The Night Book (10 page)

Myron’s mates John and Gav had come out and stayed in the bach too. One evening they’d smoked a couple of joints and the three boys climbed up the cliff above the beach and couldn’t get down. They’d gone up stoned and sure-footed, but by the time they’d realised what they’d done they were twenty metres up the cliff, stuck on top of a difficult outcrop and panicking. Roza had lazed around below, laughing at first, thinking their shouts were melodrama. Eventually she’d got up, wondering if she should go for the ranger. They’d managed to climb down in the end; they were scared and shaky, and then stupid with relief, and had gone tearing over the dunes in the evening light, exhilarated, yelling and carrying on. Roza had stopped running and stood on the cooling black sand, looking at the
flaming sky, the surf tumbling in silver lines against it, and the earth rolling back and away, until the horizon was just a black line against the moving mass of the sea. She used to think, there is nothing so pure white as sea foam against the black ironsand. She was sixteen, and in love with Myron to the point where it felt like madness.

One day Roza and Myron had walked around the rocks to the tunnel track, and crossed the great desert of black sand, all the way to Whatipu. The sun was relentless and silver mirages bubbled on the horizon, rippling in the heat haze. They’d gone in under the cliffs and listened to the roaring echo of the sea bouncing off the rocks. They’d taken off their togs and he lay on top of her and she felt the sand sliding down the dune and curving hot around their bodies, burning her legs. It made it more exciting, lying on that hot, shifting surface, holding Myron’s back, her fingers on the rough scales of his blistered skin and the scorching in her legs as the hot sand trickled down. She’d hung onto him. The sky above her was so blue it was like enamel, and blueness danced in it, and the heat of the sand became unbearable on the sides of her knees. He came and she was burned.

Myron didn’t talk much. He didn’t fill silences like she did. He didn’t try to explain things. She loved his body and his face and his toughness. There was a kind of dignity about him, he never whinged or had doubts, and he faced any dramas she created with a perplexed, boyish stoicism that made her break out in giggles, ashamed of her own lack of control. He was funny, dry, a rebel; he had pale blue eyes.

On those long days when they’d walked through the black desert she’d felt like a savage, a creature moving across the face of the planet. There was animal happiness in the heat and the sweat and the burning light in your eyes. The grey cliffs stretched up into the bush and far above you could see the pohutukawa clinging to
the rocks by their gnarled networks of roots, and birds floating way up there against the fierce blue. Sometimes they met fishermen and trampers; mostly the vast landscape was empty. They’d crossed the stream that ran out of the Pararaha Gorge and hunted for the native frogs that hid in the raupo stalks. They’d swum in the pool below the giant black dune, and Roza had got out and run screaming when a huge spider came skittering towards her across the surface of the water. On the stream there were floating islands of grass and reeds, and the reeds grew in a bright green line.

When they’d got to Whatipu they’d bought Cokes at the store and lounged in the shade. They’d picked mussels off the rocks if the tide was low enough, and slung them in a bag to steam open for dinner. It was usually late by the time they’d raised the energy to move again, and they’d end up trudging home with the sky all in flames, rounding the rocks at Karekare and walking up the last steep incline of the metalled road in a stupor of tiredness.

They’d had a kerosene lantern hung out on the balcony. Roza remembered the stink of it, the way it swung in the breeze, the flame leaving a fiery trail against the black night, the smell mixing with the rich scent of Myron’s joint. She was stupid with dope and happiness.

She couldn’t remember how long they were out there in the bush. It must have been a few weeks. They hitchhiked to Piha and bought food from the store, and a couple of times, after their money started running out, they’d gone to the phone box down at the beach and had rung Gav, and got him to bring out supplies. She could have stayed forever, but of course it came to an end.

