The Night Book (23 page)

He’d forgotten to say to her: fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. He wanted her husband to win the election: this would rid the country of the politically correct arseholes who’d set up the police inquiry and ruined his career. He thought, let’s hope nothing happens to compromise Hallwright. Missus was right to feel paranoid if she had anything to hide.

Sharon hadn’t noticed anything unusual about ‘Sue’ — he
rang her for a quick debrief — nor had she recognised her as Mrs Hallwright. He decided not to tell his wife what he’d found out. He usually told her everything, but the discovery was so unexpected and exotic, and Roza herself was so attractive and strange, that he wanted to keep the knowledge to himself.

Slowly, and with a horrible smile, Ed Miles finishes the last of his pie. The convoy is stopped briefly in a layby outside town, while David’s people call ahead. David is to walk the main street, to speak at a retirement village, and afterwards, to eat lunch in a café in the main square. The café staff are expecting them, and have promised to act surprised. To act natural.

You show you’re accessible, is the thing. You mingle with the people. The media are behind in their bus, waiting to catch the moment they walk into the retirement village, the speech, and then the scene in the café as they order their humble repast: pies, or fish and chips, tea in a metal pot. There will be a shot of David beaming as he squeezes the plastic tomato full of sauce, as he mingles with star-struck locals and talks about opportunity, the politics of aspiration, and the unused potential in this great country of ours. The police are behind in their tinted van, but trouble isn’t expected. It’s a small, sleepy town with a National majority. And David’s popularity is through the roof.

David has woken with a toothache. At 9.30 a.m. he took two Panadol. His head feels light and fuzzy and somewhere outside his body the pain queues at the barrier, impatient to get in.

Lunch is not far off, so why is Ed eating a pie? Ed has shown a talent for continuous eating, for finding food between their all too frequent meals. Clearly he’s nipped along to the petrol station while David was on the phone; now he comes close, and leans down to the open window. David identifies steak and kidney. His stomach registers a small protest.

He squints into the light, touching the sore side of his face, testing the ache. He says to Ed, ‘How d’you stay so skinny, mate?’

‘It’s a gift. You want me to get you one?’

‘No.’ David sighs. There have been so many lunches, morning teas, afternoon teas; people go to all that trouble and it’s rude to refuse. He shifts in his seat, feeling the uncomfortable pressure of his belt. His stomach is in ruins.

The young man who’s videoing the campaign diary for the website is not filming now, but gazing dreamily out at the landscape, his hands folded over the camera. On the plain the tussock blows in the wind, and the mountains rise above the brown land, their slopes crossed by soft black shadows. Now the young cameraman leans forward. ‘The grass, blowing like that. It looks like suede,’ he says.

David looks out. The suede landscape. There is a sound, like the sea, in his ears.

They have been filming the campaign diary on the road. The young man does the filming from the back seat, with David in the front passenger seat, turning around to make his commentary. Ed sits in the back, eating and making phone calls. The idea is: you’re not grand. You don’t lurk in the back of some limousine. You sit in front and turn around, and tell it like it is. ‘Here we are, crossing the Hauraki Plains.’ ‘Just a few thoughts as we enter the Desert Road.’ The broadcasts are uploaded onto the internet as soon as they’re filmed. He finds them excruciating to watch — he imagines Roza’s critical eye — but they’re easy to do once you get into the rhythm.
Apparently they’re popular: they get thousands of hits. ‘Driving round this great country of ours, speaking to people along the way, we only get more energised, more excited about our campaign. There are some great ideas, and great people out there, just waiting for their potential to be tapped. And I’m going to be talking a lot about that: potential. We’re about to visit a retirement community called The Hub. And I just want to express a few thoughts about our exciting programme for the elderly in this country. I think we’ve got some ideas that’ll really wake people up. After that, we’ll be off to find the best place for a quick lunch around here. And I for one have sure worked up an appetite!’

Out on the edge of the highway, Ed has started on a jumbo sausage roll. The wind crosses the brown land, the wind crosses …

David says moodily, ‘Look at him eating. How does he do it? The man’s a stick insect.’

‘Metabolism,’ the cameraman says.

