Gravity's Chain Part 1

Gravity's Chain.

Alan Goodwin.

For Peta, Carys and Toby-with love.

ONE.

I woke at four in the morning, stumbled through the debris of last night's fight and poured my first Dos Gusanos of the day. The tequila stung my tongue. I paused to catch a breath before emptying the gla.s.s with one gulp and wiped away a dribble on my chin with the back of my hand. Carrying gla.s.s and bottle I returned to the living room with its dismembered furniture and poured my second. There were no curtains in the room. Dad said they ruined the view, 'compromised' I think was the word he used. When I was young we'd stand together and gaze at the sea, he in his maroon flannel shorts, me in black togs. He would lightly brush the top of my hair with the fingers of one hand while holding a pink plastic cup of lemonade with the other. Can you see all there is to see? he'd ask. All I could see was the sea, but I never knew if that was enough for him.

Sipping the tequila now, I sat with my feet perched on the cracked gla.s.s of the coffee table, watching the rays of a three-quarter moon ripple on the sea. The light was sufficient to reveal our violence in the night. Three chairs lay tipped over, their cane legs, turned dull chrome in the moonlight, strutted at every angle. Cushions, magazines and books, several with broken spines, were flung to all corners of the room and the gla.s.s of two bottles and three tumblers lined the floor at the back wall where they had been fired one after the other by Caroline as I dodged her missiles. Closing my eyes to this scene I listened to the waves gently breaking on the beach just thirty metres away.

I bear a grudge against this time of the morning, with the night's heart gone and the day still to arrive. This is a void I regularly inhabit. Tequila helps pa.s.s the time before dawn when at last I no longer feel as though I'm the only man alive. But I have a taste for the booze then and it's hopeless trying to stop. In recent weeks, as Caroline and I have widened the sudden fissure in our marriage with constant arguments, there's been the added hope that drink may eradicate bad memories. Unfortunately, it seldom does that job. Caroline sobbing, her face distorted by anger, was as fresh as if she'd run from the room just moments before.

Our fight had been an ugly end to an otherwise good day-no, a better than good day. Although yesterday had begun at my witching hour, it had avoided the pitfalls of drink, because I found something other than tequila to fill the empty time. In contrast to today's calm, the wind was strong, hurling surf at the beach. When I was a young boy, bad weather fascinated me. Storms that forced children my age to the safety of a parent's bed drew me to a window or, on several occasions, outside. I remember Mother pulling me from the rain and pushing me inside where she would dry me off with an unnecessarily harsh rub of the towel. There was even a time in my early teens when I thought I might study storms seriously, using my prodigious mathematical skills to develop formulas to describe their structure. However, that was all before I discovered physics, before physics became my obsession. Like so much else, storms were then relegated to the realm of mere interest, but they could still grab my attention.

Yesterday morning rain had streaked the windows, forming patterns on the gla.s.s that consumed me. I sat cross-legged on the floor tracing the rivulets with my fingers: the greasy marks are still visible. How long I was there I'm not sure, but when I next glanced at the sea, the first shades of grey tinged the sky. Dawn had come to draw my attention. I had clawed my way to morning without drink and felt as relieved as a shipwrecked sailor washed ash.o.r.e. This was a precious moment to seize, so the electronic whiteboard hummed into life and the chemical whiff of the marker pen irritated my nose as I uncapped red and black pens. I was working. And in my head were all those rain patterns on the window weaving together as they ran, changing shape in the altering light of the dawn. The memory of the weaving pattern was beautiful. These days work is too great a task if I think about it: it has to sneak up unannounced in a sober moment so I never have to consciously begin. The most successful days are those when I've written and printed a whiteboard page before acknowledging I've started. Yesterday I worked seven hours without food or drink. Without once stopping I stood at the board writing, then printing, then cleaning, page after page. The equations intensified through the day, my speed dropping as the difficulty of the maths increased. On each fresh page I wrote the word 'weaving' at the centre and arranged the equations around it like petals on a flower. In this way I pulled apart the maths of the strong nuclear force and reconstructed it in a new way. Like the rain patterns on the window, the maths appeared to weave.

Once finished I collapsed on the nearest chair, all my confidence instantly gone, shivering at the sudden break in my concentration. For all those hours I've gripped the maths so forcefully in my mind that I imagine it locked in my arms. When gone I empathise with the mother who has had her baby ripped from her grasp. This is the time for the dark bite of whisky. Tequila is my sunshine drink when I'm waiting for the light; it's not enough to fill the emptiness after work. Whisky is the only one for that task. I always hope it will fend off the ugly thoughts that want to fill my suddenly unoccupied mind.

