Second Chances Part 12

It was early afternoon before the container was empty. Ira strolled over to speak to me as his workmates climbed into their cab.

'Hi, Mrs McNamara,' he began quietly.

'Martha.'

A heart-lifting smile. 'Martha. Thanks. Look, Martha, your kids told me they'd like to go riding.'

I glanced at Finn and Charlie, hanging by their knees from the tyre swings like a brace of drunken bats. 'I'm sure they would.'

'My uncle breeds horses, and he does trekking. He'll take them down the beach. If you want to go tomorrow, I can come along.'

'That sounds wonderful,' I said doubtfully, 'but I'm sure your uncle's busy?'

Embarra.s.sment flickered across Ira's handsome features. 'First time out is for free.'

So that was Sacha's date. I was the victim of a plot, and I'd fallen for it like a prize mug. Sacha was probably the mastermind-she was nuts about horses-but they were all three in it and they'd co-opted Ira, too. It was the oldest trick in the book: get the parent to agree in principle before mentioning the price tag; and rope in a visitor to do the dirty work.

'Tomorrow?' screeched Finn, dropping to the ground.

'That's between you and your parents.' Ira winked at Finn before hopping into the cab.

'See yer tomorrow!' Finn grabbed his bike and pedalled recklessly alongside as the lorry lurched away down the hill, gears grinding.

'It was Ira,' said Sacha. 'Riding along the beach that first day, remember? His uncle's our neighbour, and his farm stretches all the way to the sea.'

I felt Charlie's gentle hand in mine, and picked him up. We stood waving until the great red box disappeared behind a green gauze of willows.

Our move was complete. We were alone with our possessions.

All was well in the world, that evening. The twins tore into their dressing-up box and emerged as Postman Pat and a dragon. They scattered Lego across the floor, watched by the creatures of the Serengeti.

Kit had spent a happy afternoon organising his studio. You could get into it from the sitting room or the verandah. Windows on three sides looked out to the garden, the bush and the sea-obscured now by candy-floss cloud. Kit gave it Persian rugs, his leather armchair and the imp-faced portraits. Finally, with some ceremony, he placed his most prized possession in the centre of the longest wall.

'Now Sibella's here,' he declared, standing back and saluting the young woman in the portrait, 'we're truly home.'

Great-Aunt Sibella gave the painting to Kit on his eighteenth birthday, and it had graced the wall of every house he'd lived in since. It wasn't worth anything financially; the young artist never became famous before he joined up and was killed in France. He was Kit's grandfather. I'm sure he revered his sister; I know Kit did.

I stood beside Kit now, meeting the eyes of the girl in the painting. She seemed to see me through s.p.a.ce and time; supremely poised, raven hair swept up and pinned under a little hat, eyes the same pa.s.sionate blue as Kit's. It wasn't an entirely benevolent face: there was a knowing, cynical quality in her gaze. It was easy to see whose ancestor she was. Both Kit and Finn were carved out of the same rock.

Sibella murdered her husband. No, she really did. This is accepted family lore. She fell in love and married when she was too young. The bridegroom-so the story goes-was a local landowner, a s.a.d.i.s.tic and perverted man who showed his true colours on their wedding night. Within a month she had clobbered him with a fence post, fatally cracking his skull, and pa.s.sed it off as a riding accident. His stablehand backed up her account and the entire district rallied around her. The young widow inherited her husband's estate near Tralee and ran it for the next seventy years. She never married again, although she and the stablehand were inseparable until the man's death half a century later.

Kit poured us both a gla.s.s of Jean's wine, and we happily squashed together in his armchair while I recounted Ira's stories of water dragons and strange fairies. Finally, as dusk crept across the hills, Kit got up and began to play with tints of lime and bronze. I left him to it, removing the bottle as I went. Better safe than sorry.

It was fully dark when Sacha opened the piano in the sitting room and tinkled a few notes. 'Out of tune,' she remarked, as Kit walked in from the studio.

