The Night Book (19 page)

He had spent his life getting away from being strange, had armoured himself against it. His visits to Mereana were a trip back to a part of himself he’d banished, but they were crazy, selfish, wrong, and he risked damaging everyone. He was letting the old self, the old
strangeness
emerge. It was a good life he’d made; he was the sum total of his choices, and he should be content. And yet he was screwed up with restlessness and anxiety, and half in love with the risks he’d been taking. They gave him the sense that life had become interesting again. And still that persistent, nagging sense of a truth somewhere, hidden from him.

He got up and listened on the landing. Karen and Trish had moved into the sitting room, the girls had shut their doors and gone to sleep, and Marcus was snoring with a
Tintin
comic resting on his nose. Simon gently removed the book. The boy shifted irritably, batting him away.

He prowled restlessly around the master bedroom, before reaching into the top shelf of the wardrobe and taking down a file. It was the record of Elke’s adoption, a great wad of paper, notes of interviews and assessments, school reports, vaccination records, legal documents, letters from the lawyer, the agency, government departments. He leafed through it. Karen was a meticulous record-keeper. She had taken on the business of Elke like a job, and managed it efficiently; everything was crisp, chronologically ordered and in its right place. Elke was her project, and she took pride in it. Every good report was an achievement. She’d grown to love Elke in the process,
because the girl was easy to love — unlike poor, awkward Claire. Strange Claire. At bad moments he saw that Karen came close to hating Claire, and the girl was capable of being vicious about her mother. But this was all right, he thought, because he was there to balance things. Claire was his treasure, his very own girl. And Marcus was so dreamy and easy, he was everybody’s favourite.

He picked up a photograph of Elke in school uniform, smiling but not sweetly, her mouth full of gaps and big white new uneven teeth, before she’d grown tall and lean and got her orthodontic braces, and filled out and turned into a young woman. Her chin was raised; it was a challenging look. You could picture the scene: she was not co-operating. He thought, school, the kids being lined up, the photographer jollying them along. And she didn’t like the photographer, she thought he was stupid. You could see it: he was getting her to pose, making silly jokes, and she was turning her body slightly away and giving him that antagonistic, knowing look.

Simon studied it. It wasn’t a flattering picture; it made her look plain, with the snaggly teeth and a rash of sunburn roughening her skin. She’d smoothed out considerably since it was taken, but it caught the power and intensity in her eyes. I don’t like you, is what her expression said. I will not let you come near. He hunched forward suddenly, staring. He dropped the picture on the bed, looked again — yes, it was unmistakable. Not the features perhaps, but the expression, the characteristic tilt of the head …

Hearing voices and the front door banging downstairs, he jumped up, gathering the spilling pages, cramming them back in the file, stuffing the photo back on top and closing the folder. A page fell out and swooped across the floor; he grabbed it and slid the file back into the wardrobe.

When Karen came upstairs he was in the bathroom staring at the mirror. She stood holding a pile of folded clothes and he muttered
‘Won’t be a second’, closing the door with his foot. Locking it, he sat down on the edge of the bath.

In that moment, looking at the photo of Elke, he had understood. This was why he couldn’t get Roza out of his head, why he dreamed about her, why he had veered off course, risked everything and gone, with Mereana, so far outside the bounds of safety and order that his whole life was teetering on the edge. It was because he had seen in Roza such a strong resemblance to his adopted daughter that he had been struck, fascinated — and blinded. Roza had appeared to him like his love grown up, made separate and real. In her, he had seen what he already loved. He had a moment of amazement at his own confused male dimness. Why hadn’t he realised this before?

On the last day of her marriage his mother had shouted at his father, ‘You’re sick. You’re a pervert.’ They’d fled to his aunt’s house after that. Three years later his mother married his stepfather, Warren Lampton. He had never discovered what his father had done that had made his mother call him those names. He and his brother had struggled all their lives with the taint of Aaron’s badness. Now, was the badness coming out in him?

