she was his mother but someone else that he knew only vaguely. Someone less intelligent, less knowing, less familiar with the world she’d arrived in. At some level, I must think she’s changed.

She had her computer set up in an alcove off the sitting room. Paddy could see the cords running down the wall. ‘Have you been online at all?’ he said.

‘No!’ She looked almost insulted at the suggestion.

‘Murray Blanchford says you should just return to your normal routine. It might help. Do the things you always do.’

‘But the things I always do have landed me in this.’ Had she heard anything he’d said?

‘We don’t know that. Maybe there’s no cause. The brain is a mystery.’

‘Except they insist on poking around in it.’

‘Some things they know about.’

‘And with all the other things, they pretend they know about them.’ She looked over towards the computer, and then glanced at her watch. She was being drawn towards it.

‘Go on, Cleopatra,’ he said.

‘Who? Oh. Very smart, Patrick. Very smart.’ She was still considering it, then with a shake of her head, she appeared to free herself again. Her eyes searched the room in a sudden arc—was she getting her bearings once more?—and she found Paddy. ‘Has he called? Why hasn’t he called, Dr Blanchford? Did he call you and you won’t tell me what he said? Paddy, what did they find?’

‘He hasn’t called, Ma, and there’s nothing more to find. We just need to get an appointment for the MRI scan, that’s all. Things just take forever in hospitals.’

She watched him carefully as he said this, weighing things. Finally she nodded cautiously.

‘I don’t have the radio come on in the mornings any more. Its that crazy.’

He told her it wasn’t.

‘I still watch the six o’clock news,’ she said.

Good.

They talked about other matters for a while—Stephanie and her kids, the school barbecue, finally about Murray Blanchford once more and the message Paddy had left at the hospital for him—then, at the door, he told her about the lunch with Pip.

‘Pip is coming here? But when?’

He told her.

‘But I just saw her.’

‘She’s coming.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She spoke with such gloomy disappointment, he had to laugh. ‘Do you think she’ll want to—help?’

‘It’s shaping as a real possibility that a lot of people will want to do exactly that.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

It was hard to remember whose idea it was to go on the ride in the first place, Pip said. This was more than fifty years ago and quite a few things were now lost. She couldn’t remember where they got the bikes from, for instance, since they weren’t theirs. Did they have panniers full of provisions, bedding, water? She had a vague feeling they decided against carrying any water because it would be too heavy—could that be right? Visions of drinking from fresh streams? Bathing under waterfalls? They had a little two-man tent. A billy. He had to understand to a pair of closeted Wellington girls in the early 1950s, the country beyond their birthplace was largely unknown. Her impression anyway was that they were foolishly ill-equipped for such a journey, four hundred miles or so at the height of summer. The bikes were old and heavy but she couldn’t tell him what colour they were, for instance. By the same token, she said, a surprising number of things were still there, locked in the memory banks, seemingly unlosable. 

They were in the sitting room. Pip sat on a sofa, right on the edge, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Paddy was in an armchair facing her. He’d slept for fifteen minutes before she’d arrived and he felt better. There was anyway something immediately soothing and undemanding about her presence, the sort of guest who’d slip from the dining table and have all the dishes done by the time you noticed her missing. Did this mean there was also something subservient in Pip? He wasn’t sure. One imagined a life of service, self-deprecatory and resilient.
Already she’d washed the strawberries she’d bought and put them into a bowl she’d found in one of the cupboards.

She wore a faded floral sundress under a black cardigan. Her shoes were brown and looked heavy. Her white hair was cut severely across her forehead, just a fraction shorter than it should have been, as if someone else with an idea about Pip had gained the upper hand and despite misgivings, Pip had consented. He thought there was something childlike about her—the haircut and clothes contributed—though this may have only been because he’d always put her together with his mother when they’d been girls. Pip had been fair once but now her skin was sunned to the point of wearing a coating—like one large freckle or a stain—and it seemed unlikely this would fade and return with the seasons.

He couldn’t think what she’d looked like at his father’s funeral. There was only the strong and uneasy sense of Pip with his mother, two heads close together, a cousins’ conspiracy.

Now there was also a briefcase, which she put down beside her.

She’d wasted no time in starting her story. Having taken care of the strawberries, she’d moved to the sofa, refusing any refreshments. She’d shown no interest in the apartment itself. She’d shaken his hand, ducking easily away when he tried to kiss her. She was light on her feet and Paddy had the impression of swiftness, of a woman disappearing around corners, an elusive spirit, unused to being the focus of attention. She was close to her cousin, his mother, in all of this. And once she’d found out Teresa was resting next door, she wanted to begin. It seemed that if she failed to start telling him immediately what she’d come to say, it would all be over. Hesitation was the end. Nor was he allowed to interrupt. He’d tried at first, prompted by things she was saying, looking for clarification, but she’d held up her hand, smiling. Paddy was her audience no matter how much that may have pained her.

