Second Chances Part 6

Once they've disappeared around the corner, hospital noises begin to blur in my inner ear. Sleep deprivation, I suppose, and the unreality of disaster. Squeaks of trolley wheels, murmuring of voices, shoes softly thudding on lino; all m.u.f.fled in white cloud.

Missed an opportunity there.

'No. Yes. No. I don't know what to do.'

You can't sweep this one under the carpet.

'You don't really exist, you know. You're just an embodiment of my conscience.'

This has gone too far, Martha!

'Mum, I'm desperate. If I make the wrong decision my family will be obliterated. How about a bit of unconditional love?'

I hear her sniff. Honestly, I swear she sniffs. All those years being dead hasn't sweetened the bitter tang of her.

'Okay,' I concede. 'Perhaps not unconditional love. But do you think you could manage forgiveness, after all this time?'

Finn may die, she retorts. Who will you be forgiving then, Martha Norris?

She has a point.

Seven.

That was a long, long journey.

Twenty-four hours in a metal cylinder with Finn and Charlie, and anyone would need to lie on a psychiatrist's couch. I'm sure the four hundred or so other pa.s.sengers all suffer from post-traumatic stress to this day. They probably have recurrent flashbacks of cabin-fevered fiends-one blond and cherubic, the other dark and diabolical-pelting up and down the aisle, upsetting the trolleys and howling like tortured banshees just when everyone had finally put on their eye masks and nodded off.

Mercifully, jetlag has somewhat blurred the memory. Also faded, like dreams, are the August days we spent in Auckland, struggling to stay awake during the day and sleep through the upside-down nights. We'd left our beloved English summer, hay bales in the rain, and landed slap-bang in the middle of Antipodean winter. We stocked up on warm clothes, opened bank accounts and bought a people carrier from a car shark. It all seemed fresh and hazy at the same time, like a bracing swim on a hangover. After four days as tourists in the City of Sails we headed for Hawke's Bay.

I often think our new life began in a single moment, as we crossed the Napier-Taupo hills. Kit had taken over the wheel and was having a wonderful time on the hairpin bends, slamming the gear stick across and making very childish rally-car noises. I'm surprised n.o.body was carsick. We'd considered filling up with fuel as we left the lakeside town of Taupo but decided to press on. Since then we hadn't pa.s.sed a single petrol station. Indeed the hills seemed uninhabited, save for isolated dwellings with paint-peeling porches and murderous-looking hounds. I expected tumbleweed. You could almost hear the strumming of the banjo. The only human beings we saw were the drivers of monstrous logging trucks whose brakes hissed like man-eating pressure cookers.

'You wouldn't want to break down out here,' remarked Kit blithely. I leaned past him to check the fuel gauge. It didn't look too healthy.

For miles the road wound through New Zealand's native bush: subtropical rainforest complete with giant ferns, creepers and cabbage trees that looked like palms. Every bend brought another sharp-intake-of-breath view of raw-boned mountains and white waterfalls. These weren't quiet English hills. They were angular and rock-strewn, like a Chinese painting; jagged peaks and drifting swathes of cloud.

'It's the jungle,' murmured Finn, clutching Buccaneer Bob to his cheek and stroking his left ear. 'Jungle bells, jungle bells, jungle all the way.'

'Are there snakes?' Charlie's voice was m.u.f.fled by Blue Blanket.

'No snakes!' yelled Kit gleefully.

'Does Bagheera live here?' The twins had watched The Jungle Book on the plane.

'There he is!' squealed Finn, pointing into the shadows. 'Bagheera- I seed him looking at me from out of a tree.'

Soon after that, all three children were asleep. It was night-time in Bedfordshire. The boys lolled in their booster seats, soft legs dangling, baby jaws slack. Sacha was holding Finn's hand. The locket Ivan had given her- the one with both their photographs inside-was tangled around her hair. She never took it off.

Gradually, native bush gave way to forestry and farmland. As we crossed the last summit, Kit swerved onto a verge and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, he and I stepped out and stood leaning against the bonnet.

Above and around us rolled an immense pine forest, but the valley ahead opened its arms as though welcoming us to the coast. In the distance lay the Pacific, glittering in a mist of opal light, beckoning all the way to Chile. On the coast, as unexpectedly lovely as a mirage, we glimpsed a little city.

'Must be Napier,' I said, squinting at the map. 'Hastings is beyond, but I don't think we can see it from here.'

From our height, distance and state of jetlag Napier seemed a Greek village. White houses jumbled up the slope of a hill that rose straight out of the sea, like the sh.e.l.l of a giant turtle.