Now Dianne is out on the road edge, stretching her legs, talking on the phone. The wind crosses the brown land, and he hears it, mixed with the shush shush of blood in his ears. The heat of sun through glass sends him into a reverie. Brown study, he thinks. In the brown land. Thoughts of Roza. He has dreamed about her twice since he went on the road. He thinks of the way she notices when he mispronounces a word. The flash of quick laughter, like a bird crossing a window and disappearing, leaving the pane blank again, then the look of indulgence, warmth. She thinks he doesn’t notice. She has no idea how much he notices. Roza is clever, but he has reserves she can’t imagine. She has no idea how much cleverer he is.

He thinks of what he knows. That she and Lampton have some kind of connection. That they spoke on the balcony at the Ellisons, and at one point touched hands. That Karen Lampton knows nothing of this. That Roza and Lampton were brought together experimentally
at the house, and that they talked in the hall when they thought no one was listening. That Roza has renewed her friendship with Tamara Goldwater, and has not mentioned this to anyone, but that Tamara Goldwater is not being so discreet. That Roza has edited a manuscript for the disgraced police officer Ray Marden and has met him in the domain, even though his book has been turned down by the publisher she works for. That she is stepping outside the framework, making mistakes, leaving footprints in the wrong parts of town.

Graeme and Trish are right: Roza is the wild card. They are so close to winning the election, only a disaster can bring them down now. There can be no mistakes, no public relations messes. Roza is the wild card.

They discussed whether he should pressure her to come on the road. Better not, they decided. She doesn’t want to. It suits her to be where she is. It suits the children. But they must be on guard. She must be contained, she must be sure to go to her AA meetings; there must be no confrontation, no questions, nothing that will cause a blow-up now. When they discussed this, agreed to it, he turned away and a feeling shook him, so strong he had to pause. It was the same when he heard about the discussion on the balcony. The touching of hands. He controlled himself. There has to be control, or they will not get through. Sometimes you have to wait, be patient, watch. Take your time. He knows about waiting, he knows about control. He remembers his uncle, the wheezing grey-faced wreck, chasing him around the garden with the wooden spoon. He remembers watching him try to get his breath and thinking, aged nine, It’s only a matter of time. I need not even wait very long. And sure enough the day came when he rattled home early from school in the back of the old van, his cousins sobbing because their dad had died.

Ed’s been back on the phone, and now he waves to Dianne,
swings open the door, jumps in. ‘We’re on. We’re good to go. All right, mate?’ He slaps David’s shoulder. ‘Off we go. Wal-Mort here we come.’

The convoy pulls out into the road. David watches dust blow up over the plain. He frowns over his notes, and then has to sit out a moment of nausea. It’s no good; he can’t read in the car.

The small town awaits them, a huddle of low buildings and corrugated iron roofs under a sky that’s full of strange cloud formations: great wispy figures, like cartoon ghouls, heads slanted, arms outstretched. On the outskirts they swing through the gates of the retirement home, a compound around which are arranged long concrete buildings, like motel blocks. There’s a crowd gathered next to a wooden summer house or rotunda, a mass of wheelchairs, walkers, bent and bobbing grey heads, tottering figures supported by staff, all craning and jigging expectantly. The media bus pulls in and parks by the dusty flowerbed. You have to wait for the media. You don’t get going without the media. Otherwise, obviously, what’s the point? Above, the clouds are all fancy dress; the clouds are robes, sleeves, scarves.

David sits bowed over his notes until the driver, Ant, nips round and opens the door. David steps out, limps forward and is introduced by one of his people, Doug. Ed and Dianne hover outside the official group, on the phone. The manager, a busty, competent woman with red cheeks, welcomes David and presents him to inmates and staff. He shakes papery old hands, sends them into whispery laughter with his jokes. Above the rooftops the cloud is a giant mouth, howling. He thinks of ghosts drawn in steam on a mirror. All around him the old heads bob. It comes to him: these people were individuals. Now they’re lost in the collective identity: old person. Why is it that the older people are, the less easy it is for the young to distinguish them? For a moment, he feels sad. He
takes the arm of an old woman, gallantly guiding her forward. She’s wearing a crocheted poncho, a woollen hat. The cameraman comes around the flowerbed, angling in, as David bends to her wrinkled ear, and whispers into her hearing aid. Her smile seems to halve the mass of her face, as if the flesh is being sucked into the toothless hole, and inside it the tongue is strangely mobile, fluttering.

