Wake (32 page)

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I just did.' He led her indoors.

The spa was dark and there were none of the usual cooking smells. The place was so quiet that at first they didn't notice the figures scattered around the dining room, all of them except Belle and Bub sitting alone. There was candlelight shining through a crack in the door to the conference room.

A chair scraped, and Theresa came out of the dining room. ‘It's Lily. She's in there.'

William put his arm around Sam's waist, and they walked into the candlelit conference room.

When the rain stopped, Jacob and William went out, hung a lantern in the lower branches of the jacaranda, and dug another grave. They took turns digging, and when Jacob paused and leaned on his shovel he registered the sound of katydids singing in the wet shrubbery.

So—it was summer.

At midnight Dan found Holly busy in the kitchen, kneading bread dough.

‘It's for tomorrow. Lily and Curtis's funeral lunch,' Holly said. ‘It seems I've been at this bench for months.'

Dan, sensing a reproach, reminded Holly that she'd always had help. ‘Though we should probably make up a roster. Now that the heroes have let the rest of us off mass burials and manhunts.'

‘The heroes,' Holly said, and laughed. ‘That says everything, doesn't it?' She looked around at him. ‘I'm fine, Dan. This just has to be done. And now is better than later.'

Dan gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and left her to it.

Jacob decided to sit vigil with Lily. He carried some fresh candles into the conference room and saw that someone else had been there before him. They had surrounded Lily's narrow, shrouded form with damp foliage—oleander, though it wasn't yet in bloom.

At midnight Theresa finally decided to put herself to bed. On her way upstairs she ran into Bub and Belle, who were burdened with bundles of bedding and backpacks. Theresa took Belle's arm. ‘Where are you going?'

‘We'll be back tomorrow morning for the funeral,' Belle said.

‘But only for the funeral,' Bub added, and clenched his jaw.

‘We've decided to move into Sam's bach. We want to be together,' Belle said.

‘Together alone,' Bub added.

Theresa released her friend.

Belle looked stricken. ‘I think I can only look after Bub and my kakapo.' She gave Theresa a beseeching look. ‘I'm not managing, Tre.'

‘It's okay, babe, Theresa gets that,' Bub said. Then, to Theresa, ‘We'll see you tomorrow.'

Theresa told them to keep safe.

There was a light shining under William's door. Theresa knocked and heard a muffled ‘Wait'. She hovered, and after a time William opened the door and slipped through it. Theresa had a glimpse of the bed and the tumbled waves of Sam's dark hair.

William took Theresa's arm and led her downstairs. There he turned on the light behind the bar and found a bottle of whisky, a few inches left at the bottom. ‘Warren has certainly made a dent in the top shelf.' He sprawled in a chair, whisky bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other.

He had only put on jeans. Their knees were grass-stained. He was sweating, and droplets of moisture on his stomach trembled with every breath he took. Theresa could see that he was already a little drunk. He raised one eyebrow, proffered the glass, and shook the bottle invitingly.

Theresa took a seat and accepted the glass.

He raised his bottle to toast.

‘What are we drinking to?'

His face looked congested; his eyes were gleaming. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.' He put the bottle to his lips and tipped his head back. ‘Look at you—' he said, ‘—businesslike Theresa. Any moment you're going to say, “I'm expecting a report, William.”'

Theresa was silent.

William went on, ‘Or you're going to put your glass down, wipe your mouth and say, “I'll talk to you when you're sober.”'

Theresa tried to school her breathing. She'd wait this out.

‘So,' William said, ‘which is it to be?'

Theresa shrugged.

William mimicked the shrug.

‘Curtis and Lily are dead,' Theresa snapped. ‘Where's your sense of decency?'

William subsided into his chair, arms hanging. ‘Do you imagine I'm civilised?' he said. He dropped the bottle; it landed upright, spilling nothing, but the life seemed to go out of it, as if his touch had given the greasy glass some extra brilliance. ‘Go on. Tell me off. Relieve your feelings.'

Theresa clenched her teeth and tried not to fume too visibly.