Minutes after I finished working, Caroline silently appeared in the room with a Glenfiddich in her hand. It was the first time I'd seen her all day. Whenever she wakes and finds me working she now leaves the house to avoid the risk of disturbing me. Just after we arrived at the bach a month ago she broke my concentration by making breakfast, the sc.r.a.pe of a plate on the bench and cutlery on china interrupting a crucial calculation. I ended up drinking furiously and the arguments raged. Finally she left and drove for several hours before returning once sure I'd pa.s.sed out for the night. When working I'm oblivious of her whereabouts: only when I've finished do I wonder whether she has gone horse riding on the forest trails, or maybe painted now she has mastered landscapes and produced some of her most sumptuous work for years. I gulped the whisky, reached for the bottle Caroline had put on the table and poured again, almost to the rim. I needed distraction; otherwise there was danger of my falling into a very deep pit.

Caroline had been swimming now the storm was gone and the summer sun had returned. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was combed back wet, leaving her square face heavy but still beautiful. A black swimsuit revealed the total grace of her body. Think of her painting, I implored myself. Where might she have gone to paint today, the hills behind the bay, or maybe further inland to the bush, or even the estuary in the next bay with its solitary dilapidated house where Mrs Hunt has lived alone for thirty years? How hot she would have been-no wonder she took to the sea to cool her body. I faltered in my mental game. To avoid her I took my drink to the balcony, drained my gla.s.s, then dropped it to the gra.s.s below and gripped the wooden handrail so tight my knuckles turned white. A light wind brushed my face. The beach was deserted. The sea gently brushed the sand.

'Have you been swimming, or just washing off the smell of a good s.h.a.g?' I said as I re-entered the room.

'Swimming, but thanks for asking.'

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the whisky from the coffee table and drank from the bottle. 'Look at you. Been trawling the beach, have you? Anybody would think you're in St Tropez looking for a rich Frenchman, or maybe an artist.'

'I prefer American. The French do so smell of garlic.'

'Oh but I do hope you found someone out there, some poor unsuspecting victim for your...charms.'

'Nice of you to have such faith in me, Jack.'

'Faith, that's a lot like faithful, an interesting turn of phrase.' Drink and fatigue were beginning to compromise my speech.

'Jack, please, have a rest. You've worked hard today.'

'Wh.o.r.e.'

She half turned and composed herself. 'This does no good, Jack. What's done is done, it meant nothing-it was nothing, so why go on torturing yourself this way? It's so needless.'

'Good old Greg. I bet he was gagging for you after all this time. I bet he could hardly believe his luck.'

'I'm going for a swim.'

'You've just been for one. Don't tell me-someone down there to impress is there?'

'Jack, I'm just going for a swim. Leave it now, please.'

'Wh.o.r.e,' I hissed at her shadow.

I had lived with Caroline for seven years and been married for five of them. All of that time we'd spent in England, but just two months ago we'd returned to New Zealand. The purpose of our return was to heal the rift between Caroline and her parents, and her sister Mary. However, on the night of the reunion Caroline lost her nerve and instead of meeting the family sought the company of Greg, an old artist boyfriend. The betrayal was deeper than a mere liaison, because it denied me the chance of seeing Mary again. However, that was something I could never share with Caroline-how could I? Now Caroline bore the brunt of my ruined plans and our ruined marriage. We retreated to Dad's bach to repair the wreckage of our life together.

I slept on the sofa until evening. When I woke the light and warmth had gone from the day. Caroline was in the kitchen washing lettuce in the sink. Holding her from behind I kissed the tender spot on her neck exposed by her ponytail and smiled with the quiver of her body. The smell of the sea was on her skin. She wriggled free from my hold, turned and held my head in her hands, her thumbs ma.s.saging the temples. Her eyes were puffy, the rims red from crying. 'So many marvellous things happen in here, Jack.' She rubbed my head, her fingers like feathers. 'Amazing things that only happen in your head, things that n.o.body else believes a person can think. But it's so hard, Jack, so b.l.o.o.d.y hard.' Her eyes welled with tears and she looked away. 'The cost to you is so great.'

'How do you know?'