'It's been in the tropics, all humid and salty, tossed in storms around Good Hope, frozen among the killer whales in the Southern Ocean.' Kit lifted the instrument's lid and peered in. 'I think you'd be a bit out of tune after all that. I know I would.'

I glanced at Sacha. She wasn't out of tune, really. She was going to a bonfire party next weekend, and she'd befriended a tattooed young hero who could ride like Genghis Khan. What more could I ask?

'Look,' said Kit. 'Some of the ivories have come loose. I'll have to stick them down.'

I watched-afraid to move, afraid to speak-as Sacha flicked open a black case, took her flute from its velvet bed and casually a.s.sembled it. Lounging over the piano, Kit caught my eye but remained studiously expressionless. I felt like a wildlife photographer, pretending not to focus on a grazing gazelle. I hadn't heard Sacha play since she left her old school. Not a note.

She rubbed her nose on her forearm, lifted the instrument to her lips and flung a silvery arpeggio around the room. The music was a bird, released from its cage and overjoyed to be free. Celebratory fireworks flared in my brain.

She broke off abruptly, grimacing; twisted the two halves of her flute, then tried again. A scale. A flurry of octaves. A s.n.a.t.c.h of Handel. Kit grabbed some sheet music from the piano stool and began to accompany her. He played a few wrong notes, and some of the keys sounded decidedly honky-tonk, but it was the most gloriously welcome sound I'd ever heard. They were laughing. Sacha was throwing insults at Kit in between phrases and he was hamming up his incompetence, bending low over the keys with a lolling tongue like the village idiot.

I began to pile books onto shelves, feeling an absurd bubble of happiness. Sacha was playing her flute once more. Kit was painting. From the bathroom upstairs I could hear the twins, sloshing. They were probably flooding the place, but who cared? They were barefoot wildmen, Stigs of the Dump. It had all been worth it.

What is it about the early hours? I ended the day happy, but three o'clock found me fretting about my future, my family, my smugly slumbering husband. It was that time of night when the world is at its darkest. My mind seemed to be beating its wings against a dusty window in a room that smelled of hot plastic. At first I obsessed about Sacha's real father, and how I'd cheated them both. Then I thought about Dad and Lou and how I missed them. The more successful our emigration, the more certain it seemed that we wouldn't be going home. Suddenly, I ached for home. Homesickness is a rat that eats you from the inside. It has sharp teeth.

I had to be out of that room. I was suffocating. Easing my feet into slippers, I felt my way to the French doors and onto the balcony.

It was deathly quiet outside. The air felt damp and still, but at least I could breathe. I stood with my hands on the dry solidity of the wooden railing, and immediately my attention was caught by a bizarre sight. Just past the garden, where last night had been pasture and sheep, I could see the opaque gleam of a deep and unruffled lake. This large body of water filled the valley, ghostly white. Fascinated, I leaned over the rail, straining my eyes into the dark and thinking of the restless taniwha who cloaked themselves in water.

A silent whisper of wind stirred the surface of the lake, and tendrils of it broke away and began to creep up the side of the valley towards me. I watched with a sense of complete unreality until it dawned on me that the lake was not made of water at all, but mist. I leaned my arms on the rail, feeling wisps of cloud drift over and around me. It seemed to cling, to caress my face with clammy fingers. I stood dozing in a dream world of isolation and profound silence.

That was when I heard the sound. I imagine it was the first stirring of some bird deep in the trees, herald of the dawn chorus. A bellbird, or a tui. It was a hypnotically lovely melody, liquid and piercing. Just five notes. Five notes of almost supernatural clarity. After a hush, it came again.

It sounded exactly like a flute.

Thirteen.

At last, they take me to Finn. But they're playing a cruel trick because this isn't him-not my beautiful, wilful son. Who is this disfigured doll, his face a death mask? They've shaved his shock of dark hair right off. His scalp looks obscene, plucked, and there's a dressing taped across it. His right arm is in plaster. A web of tubes and wires a.s.saults his body, invades his mouth and nose, and there are monitors on his chest. Worst of all, his eyes are so swollen and bruised that I can't imagine them opening ever again. Finn looks scarcely human. He looks scarcely alive.