William went on in a musing tone. ‘Though, you know, I don't actually
enjoy
listening to you. I mean—I hate the way most of you sound. Kate has that crisp British pronunciation—very refined and ladylike. And then there's the rest of you Kiwis, with your blurry, unforthright voices. Jacob's shrinking defensiveness, the way his voice always rises at the end of every sentence as if he's constantly asking for affirmation. And Bub with his cute syncopated accent—a big tough guy who sounds infantile.' William paused for a time and Theresa could see that he was checking the truth of his own feelings, as if he'd only understood them once he'd articulated them. He met her eyes. ‘You're all children,' he said. ‘Moral infants.'

There was a long silence. Theresa finally got up, retrieved the bottle and poured herself another drink. She put the bottle back into William's hand. ‘You're baked,' she said.

William laughed.

‘The alien brought back Lily's body. He wants to talk to Sam.'

‘He told her—' William paused and looked away.

Theresa made a winding motion. ‘Go on.'

‘I think what he told her is that we're all going to die.'

Theresa wondered what her face was doing. She felt that her body had thickened, and gone stiff, like cooked egg.

‘Take a moment,' William said. He suddenly sounded very professional and Theresa realised that, like her, his work sometimes involved giving people horrendously shocking news.

‘I'm okay,' she said. ‘You can go on.'

‘That's it. That's all I've got. She wouldn't confide in me.'

There was another long silence. Theresa wasn't actually sure how much time passed before William continued. ‘I said, “Tell me, Sam.” I said, “It's okay, you can tell me. I have a hard heart.” But that only made her cry.'

Theresa was postponing feeling anything. She'd wait till she had all the facts.

‘What
I
think is this: there is something trapped in Kahukura with us, probably by the man in black. I think Sam has always known. Kind of.'

‘The man said something like that when he brought Lily. He was talking about something he called a wake, which caused the madness.'

‘A
wake
?'

Theresa nodded.

‘Remember you told me how, when Warren overdosed, Sam kept saying, outraged, “What is that?” I think that was
clever
Sam's first time with the thing.
Simple
Sam calls it “the wind”. It comes when we're in despair. It was there when we buried Adele Haines, and the night we came in after clearing the daycare centre, when simple Sam was twirling on the terrace. She was
dancing
with it.'

‘Yes,' said Theresa. ‘What interests the man in black is that Sam knows it's there.' She picked up her glass and took a big swallow. ‘After the funeral tomorrow we should have a meeting. See if we can't persuade Sam to treat us like adults and fill us in.'

The funeral was subdued. It was raining on and off—that sodden early summer weather that comes into Tasman Bay from the southwest. Nobody had an umbrella. They all stood bareheaded in the rain.

Oscar shuffled to the back of the group. Since he'd grown tall and begun to block people's views he habitually stood at the back. Besides, he didn't want to look at the shrouded forms, or anyone's face. Instead he gazed at the feijoa hedge downhill, and the wall of macrocarpa on the far side of Bypass Road. The hedges and road reserve were blurred and lumpish, and it occurred to Oscar that the road reserve hadn't been mown, and was sprouting thistles and blue borage, and that normally it was about now that the Tasman District Council sent their hedge trimmers, the marks of whose blades would show for months in the fleece of the roadside hedges.

Kahukura was going to seed, and had ceased to look like Oscar's hometown.

Oscar thought about Lily, and how bogus he felt standing at her graveside. He knew he had spoken to her often—but never about anything much. At that moment he could only recall her swinging ponytail and receding back. He tried to summon Curtis—whom he'd actually
liked
—but couldn't remember anything concrete about him. It occurred to Oscar that he didn't really know any of them. And then that he didn't really know anybody, and wasn't close to anyone any more. Sure—he'd had schoolmates he used to meet every weekday on the bus to Nelson Boys, and friends he'd chat to in a sidebar while playing
Heroes of New Earth
—but if he met one of those kids now he wouldn't know how to start a conversation. He gave it a go. At the graveside, under his breath, he practised an imaginary greeting. ‘Sup?' Oscar said, to the drizzle, and everyone's backs.