He willed himself to calm down. He’d never done anything except love Elke, and only as a father would. He’d done nothing wrong. If a beautiful woman reminded him of his adopted daughter, and if he’d realised he was fascinated by the woman because of that resemblance and even if, because of it, he felt he loved her, this did not make him ‘sick’.

He emerged silently from the bathroom and slipped into bed, avoiding Karen’s eye. His injured arm ached. He had the sense of spinning in the dark, the earth rolling back and away from him, his thoughts jumbled and surreal.

The wind blew leaves skittering across the yard and the moon shone in and out of the clouds. The police helicopter circled overhead,
close enough to shake the house, moving to hover at a point a few streets away, the white searchlight beam playing over rooftops and gardens. The moon was pale and insubstantial behind a mesh of pale clouds, a watermark moon. The helicopter lifted, hovered then turned abruptly and veered away towards the city, leaving the gardens in darkness. In the silence a morepork started, a gust of wind heaved up the tree branches, sending a shiver though them, and the shadows jittered on the bedroom wall. 

There she is again, the sexy bitch dancing at the window, she’s pissed and holding a beer bottle against her chest, closing her eyes and singing, and if he goes outside and crosses the field he knows he’ll hear her belting it out, her voice good and true and sweet, a real voice, not trained but clear and tuneful, she sings out loud like this when she’s been drinking, she’s come stumbling back from the pub where he drinks and deals most nights, gets pissed, carries out business and finishes up with a burn out in the back car park with a couple of the brothers, comes back in with his brain on fire and there she’ll be, lit up in the coloured spotlight on the little stage or standing up swaying on a chair with the microphone in her hand doing the karaoke, tiny starry lights from the disco ball crossing her face, she’s the pub champion, the skinny chick with the great tits, the one the brothers all wish they could fuck, and usually while she’s singing there’s the distraction of fights, flare ups, chicks having a go, all slapping and shrieking and hair-pulling, someone getting the bash, someone getting sick or ripped off, with all that going on he’s got to focus hard round eleven to make sure he catches her leaving, sometimes she’s slipped out before he’s realised she’s gone and he’s running out into the car park and seeing her in the distance heading
for the shops, blowing smoke out behind her; she’s fucking hard to keep up with but he usually manages it, follows her all the way home, and if she’s weaving and pissed he can go quite close and she doesn’t notice, though one night there was fog hanging like rags along the edge of the field and she stopped, turned and called out, Who’s that, and all he did was freeze and she said into the dark, Fuck off, whoever you are, and shrugged and walked on fast, ended up running the last bit to her house, but on the next night out she walked alone in the dark as usual, the only chick who would walk along that edge of the suburb where the houses thin out into paddocks and yards and bits of vacant land like the country, and when she gets back from the pub she gets out a beer, turns on her stereo and starts to sing, and he creeps close to the window and watches until she runs out of steam and falls down on her couch. He hears music in his head all the time, the bros take the piss, call him a mad cunt but he loves the music that plays in his head, and when he’s had a massive burn the music plays for him and it carries his mind through the window into the room where she’s dancing, the hot bitch, moving like she’s gagging for it, like she’s calling him in, she raises her eyes to the window, croons out into the square of blackness where he sways and listens and burns.

One night when she dances like this, singing him into her, he will go. He will kick down the door, and give her what she’s been asking for, all these nights.

Look at her. How she wants and wants. How lonely she is, yearning, reaching, singing him in.

Listen! 