I hear someone sob, feel myself stagger. A youngish man-a nurse, I think-steers me gently into a chair. The cubicle is like the bridge of a s.p.a.ceship, humming and flashing and beeping with technology.

'What's happened to his eyes?' I ask, horrified.

'It's the cranial bleeding,' says the nurse. 'People call it racc.o.o.n eyes. It's perfectly normal in head injuries, but I'm afraid it may get worse before it gets better.'

I touch the waxwork face. 'Can he hear me?'

'He quite possibly can, at some level.' The nurse is checking a drip. 'So talk to him, sing to him, whatever you want.'

I hold a limp hand. I feel self-conscious at first, but I begin to talk. I talk nonsense. I tell Finn about the exciting helicopter ride, and how I'm here beside him, and how it's breakfast time and Charlie will be up, and how his dad's coming soon.

His dad. I tap out yet another text: Kit please call me urgent!!! Then I press send and imagine it flying through the ether, shaped like a little envelope, to land in Kit's phone. Wherever it is. Wherever he is.

In desperation I call my father's number in Bedford, cursing at the sound of his recorded message. I leave one for him: Dad, it's Martha here. Um . . . please ring me on my mobile. I read out the number. We're in, um, a bit of trouble.

Then I sit and watch Finn's breathing. In my state of panic and exhaustion, I honestly believe I can keep him alive as long as I count his every breath. In, out. Every breath is priceless. A watched kettle never boils. A watched child never dies.

In.

Out.

The sky is a black bowl, spangled with stars. My feet are pounding on the boards. And Finn plunges headlong, tiny hands clutching at nothing.

'Mrs McNamara?'

I jerk upright, eyes snapping open. A figure looms beside my chair, her face a respectful distance from mine. Not young; a stately grandmother with tea-coloured skin. Strong silver brows and white hair, real white old-lady hair, brushed from her forehead and caught into a high ponytail that cascades to her shoulder blades. A plastic ID hangs from a lanyard around her neck.

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I woke you.'

'Just dozing.'

I'm rubbing the stupor from my face as she holds out a creased hand. 'I'm Kura Pohatu, the paediatric social worker.'

My insides jolt. 'Social worker?'

'They tell me Finn's doing pretty well.'

We both look at him. 'I don't know,' I say faintly. 'If he's doing well, why is he hooked up to ten machines?' I lean across to nuzzle Buccaneer Bob a little closer to Finn's cheek.

'A favourite toy?' asks Kura.

'Since the day he was born.' I almost smile at the memory. The twins were eight hours old, and Great-Aunt Sibella's arrival in the maternity ward seemed like a state visit from the Queen. She was ninety or so by then, swathed in a grey velvet coat and cameo earrings. She evoked adoration in Kit but a fair sprinkling of terror in everyone else, with her piercing eyes and merciless tongue. The nurses practically curtseyed. I sat on the edge of my bed trying not to look bloodstained and clutching a sapphire pendant Kit had given me.

Sibella halted by the babies' cribs, fishing in a Harrods bag. 'Be a pirate, nephew,' she ordered, dropping Buccaneer Bob on top of Finn, who was myopically blowing bubbles. 'Not an accountant.' She'd brought Charlie a very snazzy remote-controlled car. He was asleep, and didn't stir when the toy landed right beside his bald head. 'Bit young, yet. But Kit will enjoy it. He's always liked fast cars. Fast women, too.'

I laughed, and she peered at me. 'How's my nephew coping with a double dose of fatherhood?'

'Kit? He's euphoric!'

'You need to watch him.'

I was bemused. 'Why, Sibella? Look at this beautiful thing. He gave it to me this morning, just to say thank you for his sons.' I held the pendant around my neck, and she moved behind me to do up the clasp.