What was up?
Not him. For the rest of his life he was going to be one of those gloomy, seen-it-all people—a special kind of loser.

Oscar extracted himself from the gathered mourners and dawdled back to the terrace. He sat on the steps. A moment later Holly arrived with Kate and said, ‘My mother is feeling a little under the weather. Could you see her upstairs, Oscar? I've got to go get lunch on the table.'

Oscar took Kate's arm and they went slowly upstairs. ‘I don't know what's got into me,' she said. ‘I'm so sleepy. It's as if I took a pill.'

When they got to her room Oscar helped the old lady remove her shoes. He rolled the duvet down and left her to get into bed.

Jacob appeared. He had come to take a look at Kate. Oscar hovered a moment to see whether Jacob looked worried, but Kate and he were talking comfortably, so Oscar went downstairs and asked whether he could carry his food into the atrium and play a bit of
Bioshock
before the meeting. ‘Theresa said something about a meeting, didn't she?'

When the meal was over Belle followed Holly into the kitchen with a stack of dishes. She was about to say, ‘You'll want to go check on your mum. I can do these straight after the meeting.' But when she came in she found Holly emptying the bread basket by cramming the last few slices of today's none-too-successful batch of herb bread into her mouth. Holly caught Belle's eye and gave a grimace. She mimed that she couldn't talk, and Belle said, ‘Well—I'm going to take my seat. They're all in a fierce rush.' It occurred to Belle that Holly's gluttony was perhaps a response to Lily's having effectively starved herself.

Holly swallowed hard and offered the final slice to Belle.

‘No thanks.'

Holly said, ‘Take it to Oscar. He didn't have nearly enough.'

Belle took the bread and put it down by Oscar on the arm of the sofa. ‘Thanks,' Oscar said. His eyes didn't leave the screen. His thumbs flashed on the controller, and the fine muscles in his forearms seethed.

‘Aren't you coming to the meeting?'

‘Nah. I'm going to skip it. I've got this boss on the ropes. If he gets to that health machine he can heal. But he's not going to get to that health machine.'

Belle went into the conference room. The table was clear and smelled of wood polish. All the candles were gone from the room. Belle took her seat and gave Oscar and Holly's apologies.

Jacob was writing on the whiteboard—one bullet point, then,
Mental Health vs. Privacy
. He replaced the cap on the pen. ‘We're going to have to talk about this.'

‘Communicating with the outside—that's our first order of business,' Sam said.

‘Our first order of business is communicating with each other,' Jacob said. He favoured Sam with a reproachful look. ‘You talked to the man in black, and then stayed away for five days. He only held you prisoner for a single night, Sam. If you'd come back earlier with news—
any
kind of news—it would almost certainly have helped Curtis's state of mind. And Lily's. They would have had something to think about, instead of obsessing—'

‘Hang on, Jacob,' Bub said. ‘You told us that Curtis's death was natural causes. Some skin thing that got out of hand.'

‘Jacob—Sam is the only person here with pre-existing mental health problems,' Belle said. ‘You can't blame her because Curtis insisted on living by himself and had no help on hand when he needed it.'

‘What I'm saying is that we can't lose anyone else like we lost Curtis and Lily,' Jacob said. ‘We need some process in place to guard against it. We can't have people sliding unchecked into self-destructive behaviours.'

‘Curtis didn't want us to look after him,' Bub said. ‘He wouldn't let us. And what happened to him—a complication from a skin infection—could have happened in everyday life.' He gestured at the smeared blue of the bay. ‘Only, out there he'd have had the safety net of a hospital.'

William said, ‘Sam, you have to tell us what you know.'

‘That'll be good for our mental health,' Sam said.

‘Belle and I are sick of this,' Bub said. ‘We want to get on with our lives!'

‘So Belle thinks you're a safe pair of hands?' Warren said. ‘I'm asking on behalf of Jacob and his mental health.'

‘It's not my mental health I'm worried about,' Jacob said.

Warren said, ‘That's right. You don't need to worry. You have faith. It's your drug of choice.'

Theresa put a hand on Warren's arm. ‘We can do this calmly and politely.'