From the bedroom window Roza watched the car draw up and park outside. She walked slowly to her dressing table, sat down and looked in the mirror, studying her face, trying out expressions: ‘composed’, ‘open’, ‘relaxed’. Her feelings were kept in check; they were somewhere outside herself, and her body was fixed in a state of artificial calm. She had been to see Tamara that morning, telling her that the stress of the coming election was affecting her badly and she needed help to get through. She had emphasised how difficult her position was: her life had been taken over by a force outside herself, party people might be watching her for signs of flakiness, she’d developed the crazy fear she was being followed. Tamara was thrilled by all this, and had entered into the fiction that she was the only one who could help Roza, although she’d said at first, ‘Why don’t you go to the GP and get some valium?’ Roza had tried to explain, evasively, that this wouldn’t be enough; she’d gone beyond sensible solutions. She didn’t spell out to Tamara that her greatest fear was that she would drink, and the only way she could stop herself was to substitute booze with something equally strong, and less detectable. She would stop when the crisis had passed; she really did think this was possible. She hadn’t told Tamara she was an addict, so Tamara
didn’t need to overcome any scruples on that score when she gave Roza some slithery little plastic packets from her stash, supplied, she confided, by her sexy pool man, Curtis. During their conversation Tamara’s three-year-old had rocketed around them, waiting to be taken to his kindergarten, the cleaners had been working in the house, a puppy of some expensive and exotic breed was gnawing a shoe on the deck, and Tamara sat by the edge of the pool painting her toenails.

As the kid drove his plastic toys around the deck and the puppy growled and the cleaners shouted over the noise of the vacuum cleaner, Roza had pressed on, alert to Tamara’s expressions, acutely judging her mood, trying to pick the right things to say. She felt the force of Tamara’s prickly, resentful personality, and tried to meet it on every front with charm. Tamara was the only person she could trust; she emphasised this, without trusting Tamara at all. Even as she took what she wanted from her she was thinking of ways she could deny they’d ever talked or that she’d ever asked for anything. She was mortified, but still, she wasn’t hurting Tam, she was actually giving her something: the thrill of conspiracy, of proximity to David’s fame, the promise of a revival of friendship at a time when Roza had access to a world Tam would love to enter, if she was allowed. She would owe Tam, but would worry later about how to repay her.

As she was leaving they embraced. Roza stepped back and said— it was the first genuine thing she’d come out with — ‘But you’re looking gorgeous.’

Tamara laughed. ‘I had Botox. Have you ever done it?’

‘No. But really, you look great.’ Roza blushed, thinking she sounded false, but Tamara only gave her a benevolent smile.

‘I’ve got new hair, new body. Don’t laugh, but I’ve got a personal trainer.’

Tamara was what the Sunday gossip columns called an ‘A-lister’,
because her husband was rich and well-known, and she was a tall, good-looking blonde, and they went to charity balls and fashionable parties, and were photographed at the polo and openings and fundraising dinners. The ‘A-list’ always appeared to Roza to be a figment of the insular imaginations of the journalists who compiled it, and to consist of a tacky gaggle of people with the most dubious claim to celebrity, but she saw Tamara felt she’d reached the pinnacle of success, and she was touched by her complacent happiness. If only she could feel happy like that! 

They hugged again. Roza kissed Tamara’s cute blonde kid
without quite remembering his name, and went home.

David called out. Roza brushed her hair, put on more lipstick and went downstairs. David had opened the door and was welcoming the Ellisons. Trish marched in first, kissed David and looked beyond him to Roza, who was standing on the bottom step, smiling uncertainly. Graeme shook David’s hand and gripped his arm, pausing and leaning close as he always did, looking as if he were whispering some joke, although he was really just catching his breath. His asthmatic wheeze had got worse, and his cough was deep and rattling. He turned his head sideways and grinned up at Roza, then straightened up and came to meet her, but was beaten by his wife, who took Roza by the shoulders and air kissed her loudly, both sides. She drew back and said, ‘Roza, you look beautiful. But do you think our David’s got a bit thin?’

Roza smiled. ‘Perhaps it’s stress.’

‘But he’s amazing, he never
shows
stress. He’s always so completely
calm
.’

‘G’day, Roza darling,’ Graeme said, wheezing. He grinned, showing his gapped teeth.

Trish was in overdrive. ‘This is probably our last chance to get
together before the main event. Roza and I will let you two
conspire
and not bother you.’

David said, ‘We’ve obviously got our strategies sorted out, our people in place. This is a bit of light relief for us, er, Trish — which to be honest Roza and I need, don’t we, Roza — a bit of a drink and dinner, so let’s all relax and, ah, I’ll get you a drink,’ he finished up, clapping his hands and rubbing them, blinking rapidly.