‘I knew your father,’ she says. She pats his arm, swallows, pants up at him.

He nods. ‘Did you? Lovely.’

Slowly, heads bent together, they walk inside. 

Simon opened his eyes and groped for the clock. He crept from the bedroom. From the window in the hall he saw the moon, so clear he could make out the grey, pitted surface. He leaned against the windowsill. The lawn stretched away to the dark wall of the hedge. He watched the cat, picking its way through the dew.

He had a shower, dressed, entered the kitchen and stopped short. Karen was bending over, peering into the cupboard under the sink. She straightened up, glanced at him distractedly, took a can of flyspray and squirted it along the wainscot.

‘Ants,’ she said.

It was Thursday. Thursday morning usually brought crisis to the Lampton household. Thursday was the day the cleaner came. If you’d asked Simon, he would have said the cleaner was definitely more trouble than he was worth. His imminent arrival drove Karen into a frenzy. She did everything but stride through the house clashing saucepan lids. The source of tension in the household of a Thursday, was Karen’s insistence that they all clean up, for the cleaner.

Simon sighed and turned on the kettle. He felt fragile, having spent part of the night awake. Outside, the sun was rising, and the garden now glowed with delicate light. Karen had bounded upstairs,
holding the flyspray; now came the sounds of struggle, as she dragged the children from sleep. Drowsy oaths, the odd indignant shout as she threw curtains open, brutally yanked at blinds and swept clothes and books out of the way.

‘Get on with it,’ she commanded, and came downstairs again. The kettle hummed to its climax and clicked off.

The children descended, in the usual disarray. Simon reached for a teabag and wondered at his family’s capacity — was it so in all families? — to have the same argument, on the same subject, without variation, every week. Could they not learn from last Thursday’s spat or dingdong or barney, and move on? No, they could not. They were all too tired. They were all too pissed off.

Elke sat against the window, her hair a golden brown bird’s nest. She dipped a spoon in her cereal, eyes closed. Marcus picked his toast apart and wiped milk onto his collar. Claire, her hair tied back severely, stared severely at her siblings. A sore, red pimple had come up on her cheek, stark against the pale skin. Her face and body expressed anger. Her skin was angry. She looked at Karen and crunched an apple with a vicious yank of her neck, as though killing it. Even her eating was angry.

Simon sat down carefully. Perhaps, if he moved very quietly, none of them would go off …

But Claire began, in the usual way. ‘Why do we have to tidy up? For the
cleaner
? Isn’t that his
job
?’

Karen crossed her arms impressively. Her enunciation was crisp, ‘I have told you before. His job is to clean. He does not tidy. And he does not have to be confronted by your incredible squalor.’

‘What’s he for then? Why doesn’t he tidy? What’s the point of him?’

‘I’ve told you before …’

This would go on for some time. It would end in one of a number
of ways: shouting, slamming doors, flouncing, occasionally (once in a blue moon) tearful reconciliation. Simon glided silently to the toaster.

‘What does he do in here? Just sit around and watch TV? What do you pay him for? Why can’t we get a real cleaner?’

Privately (very privately) Simon was inclined to agree with the children. What was it exactly that Hombre did, apart from throw the house into an uproar every Thursday? The problem was, Karen was so house-proud she couldn’t bear anyone to see the place a mess. She behaved as if the cleaner were a health inspector or a real estate agent, and lived in fear that he would come upon some excruciating disgrace: a stained sheet, an unflushed toilet. That he would emerge from the bedroom, scandalised, holding a pair of Simon’s discarded underpants between finger and thumb. And so she routed them all out of bed and made them spruce the place up.

Hombre was from the Philippines, a sleepy, louche, camp young man who fluttered his eyelashes and tittered behind his hand when amused — and he was often amused by the Lamptons. He sometimes brought his family along, his mum or dad, his glamorous sisters. His dad sat out on the deck and munched corncobs while Hombre hummed his way across the floors, bowed under his backpack vacuum cleaner. Karen was always threatening to fire him. She said, ‘He comes late. He doesn’t dust properly.’

Simon thought, He probably doesn’t think he needs to. He probably thinks this is the easiest gig in town.

Claire’s fingers played over the pimple on her cheek. ‘Why do you do it all for him? What’s the point? Why are you so …?’

