The Cruel Peak Page 14

  “I can’t say,” Tom replied gently and sympathetically; it was the seemingly unsquareable circle for him and them.

  “You must have a lot of opportunities here, Tom,” Helen said softly.

  She didn’t blame Tom as the man who took her daughter and grandchildren away, but she fervently hoped he would bring them back. She had been married happily for forty years and she understood that these decisions to stay or go were reached in a composite marital brain whose workings couldn’t be unravelled by an outsider - even a mother or mother-in-law.

  “Yes, I do have some opportunities.”

  “And wouldn’t it be better, in the long run, for Alison and the children to be here? This is God’s own country, after all.” She mentioned God with a lilt; he knew this expression had nothing to do with religion.

  “I don’t fault the country in any way. I guess in terms of beauty and freedom it isn’t bettered anywhere…”

  “So what’s keeping you away, Tom?” Geoffrey cut in.

  Tom thought that Geoffrey was firmer now. Geoffrey’s anxiety seemed to Tom, like a headache that wouldn’t go away. This couple were not going to let Tom go quietly, and he considered that maybe he owed them an explanation - at least as far as it was explicable. “Have you ever been in, say, Lambton Quay in Wellington, on Saturday night at about 10pm or Sunday at noon?”

  “Not much happening?” Geoffrey asked.

  “I have a lonely feeling.”

  “You forget, we come from Bath where it gets quiet, like countless towns in Britain. You’re really saying you want the buzz of a big city,” Geoffrey said.

  “He’s saying it’s more interesting in London. They’re a young couple, Geoff.”

  “We like the entertainments and diversity of London. Alison does, certainly. But that isn’t it entirely. I work in a profession. If I worked in the medical profession, or in a branch of academia, it would be the same. In a population of four million, probably the same size as a pair of London boroughs, these professional groups are small…”

  “No room for promotion, you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

  “No. It’s not promotion or money or opportunity to exercise your expertise - it’s the small-town hothouse of peers. Everybody looking over everybody’s shoulder, and the gossip and prejudice that goes with it.”

  “Oh!” Helen was surprised and a little shocked.

  “I think I understand,” Geoffrey said. “Life in a goldfish bowl.”

  “Yes, in the same sense that families who have lived in Coronation Street for a few generations live in a goldfish bowl.”

  “Some find that reassuring, Tom,” Helen said primly.

  “They do, but I don’t. I find it cramps me. But when all this has been said, Geoff, neither Alison or I have definitely decided what we’re doing. It’s a very, very difficult question.”

  “It sounds as if you may never make a decision. Inertia will keep you where you are,” Geoffrey said.

  “That’s true.”

  “I know that Alison is having an immensely better life with you than she had with Maurice Hewitt, and that’s a relief,” Geoffrey said.

  “Maurice seemed such a nice person when we first met him. Alison never thought she’d be a parson’s wife,” Helen said.

  Tom didn’t understand Alison’s attraction to Maurice. It wasn’t a forbidden subject, just something that he never mentioned and that she never volunteered. Maurice was darkly handsome, agreeable and witty when Tom first knew him, and that may have been the sum of it. When Tom met Alison, she was, with Maurice, one of the party crowd. In the licentiousness of that time, she had struck a spark with Tom that didn’t die, as every other relationship he had with a woman did. Where and when the spark was first struck was lost in time now; it may have been in the shadow of a dawn over twenty-five years ago when he woke up beside her in bed.

  “Maurice changed. He didn’t like the life he was leading. He thought it was bad.” Geoffrey spoke resignedly.

  “Yes, but if that was so, why did he become so grim and unhappy?” Helen asked.

  “Maybe he took a path that didn’t yield the consolation he expected,” Tom said.

  “His illness was the ultimate burden,” Geoffrey said.

  “In her devotion to Maurice at home and in the hospital, Alison was a model.” Helen said.

