Читать книгу Sole Survivor - Derek Hansen - Страница 9

Four

Rosie Trethewey was not happy. When she’d left for work that morning, summer had been in full cry. The sun had beaten down from a cloudless blue sky, and for once, though only briefly, she was glad the judge had taken away her driving license. But the walk up Shelley Beach Road to the bus stop had soon tested her antiperspirant and found it wanting. Her cotton dress had darkened beneath her arms and clung to her back. Then she’d cursed the judge and the smug policemen who’d picked on her and booked her for speeding. Even the judge had expressed surprise that her Volkswagen could go as fast as the police had claimed it had. But that was Rosie. She only had two speeds, flat out and stop.

The afternoon had brought clouds, low and threatening, and sent temperatures plummeting. She’d shivered in windowless offices while the air-conditioning thermostats struggled to figure out what was happening and failed. She’d spent the day talking to groups of women, trying to divine their innermost thoughts and attitudes toward toilet cleaners and bathroom disinfectants. Up until then Rosie had thought that skid marks were something immature men in fast cars left on roads. She’d learned differently and wished she hadn’t. But the job of a market researcher was to research markets, and there was a market for toilet cleaners, just as there was for most other things. She had no control over what products she was given to investigate. Nevertheless, it had been an unedifying day and was no way to spend a life.

“You’ll have to find something else to do,” Norma insisted whenever she moaned about it. Norma was her friend and meant well but, Christ on a motorbike, what was there left for her to do?

The rain had held off until the bus deposited her at the top of Shelley Beach Road, then the heavens had opened. Typical. The only certain thing about the weather in Auckland was that it would change. Rosie began to run but quickly realized the futility of it. She was going to get soaked no matter what she did. She walked head-on into the wind and driving rain as it howled in off the harbor. The thin cotton stuck fast to her body like a second layer of skin, defining her figure in intimate detail. Rosie didn’t care a damn. There was no one dumb enough to be out in the rain to see her, and even if there had been, she was in no mood to care. She was more concerned with the cold and her hates. Walking briskly helped fend off the chill from the wet and wind, but there was nothing she could do about her hates. She hated the judge who wouldn’t let her drive her car, and she hated the police. It was their fault she was cold and wet. She hated buses. She hated her job. She hated her flat. She hated her father, her ex-husband, stupid women who had nothing better to do than waffle on endlessly about toilet cleaners and skid marks as if they were making some worthwhile contribution to the sum total of human knowledge, and she hated dresses that rode up and bunched at the crotch.

“You waste too much energy on negative thoughts,” Norma kept telling her, but Norma was younger, better looking and had a boyfriend who was loaded. It was easy for Norma to give advice. Nature had given her everything except depth.

Her flatmate hadn’t closed their letterbox properly the day before, and all the mail was saturated. She cursed the office wally who told her to keep the windows of her VW open a half inch to let air circulate. Now rain circulated. Too bad. She stepped off the driveway onto the path that wound through the overgrown garden to the once-grand two-story home that had been converted to flats. Leaves tipped water over her as she brushed past unpruned bushes. The downspouts were blocked, causing the gutters to overflow and a sheet of water to cascade off the roof right in front of the steps leading to the front door. She groaned aloud. There was the whole front of the house, but of course the gutters had chosen to overflow by the front door. She’d complained to the landlord.

“Plumber’s coming to fix it next week,” she’d been told, but next week never arrived and neither did the plumber. She hated the landlord, cheap old bastard, and she hated the real estate agent who’d signed her up to a two-year lease. She opened the door to her flat and paused, wondering how to circumnavigate her beloved kelim rugs that lay scattered across the dark-stained timber floors. Then she thought of her flatmate, who’d simply barge in regardless, and gave up. She’d long given up protecting her things against flatmates and considered herself lucky if nothing was stolen when they moved out.