She’d woken up one morning, sick. She was feverish, and threw up so much she could hardly stay on her feet. Myron said she must have eaten a dud mussel and to lie down and sleep it off, but she’d got worse, and in the end Myron had given in, and had run down
to the phone box to ring his mother, Roza having croaked that he wasn’t under any circumstances to ring hers. Myron’s mother had driven out in her old Hillman Hunter, and transported them back to town, stopping on the way so Roza could chunder out the window into the bush at the side of the dirt road. It hadn’t rained for weeks and the bush was pale with road dust, and ribbons of dust hung in the air like smoke, stirred up by the surfies careering out to the beach in their old bombs, probably stoned already and taking crazy risks on the narrow bends. Myron’s mum’s car had ripped old vinyl seats and smelled of mint and herbal cigarettes. She was a bit of a hippy. She hadn’t said much, just swerved to avoid the old vans and surfboard-laden station wagons, had clashed the gears, sworn in a breathy, apologetic, half-laughing voice and driven like a fiend in high gear all the way down the Waitakere Ranges.

Back in the city she’d parked outside the Danielewiczs’ big Remuera house, dragged out Roza’s backpack and asked her if she wanted company going inside. Roza had said no, with the sense that Myron’s mother would be relieved to see the back of her. You could tell she adored Myron: he was her only child and she was a solo mother, and although she’d known where they were, she’d made a big thing of having missed him and having been worried about him. Roza had registered the possessive, suspicious edge in Mrs Jannides’s voice, and been stung by it.

So they’d driven away and she’d walked slowly up the front path. Her own mother’s face at the window.

Roza listened. The cleaner had arrived and was barging about downstairs, talking to Jung Ha. JH was denouncing the dog again and the cleaner was chiming in. ‘That dog bad. But all dogs very bad. So dirty!’ A door banged, and the vacuum cleaner roared vindictively into life.

She picked up the next page of Marden’s manuscript and frowned, trying to concentrate. Several chapters in, he had got onto his childhood: the son of ordinary working-class parents, he had run a mile barefoot to school every day, winter and summer. It reminded her of the Frank Sargeson story about the boy who put his feet in cow pats to keep them warm. From bare feet to high office, and now out in the cold again.

She clicked her tongue and crossed out a line, sighing deeply. What fascinated her was Marden’s catastrophic fall from grace. To be exposed and vilified, brought down and down, until there was nowhere further to fall, was the very thing she feared. Not so much for herself but for David. She must not let him down. She was anxious and she felt trapped, and she thought how strange it was that there were so many things you simply could not do, people you couldn’t associate with, places you couldn’t go. She couldn’t just ring Simon Lampton — she would have to make an appointment first. You couldn’t be seen dead with Ray Marden. For her and David, the restrictions were absolute. At first, with David, she’d been attracted by the idea that she would be surrounded by money and respectability, but his success had built and built, he had tied himself to public life, and now the walls were larger and also more precarious, more susceptible to risk. She felt the scrutiny on her. So far she was known only as the undercover wife — the one who didn’t contribute enough to her husband’s campaign. If she got pregnant some of the pressure would ease; she could retreat into her ‘delicate condition’, and people would have to leave her alone. And again came the thrill of uneasiness and pain. Pregnancy — the mere thought of it made her want to get drunk.

‘It was sickening and disappointing …’ Marden wrote. Roza’s pen hovered over the page and she wrote in her small neat hand, ‘Perhaps strike a more detached tone?’

‘No way was that hypocritical woman and her cabinet of cronies …’

Roza laughed. She would have liked to get Marden over to the house, sit him down and give him a tutorial.
Let me give you a few
lessons in PR and spin
. She despaired of his sentences, and yet each clanger made him seem more helpless, inept and — although David would call this naïve — more honest. David would say, just because the guy can’t write doesn’t mean he’s not a liar. This was true, and yet she hadn’t found anything in the manuscript so far that struck a mendacious or implausible note. You can’t
entirely
dismiss instinct.

She heard the gate opening below. It would be David coming back from his photo session. She gathered up the pages and slipped the manuscript into a bottom drawer, along with Simon Lampton’s phone numbers.

‘Where’s Roza?’ she heard him say. He limped slowly up the stairs.

She propped herself on one elbow. ‘Nice hair.’

He smoothed it down with a clumsy hand.

‘They’ve given you a mohawk.’

‘Have they?’

Roza laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll look lovely, darling.’

‘Well, obviously I don’t want to look
lovely
so much as
in
command
.’

Roza rolled over on her back. ‘Oh,’ she sighed.

‘Oh what?’ He took off his suit and put on a shirt and jeans.

‘You’re such a … scream.’

‘Am I.’ He lay down on the bed.

She turned, ‘So are you ready for tonight?’