  Tom remembered that as Maurice’s illness progressed - it was leukaemia - he became more curt and sarcastic. He laughed only at the misfortune of others. Alison told Tom that Maurice seemed to delight in the long silences which fell around the hospital bed. If she showed pity, he began to sneer and become vituperative.

  Tom used to visit Maurice very occasionally when he was in a hospice in Timaru; he saw it as supportive of Alison. On one occasion they had a conversation, which he had later described to Alison as nonsensical, but had never forgotten. Maurice, with strange perspicacity, had portrayed him in a way he was always earnestly seeking to deny.

  Alison was there when he arrived at the bedside, and shortly excused herself.

  “I’ll leave you men to tell some yarns for a while.”

  After she left, Maurice said, “What would the world think if she did anything less than crucify herself? It’s not the ‘flu I’ve got, you know. I have to lie here and watch her charade…” He sighed and closed his eyes.

  Tom would have liked to leave too, but he had only just arrived, and he stayed, a prisoner of his sense of duty.

  Maurice marshalled his strength. “We’ve both been caught by a different kind of ill fortune, Tom,” Maurice said, looking at him piercingly from under heavy eyelids.

  “My misfortune has been to receive an unexpected and deadly blow. My mechanism’s gone wrong. I’ve been unlucky. I’ve lost on a chance in ten thousand. You’re different; you’ve invited your troubles in the door like old friends. And yet I’d change with you. That’s the part that hurts, to see you floundering deeper and deeper into a filthy bog - you must be blind - and yet be willing to change places with you, because at least you’ll be alive. Your folly won’t kill you. You may come as near to suffering the agony at the thought of death as a live healthy man can, but you won’t die.”

  Maurice rubbed his face with a blue hand. “Look at me! I can feel my empty cheeks, my hollow eyes. My skull feels thin. I’ve no hair. But you! You’ve changed too. I can see! Your face is shrinking. There’s a blotchiness about your skin. And you have staring little eyes. You’re oppressed too. You’re beginning to show the misery of loathing your wife, and being loathed by her, of continual arguments that seep into every moment and poison them. You’re in hell, my friend, and I would change places with you just to breathe and go on breathing.”

  Tom didn’t want to argue. “OK, I’m a sinner.”

  “I don’t know anything about sin, Tom. What I know is that you’re a wrecker, dragging everybody down. Your wife, your kids, your friends. You’re the Pied Piper. You came out of a shack at the Ashtons and you’re going to ruin them.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”

  It was true that at that point, his relationship with Robyn was shattered, but he had never seen himself as a leader in family disruption; merely a man who was careless about whom he cuckolded.

  Maurice paused, and again concentrated his sharp gaze. “Can you understand what I feel for my wife? Her smile that turns up the corners of her mouth. A demure confidence. She appears to be holding something back, and peeping at my confusion. Is Alison concealing something from me? No. There is nothing behind that self-satisfied smile. It’s a foolish mask. I know her; the line of her thoughts, her manners and her moods. I know her interests and her accomplishments. Nothing about her is hidden from me. I’ve even reflected on her death. In that case, I would lose her as one loses a piece of paper with writing on it; one remembers only the tenor of the words. I’d be free of her. I’d have used her up.”

  Hearing this description of Alison, which he thought showed that Maurice didn’t understand his own wife
, made him less concerned about being described as the Pied Piper. He believed that illness had made Maurice cranky.

  Maurice began to quiver and sweat, and stared at the ceiling. “It’s the side effects of the drugs. I’d change places with you, Tom, yes. I’d swap my death for a living hell. Does that surprise you? I should be calm, resigned to my end, saying prayers. Instead I’d exchange with a wreck like you. I don’t know what to believe anymore, but there’s surely no peace in dying.”

  “Can’t you get some solace from your… calling?”

  “That farce? Don’t be ridiculous!”

  He didn’t feel guilty - or wounded - at the bedside of this harmless near-corpse, once a delightful companion. He wondered, without being truly concerned, whether Maurice knew or sensed anything about his association with Alison, but it seemed that he was convinced of her virtue; contemptuous of it, and of her meticulously performed wifely duty. Maurice must have assumed that when all the hectic partying finally faded away, so did all the affairs or associations to which it gave birth.

