The Night Book (30 page)

He thought, if I do nothing, I will never see Mereana again. I will never hear of her again. Unless she turns up dead. He knew what he ought to do. He ought to go looking for her. There must be a landlord for the little house, although the answer there would probably be the same — the tenant is gone, who knows, who cares where. He could, theoretically, ask the police to look for her. He could, theoretically, tell them the matter was delicate, that he didn’t want his wife to know.

He had a vivid picture of her house. She had painted the furniture and walls, had set up her aquarium in her room, keeping it clean and bright. She’d gone to her job each day, worked hard, done her shopping on the way home, set her food on the shelves in neat lines. He saw her clothes drying on a chair in front of the heater, the bed neatly made, the blinds pulled up to let in the stripes of sun. Mereana lying on her couch in the sunlight, dreaming lazily, resting her bare feet on the back of the chair, or brooding over the daughter she’d lost, or breaking into a smile full of improbable hope. Or crouched in his car, banging her fist against her chest. She’d said she was lonely; she’d said sometimes she couldn’t stand people near her. She’d shouted at him, cursed him, clung to him. And now she was gone, the little house musty and abandoned, the aquarium dark and dead. There was nothing to draw her back. She was rootless, transient, powerless.

He looked out over his suburb, at the big, solid villas and the green sections stretching away towards the side of the mountain. He walked downstairs and through his house. Everything was in its place, nothing cheap or impermanent. His kitchen: freshly renovated. His furniture: tasteful. Bookshelves: crammed. Solid property, solid wealth; all this he had built around himself, shored up against his past. He had left his old self behind.

Now, glancing up, he saw Elke sitting on the stairs. She was grinning wickedly, imitating Trish. Looking at her, he felt the blood swarming under his skin. He thought of the city around him like a vast warren, and Mereana losing her grip on the tiny piece of space she’d made for herself. He saw her dead in the long grass, her face turned up to the sky, the grass growing around her and the ground claiming her, pulling her into itself.

But at the sight of Elke something stirred in him; it was like the antagonism Roza had provoked in him with her challenging stare,
and he knew that he wouldn’t ask the police where Mereana had gone, wouldn’t ask anyone.

He thought of what Karen had said at the Hallwrights’ that night:
These people are animals
. He’d been sickened by her smug privilege, her complacent cruelty.

He saw his and Karen’s world, and all the elements in it that were shallow and competitive, cruel and indifferent, and he thought: I am ready for that world. I will not lose. I will not go back.

Karen and Trish were coming in the front door. Karen was all smiles, holding Trish’s handbag. He faced them.

‘Where’s Roza?’ he asked.

‘She’s back with David now. They’re going to have lunch, and then wait for the evening. I’m going to collect Graeme and join them … ooh ow.’ Trish limped past him down the hall, hanging onto the arm of a thin little man, his face all lined with smoker’s wrinkles. ‘Ooh, nearly there, Ted,’ she said, as he lowered her off his arm and she sank grunting onto a sofa, massaging her ankle. ‘I tripped over some sort of flowerpot, darling. Done me ankle. Had to get Ted to hold me up.’

Elke came downstairs. Under the light her hair glowed with reddish points. The room was full of soft shadows, and Simon saw many reflections of himself move across the surface of a polished lamp. Outside in the garden the dreamy rain fell.

Drawing up a chair, he gently raised Trish’s foot and rested it on a cushion while he felt her ankle. ‘Does it hurt here? Here? Just bruised, I’d say.’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ she said, settling back against the plump sofa.

He fixed his face into a smile. ‘The sun’s just about over the yardarm. And today’s the Big Day. Let me make you a nice anaesthetic. One for the road, Ted?’ he said to Trish’s driver. ‘Have a seat,
mate.’ The little man nodded and perched gingerly on the edge of a chair.

Simon went to the drinks cabinet and drew out four polished glasses. Two glasses lightly touched with a crystalline
ping
. They listened.

He looked at Trish. But we are all animals, he thought.

Up in the master bedroom, Roza was brushing her hair. She stared out with a fixed expression. In the courtyard below the cars were lined up and a policeman had been stationed at the gate to monitor the people who’d been walking curiously up and down the street all morning, slowing to peer in through the fence.