He’d been right when he’d listened to her voice on the phone. Smiling for Pip meant little; it was simply the way she talked
to people and it didn’t express anything except that she was speaking. Silent, her face lapsed into a dullness that was at first disconcerting. The talking smile, this rather fixed arrangement of her lips, seemed to hold everything at a certain distance of politeness. Paddy had no doubt she was a kind person too, yet he suspected her sympathy might easily grate. He recalled the odd thing his mother had said over the years about ‘Pip the Good’ and ‘poor old Pip’. She was a loved figure, important in ways beyond their understanding, and these veiled criticisms were similarly impossible to pursue. His mother protected her cousin and kept her to herself. Over the years they’d stayed in touch, but he had no real idea what they said to each other or even how they said it.

Yet here Pip was, telling him something he’d never heard his mother speak about and which he’d never known had happened. It was hard to believe she’d appeared like this, ready to narrate. It was exciting, and partly because she herself seemed excited by such an unusual event. Paddy had no idea what she was going to say from one moment to the next. He also had the impression that when Pip had confirmed for herself that this was the case—that she was novel, that it was all new to her audience—she spoke less with the smile and with greater flexibility and emphasis, if still perhaps with the solitary person’s uncertainty as to whether she was wanted in this unfamiliar role.

What had she never forgotten? The weather on the first day of their biking trip, she knew and could recall with absolute faithfulness, the weather. How they’d watched the clouds move out to sea as they biked along the coast, settling over Kapiti Island like a … white crown! Pip laughed shyly at her own image. ‘We thought they were making way for us,’ she said. Sunshine marked the route ahead. The road was still wet from the night’s rain, and as the day heated up it steamed up beneath their tyres. ‘We joked that we were causing the effect because of our extreme speed. Of course it had probably taken us a few
hours to get even that far. We were so badly prepared really, with only the natural fitness of two averagely healthy teenage girls. We were members of the Miramar Tennis Club but that was about it. No one ran or jogged in those days. Oh, there must have been clubs of course, harriers. But normally you didn’t do such things. If someone ran in the street, they were up to no good.

‘Poorly organised no doubt about it but I do remember I had an utter faith in your mother with the bikes since she was good with machines of all sorts. She had a surprising skill there.

‘Anyway, that only went so far. Teresa quickly had blisters from pushing against the pedals in a new pair of tennis shoes she’d bought for the trip. I had very sore thigh muscles after the first hour, plus I’d fallen off when I was looking at something in the distance—a train, I think. Ran straight into a hole. That would be me not the train. I grazed my elbow quite badly. Amazingly, we did have some bandages. We collapsed at regular intervals by the side of the road, inspecting the damage we’d done to ourselves.’

It seemed both incredible and perfectly normal to Paddy that Pip’s story should involve bikes. Here was the sort of coincidence that encouraged people to think the world was a quilted thing, each person carrying a patch, the bearer of an illustrated scene or design which made sense once it was joined to its neighbour, creating overall an effect that was pleasing, cohesive. Still he wondered what part Pip had brought him? He’d never even seen his mother on a bike.

‘Maybe this won’t surprise you, Paddy, but here’s the thing,’ she said. ‘Cars would stop, they’d always stop when they saw us by the side of the road. We must have looked pathetic. But it was a different time too. It was a kinder time, I think. I want to say “innocent” though that may be pushing it, especially given what later happened. Yet people thought nothing of stopping their cars to ask whether they could help. It was just a different idea about manners and community. That’s my opinion. Historically, I may be talking rubbish. But as someone looking back fifty
plus years, I can say with all honesty, things happened to us that would never happen now and there must be a reason. We must have lost something, I think. I’m out of touch with New Zealand of course but that’s still my sense.

‘We had many acts of kindness come our way and we were always being offered lifts. Farmers in trucks would want to throw our bikes in the back and drive us wherever. And we didn’t have to be stopped anywhere to be asked. We’d be biking along perfectly well and someone would want to help us. They’d pull alongside and wind down the window. On the first day we’d decided it was a rule not to accept these offers. Apart from our minor aches and injuries, we were going along quite well and the weather, as I said, was beautiful. Not too hot, very little wind, the clouds parting for us. So we always said no thank you. I think they thought we were mad. We probably were mad. No one really cycled long distances back then, is my impression. I think we were an oddity. People stopped to find out what it was that we were doing exactly.