‘Light relief! Of course!’ Trish sighed richly. She loved it that Graeme was part-architect of David’s success, the father figure, the tough and seasoned campaigner, supplier of political advice, jokes, stiff drinks. It was, Roza thought, like a visit from David’s grand old parents, she bursting with mumsy goodwill, he standing back, grinning, proud of David’s imminent success, ready with advice, but only if it was wanted. Graeme and Trish made David sheepish, which amused Roza and also unnerved her. She wasn’t used to seeing him at a loss.

Trish turned to Roza. ‘Tell me everything, darling.’

‘I’ve been busy at work.’

‘You haven’t reconsidered, about moving to Wellington?’

Roza looked down. ‘We don’t know if it’s going to happen yet.’

Trish said carefully, as though to a child, ‘But I’d be astonished if we don’t win now, and so would everyone else. You’ve seen the polls, they’re through the roof. You’ve got to plan ahead.’

‘It’s not that I haven’t planned ahead. We both want to keep the house here, keep the kids at their schools.’

Trish sighed. ‘Ye—es, well, it’s so horribly cold in Wellington, isn’t it, and the place is so very small. Last time we went there I said to Graeme, “Do you know, I think Wellington is
shrinking
. Do you think so?” And he thought about it and said that yes, actually it was. We were both sure it used to be bigger.’

Roza laughed.

‘Still,’ Trish added, ‘poor David will be down there all week. Slaving away.’ She looked sideways at Roza with her bright eyes.

‘I want to keep my job up here,’ Roza said.

‘I suppose he’ll have all his staff down there to help: his little press assistant, his PA — what’s the girl’s name? Everyone speaks highly of her. But it’s not the same as family, is it.’

Roza said sharply, ‘You’d have to ask David about that.’

She saw Trish register her sudden coldness and added, ‘David and I have talked about this. He wants to keep our base in Auckland too.’

The doorbell rang. David came back with two more couples: Ed Miles and his wife Juliet, and the Lamptons. Karen seemed nervous. David came and stood close to her, giving her a friendly nudge and offering her a drink. He’d obviously noticed how easy it was to make her collapse into blushes and confusion.

Roza was uneasy at having to face Simon, and irritated by the memory of their meeting on the terrace at the Ellisons. His presence oppressed her, and she wished David hadn’t agreed to Trish’s suggestion that they invite the Lamptons. She felt Trish’s eyes on her.

Simon came towards her, smiling, and she raised her chin and looked at him coldly. Dismayed by her expression, he hesitated, then rallied and shook her hand. She saw him frown as he met her challenging stare, and thought angrily, He probably expects me to blush and giggle. She bristled and almost pulled her hand away. But they’d helped each other that night. She remembered that she’d liked him.

She smiled properly and said, ‘Would you like a drink?’, at the same time as she thought, The father of my child. She wished they were alone, that she could talk to him and find out what he was like, maybe even ask about his daughter. At this thought she flushed and
smiled broadly, this time with nervousness.

But he was wary now, puzzled by the changes in her expression, and didn’t smile back. Roza had a moment when it seemed impossible to carry on, but she got a hold on herself and turned to talk to the women.

Karen was seated next to David at the table and became quite animated. David kept making her laugh. Simon watched them with a detached, tolerant expression. Roza noticed he wasn’t excited by David’s position. He didn’t try to get close or to ingratiate; he seemed to avoid David, or to look beyond him, as if he couldn’t quite take him seriously. He was preoccupied and gave distracted replies to Trish, who prodded him fondly and tried to draw him out.

The conversation was stiff at first but warmed up when Juliet Miles mentioned a recent violent crime.

Karen said, ‘I’m looking forward to some reality in sentencing. They give them eight years and then turn them loose in three. And they let these maniacs out on bail.’

Juliet Miles said, ‘The jails are too soft. They sit around watching TV. There should be some rigour, basically.’