And so it went on, until Karen put her hands up to her temples and shouted, ‘Just get on with it. I’ve got so much to do. Do you know how much I’ve got to do?’

The moon had faded to a pale coin, up there in the bright
blue. Briefly, Simon considered what
he
had to do. A list of surgicalprocedures in the morning, followed by an afternoon clinic.

He contemplated his children, their size and health and vitality. Sometimes just looking at them gave him relief. Life was chaos and the self was a poor wreck, the self was shamed and compromised and corrupt, but just look at them, with their shining eyes. There was one thing he’d never doubted: he loved being a father, their father. His Claire, his Elke, his Marcus.

Claire’s voice went high. Something had got to her, while he was dreaming there over the toaster. She banged her cup on the table andstormed across the room.

‘You’re a fucking cunt,’ she said.

‘Claire!’

‘How rude,’ Elke said, looking brightly at Karen.

Marcus wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘You’re a cunt too.’ Claire turned on Elke.

‘Hmm,’ Elke said, and ran her finger around her bowl. She hummed.

Karen said, ‘She’s used that word again. Can you believe it. In our home. In our own home. She’s not coming in my car. She’s not coming in my car. She can walk. In the rain.’

Claire said with a terrible smile, ‘Oh good one, brainless. In the rain. Look out there. At the sun.’

Simon shouted at her, ‘Enough!’ They all jumped.

‘She’s not coming in my car. She’s not coming in my car. She’s not coming in my car.’

They got up, dispersed. Claire went up, came down, carrying a hockey stick. Upstairs, Karen moved furiously through the rooms. Twenty minutes later they were all out on the front steps and Karen was bundling Elke and Marcus into her car.

Without looking at Claire she drew Simon aside and hissed,
‘Why don’t you defend me? You just let her …’ She shook her head, bitter.

The car droned off up the road at high revs, in first gear.

But how do you do that, defend one against the other when you love them both? He loved Karen. She had married him; she had saved him from himself. And Claire. His own girl …

In the garage he watched his daughter violently zipping up her schoolbag. She straightened, holding the hockey stick like a spear. Despite the unseasonably warm weather she’d looped a frayed woolly scarf around her neck. Her hair (his frizzy hair) stuck up in its parody pony-tail, like an explosion of Steelo pads. She was crying silently, tears running down her pimply cheeks.

He said gently, ‘You grow out of it. The rage. It sort of leaves you.’

‘All she cares about …’

‘Come on, Claire. Come on, darling.’

‘
All
she cares about is the fucking house, the fucking money, the fucking National Party. And fucking Trish. And the fucking Hallwrights. She is the most inane, suburban
bitch
.’

‘Come on. Stop. Get in the car.’

‘She thinks she’s got politics. All she’s got is money and … and… fascism.’

‘Claire! All this swearing. Do you want to walk?’

She got in the car. He backed out of the driveway.

She gnawed her fingernails. ‘The rage leaves you. What sort of crap is that?’

‘You get more steady. It gets easier to be happy when you grow up. At the moment you’re all, you know, hormones.’

She said furiously, ‘I am not all hormones. I’m perfectly rational. I’ll never be like her. I’ll never live like she does.’

‘But you change when you grow up. Everything changes.’

‘I’m not changing. I’m not
settling
for some bullshit suburban mummy life, all fundraising and the PTA and sucking up to the Ellisons and thinking you’re flash because you went to St Cuthbert’s.’

‘
You
go to St Cuthbert’s.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘Where’s all this come from?’

Claire’s expression changed. She looked pious, tragic. ‘I despise my mother’s values. Consequently, she hates me. It’s … a fact of life.’

He laughed. ‘God, Claire, darling, she loves you, she adores you, ever since you were born. She’s a good mother. Don’t be so spoiled and ungrateful.’

‘No. We’re too different. She loves Elke and Marcus. She loves Elke because Elke is … Elke.’

He said, squinting into the low sun, ‘Couldn’t you love Elke, just a bit? You’re so savage with us all. Can’t you give people a bit of leeway?’

She looked surprised. ‘I do love Elke. Or, I wish I was like her. She’s so secret and beautiful. And I’m so …’ She dropped her head, wiped her eyes.

He squeezed her arm. ‘Secret?’ he repeated. ‘You mean secretive.’

‘I don’t know. No, not secretive, not like sneaky. She just keeps everything inside, you know. She’s cool.’