'We've made it,' said Kit. 'This is home.'

We based ourselves in a motel and tried to hit the ground running. Napier was a small city-about fifty thousand people-with a Mediterranean climate, a thriving port and Pacific beaches. That much we knew from the guidebook. What we hadn't expected was its picture-postcard beauty. Flattened by a catastrophic earthquake in 1931, it had risen phoenix-like from the ashes. The result was an art-deco town with wedding-cake buildings and a seafront boardwalk. On our first morning we had breakfast in a cafe by the marina. We sat out on a wooden deck in the winter sun, gazing across the clinking masts of yachts to snow-capped hills. I couldn't quite believe it was real.

An affable estate agent called Allan, who knew we'd brought sterling and sensed an obscenely large commission, devoted himself to showing us what he called 'lifestyle blocks'. Allan looked about sixty, with hair that swirled into a shining chocolate peak like a walnut whip. I think he had the wrong idea about us at first, and we hated everything he showed us. Modern monstrosities they were, on over-manicured subdivisions; not at all what we'd expected of this enterprising, militantly nuclear-free country. This was the land of the All Blacks and the Rainbow Warrior; this was Mordor and Rivendell. We weren't ready for electric garage doors and ludicrously phallic gateposts. Anyway, they cost too much; the exchange rate had been hopeless. We rejected them all, but Allan had the patience of Job.

'Impress your friends!' he crowed, throwing open the doors to yet another stone-grey kitchen. We trooped in, making awed noises about the view-which, incidentally, was stunning: orchards, basking in golden sunshine. Then Kit and I exchanged despairing glances.

'Not your cup of tea, is it?' Allan looked baffled. 'Homes of this calibre at this price rarely come on the market, you know. The discerning buyer-'

'Look, Allan,' said Kit, holding up his hands. 'It's still more than we can afford. And anyway, I couldn't live in a house that's designed purely to impress. This place is just a monument to somebody's ego.'

'Kit!' squeaked Sacha, rolling her eyes. 'You are so embarra.s.sing.'

'We don't have any friends to impress,' I explained sheepishly. 'Not within twelve thousand miles, anyway. C'mon, Allan. Isn't there anything a bit . . . I don't know . . . older? Less, um, tidy?'

Kit pointed out of the window. 'Like that, over the valley-see? Bit small, that one, but you get the idea. Those old weatherboard things.'

'Ah. Yes. You're looking at the traditional New Zealand construction method,' said Allan, following Kit's gaze towards a white wooden cottage wreathed in foliage. I bet there was a rocking chair on the front porch.

'They're lovely,' I said.

'They're a pain in the backside. Millstone around your necks. You have to paint them every five years or the wood rots away. They're draughty. Dark. No indooraoutdoor flow.'

'They're still lovely,' I insisted. 'Find me one of those.'

'Sorry.' Sacha smiled up at Allan from the floor, where she was tickling Charlie's tummy. 'Sorry to waste your time. My family are idiots.'

Allan twinkled at her and rubbed his chin. 'Okay,' he mused. 'I'm thinking . . . you need at least four bedrooms, ideally more, bit of land, some kind of s.p.a.ce for Kit's painting . . . and you'll be working north of Napier, Martha?'

'That's right. Capeview Lodge.'

'D'you mind living in the Wop-wops?'

'The where?'

'The Bundu,' said Allan, helpfully. 'The back of beyond.'

Finn had been watching the estate agent with goggle-eyed interest. If he stood very straight, the tip of his sticking-up hair was on a level with the man's waistband. 'Will I ever talk like him?' he asked, jabbing a thumb.

'No, silly.' Charlie leaned down from Sacha's lap, spinning a d.i.n.ky car across acres of concrete floor. 'We'll nevereverever sound like them. They talk in baby language.'

Sacha yelped and clapped her hand over his mouth, but Allan bent to ruffle Charlie's curls. I think he genuinely liked children. 'There's a Grand Old Lady with the acreage you're looking for. It's way up north, in tiger country. Much longer commute than I'd like, but you Poms are probably used to that, and it's on a school bus route. Needs, erm . . .' He faltered a little, looking for a euphemism. 'Needs a bit of TLC. Home handyman's paradise. Might suit you.'

I grabbed the car keys from Kit's pocket. 'Lead on!'

'It's quite a long way,' warned the estate agent.