  Tom thought that Alison couldn’t disguise in her husband’s presence the enigmatic satisfaction of a woman well-loved, and Maurice, who had been so prophetic about him and Robyn, couldn’t see that the nothing that he supposed was behind Alison’s mask, was actually something which was living and growing joyfully.

  Alison rejoined them for an awkward fifteen minutes at the end of the visit. When they left the hospice together, subdued, it was dark in the street. He crushed her to his side as they came down the steps at the entrance to the building, almost lifting her off her feet. They went to a restaurant where they had a steak and a bottle of wine. They talked about everything but Maurice. Later, they drove to Maurice’s house in Springvale. It was very late. They had a cognac from Maurice’s liquor cabinet, before going to bed in Alison and Maurice’s marriage bed.

  10

  He borrowed a car from Stuart and drove to Christchurch to see Len. After a beer and sandwich in a pub he went to the neurological disability centre in Riccarton where Len lived. Len was a handsome eighteen year old boy with honey-smooth skin, and rich yellow hair, but his body was now fat. He had a comfortable room with a special bed, and although he spent his waking time in a wheelchair, he could not perform any task himself; he could not eat, wash or move without help. He could not speak. He was doubly incontinent. He received twenty-four hour attention from specialist carers and medical staff. He had to be swung into his bed on a hoist, and showered lying on a tray. Whenever Tom saw him, he appeared to be in a good humour, but he couldn’t recognise Tom or, Tom thought, anybody else.

  He greeted the staff, some of whose faces he remembered; they permitted visitors at any time. He settled on a chair in Len’s room and chatted to him for a while - although Len couldn’t reply, or understand. He talked about Len’s sister, and his half-brothers in England. He asked Len questions, and answered them himself.

  On the hour, he switched on the television. The news included a short piece on the so-called mystery of Mt Vogel, referring to Sir Ernest Ashton and The Fateful Snows, and very guardedly mentioned that a Swiss team were raising questions about what happened on the mountain when Sir Ernest’s climbing partner was killed. The soundbite implicitly promised that more was to come.

  He switched off the television and resorted to a DVD of Abba which he found amongst Len’s collection. It pleased Len, who drooled and made a low noise.

  When Len had the accident, his care was discussed on the telephone with Tom in London. Tom assented to the doctors doing ‘everything’, and the result, very creditable in terms of medical science, was this; they created a semblance of a human being out of a heap of bruised flesh and broken bones. He had appreciated since then that Len had only a minute quality of life, and ought to have been allowed to die; but here Len was, a creature with the kind of consciousness which could only show pleasure and discomfit.

  That morning, before he left Tamaki Downs, Robyn had said to him, “Of course you’ll make arrangements for Len to be at the wedding.”

  He hadn’t expected this. “But Len won’t know what it’s about,” he protested.

  “He’s part of the family and he should be there.”

  “On show, you mean? So it looks right?”

  “His sister’s marriage is an important family event.”

  “Are we a family?”

  “Stop picking holes. You know what I mean.”

  “It’s ridiculous, wheeling him in like an ornament.”

  “You don’t know what he feels or knows,” Robyn said tartly.

  “Do you?”

  “I give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Petra came in and immediately sensed the tension. “What’s the matter?”

  “Daddy doesn’t think Len should be at the wedding.”

  “Why? I want him there. He’s my brother.” Her face had a smooth petulance; a way of transmitting her disapproval without moving a muscle.

  “Of course, darling, so do I,” Robyn pronounced and stared at him balefully.

  “Len may be too… you know… to come.”

  “Don’t be mean, Daddy.”

  He conceded weakly. “I’ll have to check with the doctors whether he can travel. It’s a long way. We’ll have to have a nurse. And don’t forget, Len wears a nappy and that’ll have to be changed.”

  “Then get two nurses and an ambulance.” Robyn forced her advantage sternly.