She closed the door behind her, switched on the light because the flat was gloomy even on a bright day, and began to strip off her wet clothes. She thought of leaving them in puddles on the floor as her flatmate would, but thought better of it. It was smarter to leave one big puddle to wipe up than half a dozen smaller ones. She slipped out of her clothes. Wet, cold and naked, she didn’t feel a bit beautiful, but she had the sort of figure that turned men on, particularly the one watching from the window of the house next door. She groaned at the indignity, gathered up her bundle of wet clothes and strode into the bathroom. She didn’t even bother giving her voyeuristic neighbor the finger as she normally did. It bothered her that the man never seemed to blink.

One good thing about the flat was that they never ran out of hot water, not even when her flatmate took his usual half-hour shower. She always flatted with men and still harbored the hope that one day she’d find one who was clever with his hands. In a practical way. But she was always the one who had to change washers on leaky taps, hang curtains and fix doorknobs. Yet the men were better than the women she’d shared flats with in her younger days, who spent forever putting on makeup and no time at all doing housework. She’d begun to relax and let the steaming bathwater do its soothing work when she noticed her towel missing. How many times had she warned her flatmate not to use her towel? But he had. Again. And once again he’d left her towel in his bedroom. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Perhaps the bastard was working in partnership with the voyeur next door, because she’d have to run the gauntlet once more. Had she left the light on? Of course she had. She hated her flatmate. He had to go. Enough was enough. She lay back in the bath and tried to relax. Perhaps the bloke next door had finally gone blind through self-abuse. That was a thought that comforted her and brought a glimmer of a smile, but only briefly. There was no escaping the reality. She was thirty-four years old, trapped in a grubby bathroom in a grubby flat by a grubby little man next door. What, she wondered, was she doing with her life? The sound of a key turning in the lock on the front door dragged her away from her reveries. Her flatmate had come home.

“Hi!”

She heard him call out and drop his valise. She’d grown tired of telling him to put the bloody thing away, so now it lived just inside the front door. She heard a clump, a step, another clump. He was taking off his shoes. He’d be halfway across the kelims, probably dumping his shoes on her indigo blue Kazak, which he thought didn’t show the dirt.

“Where are you?”

“In the bath, you bastard, waiting for you to come home and replace the towel you nicked this morning.”

“Sorry. Just get out of these things.” She heard his belt buckle scrape on the polished floor. Trousers down. His bedroom-door handle rattled. Coat hung. “Shit!” Slipped taking off socks. It was all so familiar and predictable they might as well have been married instead of just flatmates. Rosie never slept with flatmates, because that created too many complications; she preferred to think of them as no more than rent-sharers. She heard him open her bedroom door, open a cupboard and close it.

“Here he comes,” she said softly, slipping as deeply into the bath as she could, wishing she’d been more liberal with water and soap. But it was the old story. Too little, too late, too bad.

“Here’s your towel. Got a dry one.”

“How very clever of you.” He hadn’t knocked. He hadn’t discreetly opened the door a whisker and thrown the towel through the gap. No, he’d just marched straight in and stood ogling her.

“Anything else?”

“John, I am a woman. You are a man. I am naked and you are staring.”

“Sorry.” He made no move to go.

“John, leave me the towel. Put it on the rail. And then please go next door and punch Merv the Perv’s lights out. And when you’ve done that, ask him to do the same to you for the same reason.”

“Jesus, Rosie. Here’s your bloody towel. Don’t bother to say thanks.” He left and closed the door behind him. Rosie didn’t move. She knew better. The door pushed open again. “Want a cup of tea?” John looked vaguely disappointed.

“Yes, please. Now do be a good boy and piss off.”

“Did you get any milk?”

“Why would I get milk? There was plenty when I left this morning.”

“I used it on my cornflakes.”

“John, when you’re drinking your black tea, get the paper and look through the flats-to-let section.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Piss off. Out of my bathroom. Out of my flat. Out of my life. Take as long as you like, but if you’re not gone in one hour you’ll find all your stuff out on the street.”

“You can’t do that. It’s raining. Where will I go?”

“John, you’re still staring. Don’t stare at me. One, I can throw you and all the rubbish you flatteringly call your things out onto the street. You know I can. We know each other well, and you know I’ve done that before. Two, I don’t care if it’s raining. Three, I don’t care a damn where you go. Just go.” Fixing him with the look he’d come to fear, she sat up. He saw her breasts clearly, which is what he’d wanted to see all along, but more than that he saw she meant business. He went.