He never spoke a truer word. After a lifetime of following Allan's truck down deserted country roads through banjo country I'd begun to doubt the man's sanity. Perhaps we'd pushed him over the edge; he was leading us into the wilderness and a slow death. Maybe he was going to tie us all to trees and use us for target practice. The road meandered through landscape that was a little like Scotland, and a little like a Pacific Island, and a lot like nowhere else on earth. There was pine forestry with wisps of cloud rising like steam; there were ravines, and black cattle, and glimpses of rocky coast. I was groping for the map, last seen under my seat among two weeks' worth of rotting chips and sweet wrappers, when Allan flicked an indicator and turned up a farm track.

A rusting letterbox squatted by the gate. It proclaimed, in faded paint: 6001-Patupaiarehe. And in a different script, hawke's bay today, which I knew was the local newspaper. It all sounded vaguely intrepid.

We crossed the cattle grid with a satisfying rumble. Our people carrier- suddenly puny and low-slung-tilted unhappily, jolting as we negotiated boulders in the drive. Charlie, who'd taken off his seatbelt when we turned off the road, was bounced so high that his hair actually touched the roof. Allan's rugged four-wheel drive crunched ahead, throwing up a festive swirl of dust. We ground our way uphill past grazing sheep, willows and stands of scrubby cypress trees before turning along a ridge. Then Allan swung around a hairpin bend and up an even wilder incline.

'He has to be joking,' I clucked, spinning the wheel with both hands. Stones and dust slid beneath our tyres. Terrifyingly far below, a river sparkled cheerily as it wandered in a lazy blue arc between limestone cliffs.

'Oh my G.o.d,' gasped Sacha. 'We're all going to die.'

I pictured our car slipping, sliding backwards down that rocky precipice. I could hear the screaming of the twins as we plunged into the cold water. Sweating now, I changed into first gear, revving the accelerator and letting out the clutch with a shaking foot.

'Christ,' breathed Kit beside me. It was a prayer rather than an oath. I'm fairly sure he crossed himself. He's never a better Catholic than in times of peril. Useful trick, that: instant faith at the touch of a b.u.t.ton, but no nagging guilt when life is going well.

'I want a four-wheel drive,' I whimpered. 'Right now.'

Abruptly, the ground levelled out and looked as though b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in its mouth. The drive-suddenly pretending to be regal and gracious- widened into an open s.p.a.ce under the shade of a wise old tree before disappearing into the canopy of native bush on the far side. The house was waiting patiently, watching us from under heavy lids. I had an impression of cream weatherboard, of wide verandahs and magnolias. It reminded me, immediately and irrevocably, of Kit's Great-Aunt Sibella.

'I recognise this place!' I cried happily, craning my neck for a better look. I'd seen it from my magic carpet as I floated in the dark. Perhaps, without realising it, I'd been looking for this very house ever since we came to Hawke's Bay. Arriving was like sinking into one of those really comfortable sofas you can't get out of gracefully.

We pa.s.sed a couple of sheds and pulled up next to Allan under that gnarled grandfather of a tree. It was a walnut, I later discovered, and it had seen a bit of life. Jubilant to be free, the boys leaped out and began to swing like gibbons on tyres that hung from the ancient boughs.

'Look at that,' said Kit, staring past the house and across an overgrown lawn to where the ground dropped sharply away. He reached for my hand. 'Martha, will you look at that.'

The house stood at the head of a valley which flowed down to the glimmering haze of the Pacific. One peak after another billowed away from us, sheep-grazed and bare. Inland, forest swayed and jostled to the edge of the drive.

'Patupaiarehe Station,' announced Allan.

Kit blinked. 'Who?'

Allan said it again, more slowly. 'Patu. Pay-a-ree-hee.' He stressed the ree. 'Probably p.r.o.nouncing it wrong. That's the name of this farm. It was a ma.s.sive station originally but it got cut up into smaller blocks. Some of it's in forestry now, and there's a native bush reserve. You're looking at the original homestead. It's a Maori name, obviously.'

We practised the word. It sounded mystical and melodic.

'I know there's a legend involved; blowed if I can remember the details.' Allan slapped himself on the back of the hand. 'Must do my homework next time.'

'It's so quiet,' whispered Sacha, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. We all listened. It was like no silence I'd heard before. There was, quite literally, not a man-made sound to be heard. None.

Then a haunting little melody drifted out of the cathedral gloom of the bush. A pipe, you'd swear it. Answering music burbled from the branches above our heads, ending in a whistle, playful and mischievous. Leaves rustled.

'Tui.' Allan began fishing in a plant pot, pulling out keys. 'There's fantails, bellbirds, kereru-that's our native wood pigeon. Morepork, which is a kind of owl. You'll get them all up here. When your dog arrives, do keep it under control; they're trying to introduce kiwis not far away.'