There was a silence.

She sniffed. ‘When Mum got Elke, she realised there were greener pastures.’

‘What? Greener pastures?’

‘She realised not all girls were like me. Some are like Elke — nice, easy. So she stopped thinking it was all her, and decided it was my fault she hated me so much. That I was a horror that had been foisted upon her.’

Simon grappled with this. It had to be denied, and yet, as with everything Claire came out with, there was a grain of truth in it. But the way she obsessed, channelled everything into her own rage. He said, ‘Christ, Claire, stop. You’re just inventing all this.’

Unexpectedly, she smiled. ‘So, you stop feeling angry.’

‘What? Oh yeah. In life. You calm down.’

She stared out the window. ‘But why is that a good thing? You settle down, stop caring about things, bury yourself in the ’burbs. Pretty soon you’re just one of
them.
’

‘One of who — whom?’

‘Mum. Trish.’

He said sharply, ‘Give it a rest, Claire.’

‘Racist. Conformist. Fascist. Obsessed with money …’

A bus cut in front of them. Simon stamped on the brake and turned on her. ‘What
is
it with you? Have you got Asperger’s or something? Why do you have to harangue the world to death? People are doing their best. Usually for you. While you lounge around, complaining.’

They pulled over outside school, and he waited while she sobbed into his shoulder. She said drearily, ‘I don’t hate
you
.’

‘I know. I know. Everything’s all right. Everything’s
all right
. Here, darling, dry your face.’

He watched while she threaded her way through the crowd, her hockey stick on her shoulder, ragged scarf trailing down her back. All those milling girls, their bright eyes, their terrible energy. Pity the poor teachers.

He started the car. He was running late, because of having to drop off Claire. Because it was Thursday.

By the end of the morning he’d nearly made up the time, but he was twenty minutes late for his clinic. Sweeping into his parking space,
he clipped a concrete pillar, and barely stopped to check the chalky scrape on the bumper. The waiting room was full and when he checked the files he saw that Roza was booked as the last patient.

He forced himself to concentrate on each woman who came in. It was a skill he had, to appear relaxed and absorbed in their problems, and yet subtly to process them through. Some were hard to move, and he got the full range that afternoon, from impossibly chatty new mothers to a woman so paralysed by anxiety over the most minor symptoms that he felt like referring her to a shrink. There were ways of quelling, of hinting, but some were too fixated to respond, and the minutes dragged by, until finally he slapped his hands on his thighs, jumped from his chair and said, ‘Thank you for giving me such a full picture. We’re really going to get this sorted out now, aren’t we.’

And she would have to rise, unwillingly, and he would waft her towards the door, looking over her shoulder, looking beyond.

He was carrying an infant in a car seat through the waiting room when the glass doors shivered open and Roza walked in. The patient said cosily, ‘Thanks Simon.’ Or, ‘Thenks Soimon.’

Roza had approached the counter. He heard her give her name.

The woman held out her hand. He had a moment of blankness, stared, as she gestured at the car seat.

‘Oh yes, sorry.’ He handed the baby over, saw the woman’s shoulder sag under the weight of the reinforced plastic chair. The child itself, premature, would weigh almost nothing. It looked up at him with puzzled eyes as it was borne away, its tiny forehead wrinkled with the effort of sight, sensation. Simon followed the baby’s eyes and felt, like his recent patient, paralysed with nerves.

The receptionist said, ‘Mrs Hallwright. Sure, have a seat.’

It took an effort to turn, to check the files in their tray on the counter and to see that there were still two patients to go.

Without looking at her he crossed the room and entered his office.
Softly, he closed the door. Now he tried to direct all his quelling and soothing skills — onto himself. And found himself to be resistant. Nervousness didn’t happen to him often, not the way it had back in his youth, when life had presented itself as a series of exquisite embarrassments, when he was still forming the shell over what was wrong with him, what was
strange
.

He arranged the files on his desk, put his head in his hands and took a breath — in then out, slowly. He opened the door and called the next woman in.

When he’d dealt with the second to last patient and ushered her out, he retired to his room to prepare himself, and as he emerged again, resolute and artificially smiling, he found Roza up at the desk looking agitated. Clarice was saying, ‘Just writing up his notes. I’m sure he won’t be … Oh. Here he is.’