‘Anyway, day one ended in Levin, which made us proud, I remember. We’d reached Levin! That seemed a long way on the map—not that we carried a map. I think my father had told us the way to go and we were quite happy to have his extremely basic directions to guide us. It was straightforward, right up State Highway One until we hit Auckland. “Don’t go to Napier” was one thing he said. No idea why. Once we hit Auckland, he didn’t have a clue and we were on our own and good luck to us. That was all right, we’d just ask someone. We were going to stay for a few days with one of my mother’s relatives whom I’d never met.

‘You’ve got to understand, the arrangements, the planning was very loose. We weren’t silly girls by any stretch of the imagination but we liked to pursue a notion. Your mother was great fun and very determined, up for anything.’

Paddy wasn’t sure if Pip had seen something pass across his face, a questioning look, some doubt, for her to say what came next.

‘It’s sometimes hard for children to accept any image of their parents which is not the one they’ve developed through that relationship. But this was well before that relationship, Paddy. You were not even thought of beyond the most abstract abstract. We were still children ourselves. We encouraged each other. We were a good team. Always laughed a lot. We had no fear or trepidation about the biking, despite never having been on a bike for more than about forty minutes, never having been further north than New Plymouth in my case and somewhere similar in your mother’s, and only having a very faint idea about what Auckland actually was, how big, how easy to get around in, how it looked and felt. None of this made us pause for a moment.

‘I got a puncture just before we stopped for the night and your mother had the tyre off and repaired in minutes it seemed. I remember looking at her while she worked and just giggling. She put the plaster on the tube and I think I said, Thank you, nurse.

‘Day two was always going to be harder. You wake with all of day one’s previously hidden problems now exposed. Where did we sleep though in Levin? I don’t know. There were towns where we slept rough. Can’t really remember being inside the tent. We wheeled our bikes onto farmland, or down beside rivers, and slept under trees. That was perfectly acceptable too. If we were found, and once or twice a farmer’s wife or a worker spotted us, perhaps, we weren’t chased off or suspected of something. We were invited into houses and fed and, very gently, questioned. I remember telling our story to a family of wide-eyed listeners on a farm near Bulls. They listened as though we’d decided to circumnavigate the globe.
Auckland
? They inspected our bicycles as though they must have been fitted with rocket technology. Teresa could hardly keep a straight face.

‘Am I making this sound dubiously idealised? Was it a nation of generous, simple, good-hearted people on the lookout for those in need? I don’t have statistics to back me up but as two teenage girls biking the length of the North Island, we took this
sort of treatment as a given. I don’t think we thought we were charmed. We biked on with simple confidence, communicating to those we came into contact with the same unselfconscious and unexamined faith they too possessed. If we were unusual, and we were, for taking on such a journey, then this only increased the kindness.

‘But that second day was hard. Our bodies weren’t ready for it. The sky, I remember, was bare. It was boiling hot. We’d decided we had to get to the coast, to cool off, but we took a wrong turn somewhere and biked for a long time in the afternoon sun down deserted roads that circled back on themselves.

‘“We should have stayed on Highway One like my father told us,” I said.

‘“Shut up,” said Teresa.

‘And she was right. Shut up.

‘At one stage we emerged onto a major road and set off in what turned out to be completely the wrong direction. We were heading back south! We weren’t speaking to each other by then, blaming each other. I wanted to stop and bike down a long gravel road which looked like it led to a farmhouse we could see on top of a distant hill. But Teresa had already passed the driveway, her head down, pedalling blindly. It was the only time I wanted to go home, well, one of the few times. I hated her back. I hated her pedalling. There was a pointless aggression in her pedalling, her legs were going round too fast. I could also see that her shirt was soaked in sweat, as mine was also, and I even hated her sweating like this. You understand how it can get, Paddy, do you?

‘I followed behind her, furious. She disappeared over a little rise and just as I was fantasising about a big hole swallowing her, I came to the top and we were looking at the sea! She’d stopped her bike and was gazing out. Then she turned to me. “Told you,” she said. It was completely the most stupid thing I’d ever heard in my life and we both burst out laughing. We were dehydrated too, I’m sure. Brain-fried. We had to get off our bikes and fall into the grass, still laughing. We let our bikes crash down. We didn’t care. We loathed the bikes right then and
hoped they’d break and we wouldn’t be able to carry on our journey to Auckland. Who cared about Auckland anyway? It was so delicious to lie in the grass, delirious and exhausted.

‘Eventually we stood up, picked up our bikes and made our way down to the beach for a swim. And this was where we slept the second night, just up from the beach, on a springy stretch of sandy grass, with a few sheep moving around us. You could hear them munching in the night, a sound like someone tearing their hair out but we didn’t mind. What did we eat? Certainly we didn’t have dinner—we were going to get that further on at some town. What town? Well, we didn’t know names, we just took what came at us. We felt amazed people lived here.