A tear broke away and ran down her cheek. 'Because I'm here with you all the time, Jack. I see you when you win,' she dropped her head and stared at the floor, 'and I see you when you lose, when you just rip yourself apart and all the ugly s.h.i.t pours out. And I'm here when you abuse me as though that alone anchors you, stops you from floating away to some unimaginable part of yourself.' She looked at me again and saw me crying with her. She held my head again and kissed my cheek.

We ate a supper of cold chicken and salad with which I drank two bottles of pinot noir. When Caroline cleared up I took a walk on the beach in the dark. Ohawini Bay has no more than fifty homes and only a handful of permanent residents. Mid-week, even in summer, the place is all but deserted and I could see only four house lights. A breeze blew from the hills, bringing with it the scent of freshly cut gra.s.s from one of the rear paddocks. A horse brayed and a dog barked in reply: apart from the constant roll of the surf, these were the only noises in the night. The thick belt of the Milky Way was easily visible. I looked long enough to catch the speck of a satellite speed across the sky like a star racing to a new and better position in the night. The breeze dropped for a moment and all was still.

Caroline sat on the sofa, flicking the pages of a fifteen-year-old National Geographic taken from a pile of similarly ancient reads stacked on the bottom shelf of the coffee table. 'Good walk?'

'Just tell me once more, what was it about Greg that made you want to see him again after all these years?'

'Not now, Jack, I don't have the energy.' She looked suddenly tired and I felt a flutter of pleasure at having caught her with her defences so unusually low.

'What, no smart answers, Caroline?'

'Why do you do this? We've had a good evening and you've worked today. There's just no need for this.'

'I just want to know. I need to know.'

Ever so precisely she placed the magazine on her lap. 'Jack, it was your idea to come back here to New Zealand. It was your idea to put the past to rest, to, as you said, mend the bridges. I didn't want to, you knew that, but I agreed because it seemed important to you that I make peace with Mary and the rest of the family.'

'That's right, your family, that was the past I was talking about, not some old has-been artist you screwed when you were young.'

'I just wanted to see a friend.'

'You went to see Greg, but not your parents, not Mary.'

'I wasn't ready to see them, Jack, I told you that. I've been through this a hundred times.'

'It was all agreed, Caroline. It was all set up, the time and place to begin the healing. Instead you go and s.h.a.g Pica.s.so.'

'Like I said, I just wasn't ready. Now please, Jack, I've told you I'm sorry a hundred times, I've told you it meant nothing a hundred times. I'm so tired of this, please let's finish now.'

'Not so tired when you visited Greg though, were you? Lucky fellow, what is he now, fifty-fifty-five? He must have thought it was his b.l.o.o.d.y birthday when you rolled up on his doorstep in all your glory.'

'Jack, please, keep this inside yourself. For once lock it up somewhere, anywhere, because, quite honestly, I can't cope with all this again. I'm so tired.'

'Angry, my love?'

She stood and flung her magazine at the front window, which it hit with a heady whack. She was crying again, her cheeks flushed red. 'Yes, I'm angry. Happy now?'

'Not really, it doesn't give me any answers.'

Caroline raised her arms and snorted a half manic laugh. 'Answers? Answers? It's always answers with you, Jack, but you know, sometimes, sometimes there are...just...no answers.' She walked to the whiteboard and slapped it with an open hand. 'You might find answers here, Jack, but in the real world, you can't always find them. I don't have any for you, Jack. We go through this night after night and I'm exhausted by it, exhausted by you. I don't have anything more to offer you, nothing more to give. Nothing. I'm all answered out.'

'I've tried, Caroline, believe me, I've tried...but I just can't drive the image of him on you out of my mind...'

She started crying again.

'...and I feel so wretched, so disgusted and I plead with myself to let go, but I can't. I can't let go. I feel betrayed, Caroline, betrayed that you saw him instead of your family, you chose him over your mum, your dad, Mary and I think it must have been so important for you to see him instead. You just left them waiting at the restaurant, feeling like useless s.h.i.ts. There must be a reason why you did that, you must have an answer.'

'I wasn't ready to meet them.'

'We came back here to meet them, gave up our life in England to meet them.'

'I just wasn't ready. That's all, there's no other reason.'

'There must be.'

'Oh please, Jack, please, I can't stand this s.h.i.t any more.'

'Leave me then.'

'You know I can't do that to you.'

'So what do I do?'

'Stop drinking, it's destroying you. It stirs up every ugly thought you could have. Perhaps without drink you mightn't want to find answers all the time.'