'Moods,' she said dourly. 'He has a temper on him.'

'Oh, I can handle those. I've known him five years now. I've seen it all.'

'Black dog. When that visitor is with him, he's beyond help. Beyond help. You just have to wait it out.' She lifted my curls to free them from the gold chain. 'It takes one to know one, you see.'

Three weeks later, Sibella died in her sleep. I think she knew it was coming, and it wasn't long before I understood what it was she'd been trying to tell me. Her death triggered a terrifying darkness in Kit, like nothing I had ever seen. He tried to stave it off, poor man, but it was inexorable. He told me he'd been there before: after his father died, and again when his first marriage failed. He refused to see a doctor, said he'd been down that road, never again; nothing helped. When life became unbearable he tried to escape by drinking himself into insensibility. For six months, depression stole the joy from our family. Then, for no apparent reason, it began to lift. Kit's illness became a memory, a 'bad patch', something we rarely mentioned and hoped never to experience again.

I can see Kit stumbling, falling over the baby gym, and in the sleepless night pacing around Finn's cot as the baby wails with colic. Finn has been wailing for hours, and we're all at the end of our tether. Kit shouts. His fists smash against the bars. The baby screams still louder as I run to him.

Someone's touching my shoulder. It isn't Kit. I struggle to understand where I am, ebbing and flowing in waves of dream. Sorry, I say. Sorry. So tired.

Kura is watching me closely. 'Have you eaten today?'

'Not since . . . dunno when.' Not since I shared fish fingers and peas with the boys, and Finn used his fork as a trebuchet and I snapped at him, and his face fell. Oh, how I long to turn back the clock. I would let him flick all the peas on his plate. I'd give him the whole packet and draw him a target.

'I'd like us to talk,' says the social worker, 'and work out how best I can help.'

'I can't leave him.'

Her smile is too wide. 'The staff will page me in a flash if there's any change.'

'I could murder a . . .' I stop, think, and then guiltily ditch the metaphor. 'I'd love a strong cup of coffee.'

The hospital is shadowy. We pa.s.s an incredibly old man who touches the wall with trembling fingers as he navigates a mile of lino. He might have been inching down that corridor for weeks. We pa.s.s orderlies wheeling trolleys whose occupants look dead already. We pa.s.s the gift shop, skirting around its display of heart-shaped helium balloons on sticks.

The cafe isn't busy. We buy our coffee, and Kura insists that I eat a sandwich as well because my little boy doesn't need me fainting from hunger. She has natural authority. I picture her as Maori royalty, a queen in a cloak of feathers. She chooses a table to one side, far from eavesdroppers, and parks me closest to the wall. Perhaps she wants to block my escape.

'What we talk about here is in confidence,' she says. 'It's just between you and me, unless someone's safety is at risk. Do you understand that?'

Yes, I think. I understand all too well.

'Is there anything you need at this stage? Start with practicalities.'

'A toothbrush,' I tell her. 'I've just spent my last cent-you don't think to grab your handbag. Luckily my phone was in my pocket.'

'Okay . . .' I can see she's making a mental note. 'No problem. Now, who's at home at the moment?'

'My other children. Sacha and Charlie, seventeen and five.'

'Quite an age gap.'

'Sacha's my daughter from an earlier relationship.' I have no intention of discussing Sacha's paternity with a stranger.

'Do you need me to arrange care for them?'

'No. Sacha's very capable, but she's in bed with this winter bug that's going around. So my neighbour's looking after Charlie.'

'Who's the neighbour?'

'Just a neighbour.'

b.l.o.o.d.y woman's like a terrier. 'I might know her. I've worked in Hawke's Bay for thirty years.'

I sigh. 'His name is Tama Pardoe. The children know him well. And thank G.o.d, he answered his phone last night.'

She looks at me, a.s.sessing the information. 'So this neighbour, Mr Pardoe, came around after the accident?'

'Yes,' I agree firmly. 'After. I called him once the helicopter was on its way.'

'What about Finn's father?'