Rosie sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. John had gone by taxi, but not without argument, not without some of her things as yet undiscovered, and not without asking if he could borrow her car. She was alone again, and wondering if she should cry. The flat was cold and damp and there was no milk. Tomorrow she’d have to begin writing up the report based on the findings of the group discussions she’d conducted. What, she wondered, was the benchmark for removing skid marks, and did anyone really care? There was nothing to eat except limp vegetables, a can of baked beans that John had left behind because he’d put it in the wrong cupboard and a butterscotch-flavored Gregg’s instant pudding, which needed milk. Crying seemed the preferred option when she heard knuckles do a drumroll on her door.

“Come in, Norma, it’s not locked.”

“Hi,” said Norma brightly. “Guess what? You and me are going out to dinner. Loverboy’s had to fly down to Wellington on business. I stopped off at the Bistro and reserved a table.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Rosie. “John rang you to see if he could sleep the night at your place.”

“How’d you know?” Norma seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s good to see you, I need a friend and I’d love to go out to dinner with you because there’s nothing to eat here.”

Norma hung her raincoat on the back of the door and flopped down on a chair opposite Rosie. “What happened?”

“Nothing, everything, the usual, what the hell does it matter? In a funny way I’ll miss him. Sometimes I think I’m the most useless creature on earth, then I come home and John’s here and suddenly I feel reassured.”

“Negative thoughts,” said Norma.

“I’ve earned them,” said Rosie.

“There’s never any excuse for negative thoughts. You’re brainy, your whole illustrious family is brainy, and they’re all wonderfully successful.”

“Except me.”

“Except you. You don’t even try.” Norma stuck a Du Maurier in her mouth and lit it. She had the knack of talking while her cigarette sat glued to her bottom lip.

“What do you mean?” Rosie wasn’t protesting but complaining. She was due a good moan, and moans were only good if there was someone to hear them. “I tried. I still try. Trouble is all I ever wanted to be was a beatnik, make pottery and love everybody and throw pink rose petals in the air. Instead I became a doctor and went off to save the world. They sent me to India, which was full of sick people, but didn’t give me any medicines to save them. Instead of curing them, I joined them and had to be evacuated home. It’s all been downhill since then.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I’ve got a bottle of wine in the car. We could drink it now and get another to drink over dinner. What’s this?” She spotted the sodden pile of letters and idly peeled them apart. Bills, more bills and a large envelope with Green Lane Hospital printed across the bottom. Norma raised her eyes questioningly. When she shook the envelope something slid around inside it.

“Probably notification from the VD clinic. That would just about be my luck.”

“Better open it and see,” said Norma.

“You get the wine, I’ll open the envelope. Probably need a drink by the time you get back.”

Norma grabbed the umbrella Rosie hadn’t bothered to take to work with her and dashed out. Rosie picked up the envelope from the hospital and weighed it in her hands speculatively. A fund-raising brochure? A letter from her father? No, he’d know better than to write to her. She could imagine what it would say. “Please find enclosed my written disapproval of the way you are conducting your life.” But perhaps for once the old boy might have got it right. She tore the envelope open and picked up the letter that fell out. She chuckled at the address. “Care of the Professor.” Well the professor had done the right thing and forwarded it on, or at least his receptionist had. She turned it over and looked at the return address, printed neatly on the back though somewhat blurred by rain. “Red O’Hara, Wreck Bay, Care of Col Chadwick, Port Fitzroy, Great Barrier Island.” Her first thought was that she’d won a holiday. She wondered if it was raining on the Barrier.

She pulled a knife out of the cutlery drawer and slipped it beneath the flap. Gingerly she opened the envelope, careful not to damage the contents. She spread the letter and will out on the table and read them.