  “It’s a hell of a long way for Len to travel for -”

  “For what, Tom? His sister’s marriage? And before you tell me that a Christian marriage ceremony is tribal trumpery, remember that you’ve come twelve thousand miles for one!”

  “Oh, Daddy, you don’t think that about church weddings.”

  “Doesn’t he just, darling! You don’t know the half of what he thinks.”

  “I’ll see the doctors.” He retired meekly from the fray.

  He spoke with the doctor on duty when he left Len, saying that he was prepared to meet the costs of staffing and transport to get Len to Springvale and back for the wedding.

  The doctor looked at him closely, as if examining an unusual species. “Come into my office, Mr Stavely.”

  Tom followed the white coat into a small cubicle. The doctor hunched over a desk and pushed up his spectacles to his hairline. “Let me ask you a question, Mr Stavely. Would you take Len to a performance of the Merchant of Venice?” He dropped his spectacles back on his nose by a movement of his brow and looked at Tom critically over the rims.

  “No.”

  “No indeed, Mr Stavely.”

  “But it’s no use telling my ex-wife that Len wouldn’t have a clue where he was or why. She’s not interested in what he can understand. She’s interested in what the guests understand. She wants him at the wedding as a necessary exhibit, a family artifact.”

  The doctor was amused. “Sure, I’ve met Mrs Stavely. She has her reasons, but there’s a risk. Len has epileptic fits. Did you know that? He could have a stroke or a fit in the ambulance, and the nurses might be in difficulty in those conditions. It’s going to be an uncomfortable, risky and unnecessary ride for him.”

  “OK, I’ll call Robyn now and I’d like you to speak to her, doctor.”

  “Surely, Mr Stavely, you can talk to your own ex-wife…”

  “Surely I can’t. My ex-wife will only accuse me of misrepresenting what you say to get my own way. You can help Len - and me - by talking to her.”

  The doctor reluctantly agreed.

  Seeing Len nodding in his chair, so fair and yet so damaged, made him think of Len’s older brother, the lost boy, whom Robyn tracked down about three years ago through the Camden local authority in London which handled the adoption. The boy was nineteen at that time. Robyn had telephoned Tom and written about her plans, wanting him to be involved.

  He talked about it to Alison. She said, ‘I think it’s something you ought to face, and understand, rather than leave as a dark hole full of bad dream
s, or worse, hear about from Robyn’s point of view afterwards. Go along with Robyn.’

  The visit was agreed, against his instincts, and handled in the way that he and Robyn had developed since parting, with paper-thin courtesy over a cauldron of conflict. Alison felt constrained to invite Robyn to the house for a drink when she arrived in London - tea, as it happened. This was polite recognition that at one time they were all friends together. Robyn chatted charmingly, giving no sign that she was measuring and assessing their Fulham semi-detached, a comfortable but not luxurious home, against her own superior standards of space and décor.

  The next day, he met Robyn at the Camden underground station and they walked to the meeting room at the Camden Social Services Department, Robin swaddled in a thick overcoat, her cheeks mottled red, and her eyes very wide open and glowing. He knew the signs. She had been drinking heavily last night, and had swallowed a handful of painkillers this morning.

  They were late for the meeting and were shown in quickly. A young woman social worker greeted them. “Peter is in there now,” she said, pointing to a door. “My advice is that you try to start very quietly. Just go in and chat.”

  Robyn rushed in and tried to get close to the boy, but he had hemmed himself in on the other side of a table pulled close to the wall, with chairs on either side. Robyn had to give up and squeeze into a chair opposite. The boy stood, slouched against the wall, almost out of reach. Tom hesitated, standing by the open door.

  Peter really deserved to be called a young man, but Tom could only think of him as a boy. The room was white and brightly lit, the furniture white plastic. The boy’s head was bent and he looked up slowly, straight at Tom. Tom took the few steps across the floor and held out his hand across the table. The boy touched his hand before sliding down on to a chair. The boy’s hand was rough.