'Oh, I knew we'd get to the drink soon enough. You really think all this is that simple? Turn off the tap and all our problems disappear? It's easy to blame the drink, but it's not the booze-it's you. If you want to blame, blame yourself.'

'f.u.c.k you, Jack.'

'Is that the best you can do?'

Caroline pulled a dictionary from the middle of a line of books and hurled it at me, missing by a metre. 'Get out.'

'Ding, ding, round one, it's Caroline Mitch.e.l.l in the blue corner. She's coming out fighting, ladies and gentlemen-first the dictionary, now Michener and Mailer, all the heavy volumes. s.h.i.t, Caroline.' A book landed on my leg, the hard corner stabbing my thigh. I stood up, but before I could get my balance she charged, knocking me into and over a chair. I got up, but was knocked down again. In our grapple two more chairs went over. Once on my feet I gathered some strength. She held a footstool which I battled from her grip, smashing the gla.s.s top of the coffee table. Then she was at me again, clawing at my face as I swung a fist, hitting her so hard on the back it sounded like a sandbag dropped on a wooden floor. She groaned and withdrew, but only as far as the bottles and gla.s.ses left on the table. One at a time she threw them at me, each missed as I dodged, smashing against the wall. I reached the stairs, crouched almost to the floor and took the steps two at a time before running into the night. I waited an hour. By the time I returned Caroline was in the spare room at the bottom of the stairs. I crept past and went up to the now empty bedroom beside the ghoulish scene of our fight and slept until four o'clock this morning.

There will be no work today. The tequila tastes too good, its bite too satisfying, and so I pour my third; and I sit, waiting for the dawn, for the disconnection from the world to end and for Caroline to wake up. I know I'm a vandal, gratuitously smashing our marriage. Now for the day of reconstruction, the long slow job of finding all the pieces and fathoming how to put them back together. It takes longer every time. One day the pieces will be scattered so wide that some will be lost and we'll never be able to fit them all together. The thought of a solitary life made me shiver: all the empty time, all the drink to fill it with and all those ugly thoughts to keep at bay. So why hasten what I fear most? If I knew that perhaps we might avoid nights like last night. I long to hold her, to nuzzle in her hair and feel the balm of an embrace. It is an ache not even drink can soothe.

The arm of land on the opposite side of the bay was just visible; the first sign that the long slog of night was ending. In half an hour it would be light enough to launch the boat. If I prepared slowly I could fill the time. I set about this task with evangelical enthusiasm.

The Winston is stored in a shed that always smells of diesel and rubber. A single naked electric bulb hanging from the central beam lit the top cabin of the motorboat while leaving its hull and the shed deep in shadow. When I pulled back the tarpaulin, dust flickered in the bright light. Fuel, electrics and engine checked out. Two wetsuits and a wooden box full of pots, with a red nylon rope on top, had been dumped on one of the rear seats. I hung up the wetsuits and took the box into the house, leaving it next to the door of the spare room where Caroline slept. She had been up after I'd come back to the house last night because the downstairs phone had been taken from the bottom step into the room; the lead snaked across the tiles and under the closed door.

Contact now could be fatal; I've made this error countless times. But I opened the door slowly and whispered, 'Are you awake, Caroline?'

She had left the blinds up and the room was lighter than I'd expected. She turned in bed, her back a solid wall to me. 'Not much chance of that with you banging around out there.' She was hoa.r.s.e from last night's shouting.

'Sorry.'

'I doubt it.'

Turn away, I implored myself. Turn away now and leave the questions till later. 'Who did you ring?'

'Mary.'

This was a finger in the electric socket moment. 'Mary?'

'Precious sister Mary, that's right.'

'Why?'

'That's what you want, isn't it? As you keep saying, that's why we came back so we can kiss and make up.'

'What did she say?'

She half turned, but not far enough to see me. 'What are you so nervous about?'

'Nothing. What did she say?'

'My, oh my, you're a curious rabbit this morning.'

'Caroline.'

'She didn't say anything. She wasn't there. Perhaps I should just drive over and see her.' She pulled the covers high up to her chin. 'Now you run along and take the boat out.'

'You won't go anywhere until I come back, will you?'

'Don't worry, I'll be a good girl. I won't do anything without you.'