‘Well obviously, there’s a lot we can do in terms of the, er, justice system, Juliet.’

‘It’s all about their welfare, and their special lessons and their cultural sensitivities. We’ve lost sight of the idea of punishment.’

‘The sentences are a joke. Let the punishment fit the crime.’

Simon said, ‘Don’t we have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the Western world?’

‘Make it
the
highest. Maybe other countries don’t have to deal with the kinds of people we do.’

Simon looked at his plate. ‘The kinds of people …’

‘Well, let’s not be PC here. The Maoris … you’ve got to admit, if we didn’t have Maoris our crime rate would be really low.’

Simon said, ‘But we do have Maoris …’

‘And they end up in prison. Their choice,’ Karen said.

Trish said, ‘Simon’s got such a kind nature. He feels sorry for people.’

Ed Miles leaned across the table. ‘You can feel sorry for people, sure. But let’s face it, the reality out there is that the crime rate is high, and if you actually had to deal with these people, if you met them, you’d realise they only understand one thing. And that’s toughness. I think we have to look at making eight years really mean eight years, life mean life, and also making it less cushy inside.’

Simon looked depressed. ‘Sentences have already gone up so much. These enormous non-parole periods …’

Ed smiled blandly. ‘That’s good. But we can do more.’

Karen said, ‘Great. Some of these people are
animals
.’

Simon looked at her. She noticed, and said defensively, ‘You’d change your mind if you lived out with the criminals in South Auckland. You’d want the streets made safe.’

‘If I lived in South Auckland …’ He broke off, staring at her.

She went on, ‘But you don’t. You live in your safe suburb, and you never go outside it. That’s why you can afford to be “kind”.’

‘And you can afford to be cruel.’

‘Simon!’ Trish said, giving him a glare of affectionate reproach. ‘How can you call your wife cruel? She cares so much. She
slaves
for charity.’

‘For sports pavilions,’ Simon said.

There was a silence.

Trish ended it by hugging Simon, telling him to apologise to his darling wife or she would send him outside, and signalling to Roza, who had been watching the exchange with interest, to create some distraction.

Roza jumped to and made a show of starting to clear plates for
the next course. She got confused about what needed to be cleared, but Jung Ha came out of the kitchen and straightened things out and took over while Roza hovered, pretending to help and getting in the way. David stood up and poured more wine.

Trish patted Simon’s arm and said to Karen, ‘Simon sees the good in people.’

David said, ‘I applaud that actually.’ He raised his glass.

Juliet Miles frowned. ‘I do too, in theory. But there’s theory and then there’s reality. Someone’s got to make the hard decisions.’

Karen laughed coldly and said, ‘Now Simon’s going to say, “That’s what the Nazis said”.’

‘Simon doesn’t want anyone to suffer, even jailbirds.’

Simon smiled and looked at his plate. When he raised his eyes Roza thought he looked agonised. Everyone laughed, and the conversation moved on.

The guests got through a lot of wine. They praised the food, and after the main course Jung Ha brought in a cake decorated with the party logo, which the caterer had done without being asked, and there was a round of clapping and cheering. The caterer lit a sparkler on top of it. After that they had coffee and moved around the table. Simon listened in on Ed and David’s conversation about privatising the accident compensation scheme without a public outcry. They moved on to the idea of privatising prisons. When Ed persuaded David to go outside for a cigar, they were nodding together about ‘presenting a centrist face at this point’, and discussing the ‘optics’ of what they proposed.

Juliet focused on Simon with her crooked, intense frown and asked him about obstetrics. She tapped the table. ‘This turf war between midwives and doctors … Birth is natural, right?’

Simon agreed it was.

‘So why does it have to be so
medicalised
?’

Simon caught Roza’s eye. He said carefully, ‘Well, yes, birth is natural. But perhaps what people forget is natural selection — the idea that nature actually intends a percentage of women and babies to die in the process. It’s survival of the fittest. If you medicalise it, as you call it, you cheat nature.’