Behind her David said, ‘Roza, stop doing that and listen.’

She turned, holding the brush.

He took it from her and tossed it on the bed. He said formally, ‘This is it now, Roza.’

A flash of laughter crossed her face. ‘Yes, it
is
.’

He came close. ‘We’re in this together. I need to rely on you.’

She met his gaze, and her expression was tender, mocking. ‘You can.’

‘No, I really need to rely on you. This isn’t a game, Roza.’ His voice deepened, ‘I’m going to be the prime minister.’

‘Yes. You
are
.’

He gripped her elbow and put his forehead against hers. ‘Don’t give me your coy little laugh and your bullshit. Do you think you can patronise me?’

She pulled away from him. ‘Get off. You’re hurting me. I know what’s going on. I’m going to be the prime minister’s wife. Yes, you can rely on me.’

‘Things have got to change, Roza.’

‘Stop saying my name like that. Roza.
Roza
,’ she imitated him.

He made an effort to control himself, walking deliberately to the bedroom door and closing it, and advancing on her again. ‘Things have got to change. You’ve been meeting this ex-policeman, this Marden. I know you met him through your work, I know you’ve just given him some editing advice. But you can’t do it any more. You cannot be seen or publicly associated with that person.’

She waved her hand dismissively.

‘And you can’t see Tamara Goldwater.’

Roza rounded on him, looking frightened.

Now he had her attention, and he allowed an ominous little pause to play out before adding, ‘Do you know what that creature has been saying about you?’

She seemed to shrink into herself, balling her fists together under her chin and muttering, ‘I don’t care about her.’

‘Well, you should. She’s not discreet. Roza, you’ve got to understand we need each other now. You’ve got to help me.’

There was a short silence. Her face was suddenly bitter. ‘If I created some scandal, if I disgraced you, shocked you, you would divorce me.’

He stared at her. ‘No.’

‘No?’ she laughed, pacing, biting her nails.

‘No.’

‘But your …’ She stopped and picked up the brush, playing nervously with it, pressing the bristles hard into her forearm.

He looked extraordinarily tired. Turning up his palms he said,

‘If you damage me, if you ruin me politically, well …’

‘What?’

‘Well, we’re very rich, darling. It’s not like I need the salary. I’d find something else to do.’

Roza sank down on the bed and shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it.’ She chucked the brush across the room. ‘I don’t believe you.’

He sat beside her. ‘I love you more than anything. Can’t you tell? I put up with everything.’

She screwed her head around, looked at him with a strange, intent expression. ‘You put up with everything?’

‘Yes.’

They sat side by side. ‘You wouldn’t divorce me?’

His voice was heavy, exhausted. ‘Well, I can’t keep you prisoner here if you want to leave. But I don’t want you to.’ He turned to her. ‘I can’t live without you.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Even if I told you something strange or shocking.’

‘No matter what. You’re
constantly
strange and shocking.’

Roza fell back on the bed. ‘Ohh.’ Her laughter was wild. She sat up again, abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘There’s no need to say sorry.’ He put his arm around her. ‘I mean it. I can’t live without you. I’d die. I’d have to take the children with me. It’d be a bloodbath.’ He grinned; he always made a joke when he was serious.

Roza looked into his eyes, searching his expression, and he met her stare, felt the hunger in it.

She said, ‘People have been spying on me. Trish Ellison.’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about the Ellisons. They’re a necessary evil.’

She gasped, laughed. ‘A necessary evil? That’s rich. They’ve got you to where you are.’

‘Well, yeah. But I’ve got
them
to this point too. And it’s us that matters. Us two.’

She looked at him. ‘What a strange thing. Us two.’

He said gently, ‘Shall we go down and face lunch? Us two, and fifty of our closest friends?’

‘Yes.’ She got up and went to the mirror, putting on make-up
and fixing her hair while he sat on the bed and watched, and when she was ready they looked at themselves in the glass with an almost embarrassed wariness and pleasure as if they’d only just recently met, and she said, ‘Well, that’s a ridiculous-looking couple,’ and he put his arms around her, kissing her satirically on the cheek. He stepped back and gestured towards the door. ‘At least
you
look lovely. Now, shall we get on with it?’