I withdrew and stood outside the door for a moment. I had to go. If I stayed her curiosity would be aroused, turning the mocking to the seriously suspicious. I searched the house for the car keys and put them safely in my pocket. With no car there could be no escape. Taxi, what about a taxi? Her wallet was on the table. I took and hid it in the bathroom. There was no one she knew well enough to rescue her. Mary was too far away, and the chances of her dropping everything on a work day and coming to the bach were very remote. I took a bottle of whisky and left the house.

My parents bought the bach in Ohawini Bay in 1976 when I was six with money left to them by Dad's mother when she died that year. I only ever saw her at Christmas when Dad drove her up from Cambridge where she lived on my uncle's farm. I have no memory of her except for a picture Dad kept in his bedroom. She was a stern woman, her hair pulled into a bun and large brooch at her throat. The picture always reminded me of the suffragettes. The bach was a simple two-level structure. On the ground floor there were two bedrooms on either side of the stairs and a storage shed that could be reached only from the outside. Upstairs there was the main living room and kitchen with another bedroom off the side. The bach had been well looked after by the previous owners and although the decor was twenty years old it needed no repair.

When Mum and Dad bought it, there were just a handful of older basic wooden baches in the bay. The place swelled with tents and caravans in the summer holidays. A large pack of children played all day on the beach and on the gra.s.s paddock behind the beachfront homes. However, gradually most of the old baches disappeared, replaced by bigger, improved baches, or in some cases whole new homes.

Despite development the bay remains isolated in modern terms, any property growth prevented by the natural constraint of rock spits at either end of the beach and the hills behind. The only access is by road from Oakura Bay and then across the beach to the ramp leading up to the baches. Dad bought a little metal boat with an ancient outboard motor from Mr c.u.mmings when he upgraded to a larger motorboat. I can't remember what Dad enjoyed before the boat, but afterwards his life contracted to a solitary love of taking it fishing. Every holiday, and almost every weekend, was spent at the bach. We would drive up on the Friday night, a pillow and blanket for me on the back seat. We'd arrive at midnight and I'd get a soft shake to wake me. By the time I was ten it was just Dad and I who drove up. Mum stayed in Auckland.

We'd been to the bach in 1984 when we returned on the Sunday evening to find Mum gone. There was no note, nothing; I've never seen her since. Dad stopped going to the bach regularly after that. Even after he bought the Winston with his redundancy money to replace the old metal boat, he rarely came. All his pa.s.sions died that day and he stayed at home as if that act alone might ease the guilt of not being there when she left. Perhaps he hoped to be there when she returned.

Launching a boat in Ohawini Bay follows a time-honoured tradition. Parked next to the Winston was a tractor. All residents with a boat have a tractor; some customise and paint them. One has flames painted from the engine and is named Hot Betty. Our tractor lacked such tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs: it was old and grey. A blue belch of smoke coughed from the rusted stack on the third turn of the key. The smell of oil now mingled with the rubber and diesel of the shed. I reversed out, the engine chugging with a husky rev where the ride became b.u.mpy. My bottom slammed into the metal seat when I rode a sunken trough in the gra.s.s between the shed and the bach. Once I'd turned, I reversed back and hitched the boat, then headed for the only access to the beach, a concrete ramp to the sand. I drove in a half circle through the gently lapping sea and reversed the trailer and boat back into the water. Unhitching the Winston was an effort and I quickly lost my breath, forcing me to rest several times before I was finished. After floating the boat I pulled it out to a safe distance, boarded and dropped anchor before wading back to sh.o.r.e. The exertion brought a taste of tequila riding a wave of bile and I spat half a cup of sick on the sand. I parked the tractor and trailer on the soft sand at the back of the beach, away from the greedy grasp of the morning tide. Three gulls squabbled over the meagre pickings of my vomit and grudgingly retreated when I disturbed them to return to the boat. The clear night had given way to a grey day, but as the cloud thickened, the wind remained calm. The waves were gentle and just kissed the boat's hull.

There was no planning to the journey: I just went east for several hours, idled and drifted before going about for the return. As I plotted how to placate Caroline I drained the bottle, but I had no answers. The drink just made me drowsy and more nauseous. When I entered the bay I throttled back, the Winston instantly responding and settling in the still calm sea. Rain had come to the bay and my sweatshirt was heavy and wet by the time I reached sh.o.r.e. So much drink before lunch had left its mark and my movements were unsteady. I slipped when I jumped off the boat and sat back in the water up to my waist. The cold snap of the sea made me scramble to my feet and I ran out of the water. I was too cold to winch the boat on to the trailer before changing, so I headed for the house. Sand crunched under my wet boots as I walked.