‘Yeah. God. I’m bloody tired actually.’

‘Good. We’ve got an hour before we get ready. Like a little holiday.’

They lay side by side. The big clouds shouldered along the skyline, with their shawls of rain and vapour. Fat drops splattered against the window. He put the back of his arm across her stomach.

She said, ‘So you say we should have a baby. Isn’t the timingspectacularly bad?’

He turned on his side, amused. ‘The timing is always bad for a baby. That’s what babies do — they change everything.’

‘We can just let it happen, I suppose,’ she said in a faint voice.

He put his hand on her arm. ‘That’s the thing. Don’t worry about it. Let it happen. Or not. Just wait and see.’

She said, ‘I suppose you know all about it. You’ve done it before.’

‘Yes, I’ve done it all before and it’s great. You’ll love it.’

She sighed. ‘Isn’t it strange, what we’ve got ourselves into. I have odd thoughts. Like, what if the place is bugged.’

‘The house? It’s not bugged.’

‘What if there’s a cameraman out in the trees.’

‘We’re not that kind of famous, we’re boring famous. No one wants to look in our bedroom window.’ He looked at her intently. ‘Don’t worry. It’s completely safe and private in here. It’s our bolt hole.’

‘Someone’ll come to the party with a hidden camera.’

He laughed. ‘Well, just watch yourself. Stick to the party line.’

‘I think, do you just want us to have a baby because it would look good? Make you look all virile and manly. Make people stop wondering why I’m so supposedly undercover.’

He said, ‘Don’t say that. It’s all up to you. I like the idea; I want you to be happy. It’s completely got nothing to do with anything else.’

‘I think, imagine if Jung Ha sold our secrets to a magazine.’

‘What secrets? There wouldn’t be justifiably … It wouldn’t be
much of a story. Speaking of Jung Ha, where is she?’

‘Prowling around with her camera. Snooping through the laundry basket.’

‘Let’s keep her out then,’ David said.

He got up and locked the bedroom door, turned, listened, then dipped his head and said, ‘Hopefully it’ll all go swimmingly tonight and then we can totally relax the next day and stay under the radar.’

Roza looked at him without expression. She had the reflexive desire she often felt when one of his sentences hung in the air, to whip out her red pen and correct it, usually with cuts, drastic cuts. But she loved him when he mangled his sentences. As it was with Marden, the more he struggled to express himself, the more she turned towards, rather than away. It didn’t mean they weren’t lying,but it softened her.

He wrinkled his forehead and limped to the window, looking out. ‘You’ve gone and got me all paranoid now,’ he said.

The room was large and filled with light. She could see the bare tips of the trees, and, if she raised herself up on one elbow, the distant ridge with its line of wooden houses, and beyond that the city. She thought, you could probably go up the Sky Tower and look straight into this room with a telescope. She flopped down on the bed. ‘You’re right. Say they saw us having sex. What are they going to do with that? They’re not interested, unless we’re doing it with the wrong person, or doing something illegal.’

She thought, But who are ‘they’?

He leaned his forehead against the glass and said in a distant voice, ‘You’ve obviously got to rationalise it.’

She looked at his bowed shoulders, the backs of his elbows, the crooked collar of the polo shirt, his hair standing up in clumps at the side of his head.

There was a click and a sigh as the thermostat adjusted itself and warm air rippled against the glass.

He said, ‘It would only get ugly if there was some scandal.’

‘Well, yes,’ Roza said. She looked at him carefully; there was something unusual in his tone.

He turned, raised his eyes and met hers, lifted and dropped his shoulders and smiled, pressing his lips together, as though pushing away an unpleasant thought. Picking up the clothes that she’d tossed over chairs or dropped on the floor, he smoothed them out and hung them in the wardrobe. She watched him add his shoes neatly to the line in the cupboard, straighten the mess on top of the chest of drawers.

There was a sound out in the hall and he paused, holding a coat-hanger he’d been about to angle into her jacket. They looked at each other and grinned.

Roza whispered, ‘Jung Ha. With her camera. Her
equipment.
’

He hung up her jacket and came to the bed. They lay close; he put his arms around her and she said, with a sense that she would lose something by asking the question, ‘There’d be a scandal if you had an affair.’