“Who the hell is Bernie Arbuthnot?” she asked out loud. The name rang a bell, albeit distant. She thought back to when she was a child, accompanying her father on his weekend rounds. She vaguely recalled an old tubercular alcoholic who gave her sweets in exchange for stolen bottles of her father’s beer, and told her rude jokes. She couldn’t remember his name but guessed it was him. “Bernie, you old bastard,” she said.

“Who’s a bastard?” said Norma as she shook out the umbrella at the door. “You haven’t got a dose, have you?”

“Norma, Green Lane Hospital doesn’t have a VD clinic. It has my father instead. Tell me, what do you know about Great Barrier Island?”

“Not much. You can see it away on the horizon on a clear day. Yachties go there, and that amphibian plane flies there. Why?”

Rosie told her.

“God Almighty! You wouldn’t even consider moving there, would you? I mean you’d be mad. No one lives there, well no one with any sense. There’s nothing there.”

“I don’t know,” said Rosie. She didn’t know much about Great Barrier Island, either, but the idea of owning a house and doing nothing but make pottery and grow roses suddenly appealed. Outside, the wind gusted, causing the rain to beat a violent tattoo on the window. She picked up the letter and reread it. Maybe it was a sign, or divine intervention, or simply a stroke of luck out of the blue. A new life beckoned, a better life, a simpler life where she wouldn’t hate everyone and everything around her. She could picture herself at her wheel, shaping the clay, a smile on her face and contentment oozing from every pore. She looked around her flat and thought of a future documenting skid-mark removers and house-training flatmates. Norma shoved a glass of claret into her hand.

“Rosie, I’m telling you, don’t even think of it. You’re not the type.”

“It couldn’t be any worse,” Rosie said softly, optimistically. She took a generous swallow of wine. Somewhere inside her the mischievous young girl who’d wanted to be a beatnik awoke from her slumber.

There was a time when Rosie would have simply walked out of her flat and her job and hopped on the Grumman Widgeon amphibian that flew people out to Great Barrier Island. But age and experience had curbed her impetuosity. The last thing she needed was another disappointment. So the following morning she bought a map of the Barrier and studied it. The first thing she noticed about Wreck Bay was that it appeared uninhabited, the second was that there were no roads that went anywhere near the place, and the third that it was surrounded on three sides by what appeared to be steep and rugged hills, all of which, according to the artist who drew up the map, were covered in dense bush and scrub. There were no trails in or out that she could see. Strangely, she didn’t find any of this the least bit off-putting. On the contrary, she found it intriguing. She knew someone did live there or, at least, had lived there. Bernie had lived there and grown roses. Among the bushes and birds. Gazing out across an ocean that stretched unbroken halfway across the world to Chile. Bernie had managed to live there. How old would he have been, she wondered? She’d thought he was old way back when she was a child. If an old man could live there, so could she. Rosie leaned back in her chair and sipped at her tea and tried to imagine what life at Wreck Bay would be like. No corner stores to run to for milk or bread. No supermarkets. No television or phones. No cars. No electricity. No doctors, apart from herself, and that didn’t count. No voyeuristic neighbors. No neighbors.

No neighbors?

Rosie felt the first tinge of doubt. Surely someone else would live there. She knew she couldn’t handle the loneliness of being all alone. Then she thought of the man who’d left his name on the back of the envelope, Red O’Hara, Wreck Bay. She almost cried with relief. She could be alone but not alone. She picked up the map of Great Barrier Island once more and gazed at the bite out of the northern end. She was staggered that somewhere so close to the bustling city of Auckland could be so remote. Wreck Bay made Easter Island seem like Club Med.

Norma thought Rosie had finally flipped when she applied for two weeks’ leave and booked a flight on Captain Fred Ladd’s amphibian.

“I’m off as soon as I’ve presented my findings on toilet cleaners,” she said.

“You’re mad,” said Norma. All she could do was wonder at the change that had come over her friend. She played her last card. “There are no blokes over there, none that you’d want to go to bed with at any rate, and you’re not cut out for celibacy.” Her cigarette bobbed indignantly.

“It’s only for two weeks,” said Rosie. Her face lit up and she burst out laughing. “I know it’ll be tough, Norma, but I think I’ll survive.”