'm.u.f.fin's too old to chase anything,' said Sacha. 'She just sleeps.'

'Best kind of dog. This opens into the kitchen.' Allan unlocked a wood-and-gla.s.s door. 'The front of the house faces northeast down the valley. Comes with eight hectares: pasture and a block of native bush.'

'What's that in English?' asked Kit.

Allan squinted skywards, calculating. 'About twenty acres-I'll show you the boundary later. It's leased to your neighbours and they're happy to carry on the arrangement if you don't want the malarkey of running stock yourselves. There's a dam-that's a pond to you. Yards and a woolshed up here. They're pretty run-down, but the house has been reroofed in the last five years.' He smacked his hand against the doorframe. 'It's solid.'

He watched unsurprised as a hen-feral, presumably-scurried out from behind a scrubby bush and sprinted under the house. The twins shrieked and tore after it, but Allan didn't even comment. 'The original station ran all the way to the sea.'

He stood back to let us in. Charlie and Finn abandoned their chicken hunt and hurtled into the cool interior. I heard the demented clattering of feet on stairs. Sacha followed, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

The place made me think of Gone with the Wind: high ceilings, wooden panelling and prehistoric plumbing. It had polished floors and a wide staircase for flouncing down in a red taffeta frock. The back door led into a kitchen with grim 1970s lino, a pantry and a laundry. Upstairs, three of the five bedrooms opened onto a balcony that ran right along the front, looking out to sea. The boughs of a spreading magnolia touched this balcony, even sc.r.a.ping the roof. Directly below, a deep verandah edged two sides of the house. It called for wicker chairs and potted ferns; for sundowners and a gramophone playing into the night.

'Cold,' warned Kit, resting his hand flat on the kitchen wall. 'It's just made of wood, really. No central heating.'

'No insulation either,' said Allan, who clearly thought us off our rockers. He hadn't given up hope of selling us a concrete cake tin in suburbia. 'This stuff on the wall is called scrim. It's not even plaster. You're looking at building materials from the eighteen hundreds.'

We heard the squeak of the twins' jeans as they slid down the banisters. 'We've bagged our bedroom,' declared Finn.

'Did you see those smaller trees right beside the verandah?' asked Allan. Crouching down to the boys' height, he cupped his hand and spoke in a stage whisper. 'Be covered in lemons later. Great for fights. And the best thing- don't tell Mum-is you have to pee on 'em sometimes! They love the nitrogen.'

The conspirators sn.i.g.g.e.red and sneaked outside to fertilise the lemon trees. I followed Allan across the hall and into a large sitting room. Sacha was standing in a bay window, one knee resting on the red velvet cushions of a window seat. The room was dominated by a heady cacophony of scents: a century of wood polish, wet gra.s.s and a strong, exquisite fragrance that turned out to be daphne bushes in flower.

'The parlour,' said Allan. 'In the early days they would have kept this for best.'

Sacha looked thoughtfully across a bedraggled orchard, piling her hair up on her head. 'Horses,' she said. 'There, see?'

Following her pointed finger, I spotted five horses way up on the northern side of the valley, grazing peacefully beside a stand of Lombardy poplar.

'Why all the imported trees?' I asked Allan. 'Walnut, beech, poplar.'

'Those early settlers were homesick. They brought as much of the Old Country with them as they could. Mind you, most of it should have been left at home. Gorse and blackberry-to say nothing of rats, cats, dogs, ferrets, rabbits . . . Tragic, really.' I reckon Allan was a bit of an eco-warrior under his Jimmy Neutron hairdo. He jabbed his chin at a fence. 'Tennis court over there. Seen better days, but nothing a bit of white paint won't fix.'

Sacha let her hair go, and caramel ringlets cascaded around her face. 'The boys would love it here.'

'What about you, though?' I asked her. 'It's miles from town, from friends, clubs and things. You'll have a long bus ride to school.'

'I'm used to taking a bus to school. That doesn't bother me.' Sacha's gaze took in the horses, the tennis court and the distant sweep of the sea. 'Actually, I think I can see us living in this house.'

'Most rural kids drive themselves around,' said Allan. 'You're sixteen, right? Well, get your learner's licence now and in six months you can be driving on your own. Gives you a lot more freedom.'

We found Kit on the verandah. He was wearing that ragged corduroy jacket of his, I remember. The late afternoon light was a spray of gold, falling slantwise upon the hills so that every contour was accentuated. His hands were in his pockets, jingling coins, and his shoulders were up. I knew he was planning his first painting.

'There's the dam,' said Allan, pointing down the valley at a shimmer of water. 'By the cabbage trees, see?'