‘Ready when you are.’ She wiggled her toes into a pair of stilettos that added to her imposing height, and he followed her, limping down the stairs.

He watched her as she crossed the room to greet the group gathered out by the pool. He saw her talk and laugh, put a graceful hand up to hold back her hair as she bent to listen to Graeme, who was sitting in a chair with a rug over his knees; he watched her shake her head as wine was offered, clap her hands and smile when someone made a joke and the group all laughed with a slightly edgy heartiness. He saw how the men were strongly attracted to her but wary and cautious, how the women eyed her covertly, checking every inch of her tall, lithe figure and her costly outfit, how they hated her a little and were ready to pounce on any scrap of gossip about her, yet yearned to be close and to claim her friendship.

He watched her from across the room as they assembled for the lunch, which was slightly chaotic, with Jung Ha marshalling the staff and an undignified scramble for the buffet food. Roza drank water and picked at her food. Trish sat next to her, a fond hand on Roza’s arm, patting and stroking her.

Roza flirted and joked with the man sitting next to her. Her pallor and her air of wry, frozen amusement had gone, and she rolled up her sleeves and put her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her hand. As David walked past the table, on his way to a cigar outside, he raised his eyebrows at her, comradely, and she
flushed and looked down, smiling.

Trish put down her glass. She caught David’s eye. A look passed between them.

Trish gave David a tiny, barely perceptible nod.

That evening they left the house in a large convoy. There was a crowd at the gate waiting to see them pull out, and as they drove through it Roza and David waved and then turned and said at the same time, wryly smiling, ‘The royal wave.’ They drove at a stately pace along a causeway and Roza looked at the city lights shining on the dark, brimming water of an estuary. She felt that their lives were ending, that it was the end of their old selves. She had resisted the idea of change, had wanted everything to stay the same, but now a fatalistic calm came over her and she felt as though she were letting go, allowing something momentous to happen to herself; it was, she thought, looking at the dark water beyond the lights, like being swept out there towards the sea, ceasing the struggle and letting the currents take her where they would. There was something exhilarating in the letting go. She wondered how David felt. After tonight, would he become a stranger? No, she thought, he would be no more strange than he already was — everyone was a stranger, even loved ones — he would simply be altered, and she would only have to add to her present idea of him. He had seemed to her, just in the last few hours, to have become calmer and steelier, and yet a furious energy radiated in his blue eyes, and she thought suddenly, But I can be equal to it. I can be equal to that power.

She remembered wondering whether marrying him had been just a way of surviving. What she’d always wanted was to be sure he wouldn’t leave her. She wanted to know they would be together forever; she would have roped him to her if she could — and wasn’t that love? Now they would truly be bound together, and she could
face the future without worrying and hiding and subterfuge, and he would have to accept whatever facts she presented him with. In the darkness of the car, Roza smiled.

At the electorate headquarters they sat through the hours, watching the results coming in on the TV screens. The room was filled with blue balloons, the light was garish and the cheers went up in waves. Safe seats were falling. It was a landslide, a rout. Halfway through the evening it was clear that David’s party had won; the only question now was by how much. Roza sat with the children, drinking lemonade and watching David as he moved around the room. She’d had a hairdresser come to the house in the afternoon, she was wearing a designer outfit and she looked more glamorous than she had for weeks. Her expression was dreamy and faraway. Trish’s face had turned red with excitement and her hair stood up in blonde corkscrews. Graeme gasped and hacked beside her, a lock of grey hair falling over one eye, rising after each coughing fit with the same indomitable, gap-toothed grin.

At one point David sat down next to Roza, took a sip of her lemonade and squeezed her hand. A significant result was announced and the crowd in the room turned to them and cheered. Roza looked at a wall of hot, beaming faces. She saw open mouths, mad hair, wild eyes. The sound roared in her ears. She moved close to David, clutching his arm and he turned, concerned, saying something she couldn’t hear; he looked at her, expecting to see panic — she was holding his arm so tightly he could feel her nails — but what he saw made him pause, surprised. She was smiling, and her expression was one of anarchic delight.