The Night Book Part 5

Since David had been elected leader of the National Party the mansion had become a fortress. Security cameras monitored all points of the grounds, gates and driveways; panic b.u.t.tons had been installed inside, and a private security firm was always on call.

David worked in Wellington for much of the week, and Roza lived here with her stepchildren, Jung Ha, the cat and the dog. She went to her publishing job each day, finishing at four so as to be there for the children after school. David came home at weekends and on some nights during the week. Life had gone on peacefully like this for four years.

But soon, David would most likely win the election and Roza Hallwright would be the prime minister's wife. Everyone said her life would be utterly changed. And yet, she privately wondered, did it have to change? Couldn't it go on just as it had before? David would be away more often, she would have to go with him on overseas trips, but there were no plans for them to move into the residence in Wellington. She didn't see why she couldn't try to have the same life she'd been leading.

She stood in the courtyard, looking at the pool. There were insects floating on the surface, reminding her of last night's dream, which would have been triggered, she knew, by her encounter with Simon Lampton. There'd been that suggestion of the past in the dream: the blurred vision of the old priest, Father Tapper. The danger of secrets.

She remembered last Sat.u.r.day: she and David had been lying here in deckchairs in the late afternoon sun.

She'd told him, 'I don't want to move from here.'

'You don't like change,' he'd said.

She had leaned back and stared up at the patterns made by the branches. 'Change isn't good for me.'

'It's all right. I want you here. This is where you belong. With the family. In the bunker.'

'Am I just the nanny?'

He'd caught hold of her hand. 'Don't say that. Jung Ha's the nanny. You I can't live without. You know that.'

She didn't answer.

'Tell me you'll never leave me.' He was squeezing her hand.

'Let go. You're hurting me. What's wrong with you?'

Looking into his lean face, the penetrating eyes, she'd got the sense of the hard man, who'd been hurt as a child, who'd lost both his parents and grown up poor, who'd lived with relatives who were dutiful but cold, and who had buried all his pain somewhere and lived on the surface of it, a thin crust with rage underneath.

He was clutching her satirically; he always made a show of parody when he was serious.

'I love you,' he'd said. 'Never change.'

She'd looked up and seen Michael at the window, watching.

Now she thought, I say I don't like politics, but really I don't like his politics. But I don't care enough for it to matter.

She remembered what he'd said next. 'I want us to have a baby.' She'd looked at him without expression. He'd said, 'It would make me happy, and you too. I know it's what you want. And you'll be all right,' he'd added.

'Yes,' was all she'd said in reply.

People had often told Roza: 'Live one day one at a time'. And she had done just that. She'd become expert at living in the here and now, had come to relish it, to enjoy each day, mindful of what she had. But now something much larger was being asked of her. To adjust to a life under the public eye, to consider having a baby; to plan for great things that lay ahead. It was this contemplation of the future that made Roza frightened, and that caused her to turn her mind to the past. And then there was the question of Simon Lampton.

David had grown up poor and she had grown up rich. Her father, Antonin Danielewicz, was a businessman who'd owned interests in more companies than Roza could name. He was a humourless man, religious and authoritarian. When Roza was disobedient he'd smacked her on the legs with a belt. Roza had been an obedient girl until she was fifteen, when she'd woken up to the idea of rebellion. She'd met a boy called Myron Jannides, who had dropped out of school, and together they'd launched into freedom. She was expelled, went to another school, and was expelled from there. Her parents were beside themselves; there were ugly scenes, recriminations. She accused them of repressing her, of forcing their Catholicism down her throat. She told them they were both cold, that all they cared about were money and G.o.d, and that Father Tapper had groped her and her friends in the back courtyard after Ma.s.s. This was a lie, but it was also an approximation of the truth: she'd felt that Father Tapper had played obscene games with her mind. He had made everything innocent and good seem dirty.

When she was still a teenager her father had died of a stroke, and her mother had accused her of killing him by breaking his heart. She'd left home, and drifted away from contact with her mother. After that, what she thought of as the dark days began. She'd had no idea of self-preservation. She knew now how innocent fun could turn ugly, how it could hurt you if you weren't careful. By the time she was twenty, she was an alcoholic, and her days and nights were a giddy mix of euphoria and terror, laughter and shame.

She remembered the crisis, the lowest point: one morning, sitting on the back steps of her rented flat. She had just been fired from her job. The landlord would be looking for rent, and she had no money and nowhere to go. She sat looking at the light shining on the leaves and the birds swooping between the trees, and she seemed to be looking at the end of her life. Her hands shook. She was too thin. She couldn't lie straight at night, because she felt that knives would come up through the mattress. She slept curled up in a ball with her hands jammed between her legs, and had nightmares that people were cutting her there. There was a black s.p.a.ce inside her. She had lost part of herself and she was afraid all the time.

That morning all those years ago the sun had come up, brash and hot, over the shining garden, and she'd sat dreaming on the concrete step, considering this new feeling: she had reached the end, and let go. She wouldn't try to live any more, but would simply wait for it all to fall in. No more hiding and hustling, no more secretive addict's bargains. The rent would fall due, the landlord would come; she would be thrown out in the street. It was finished; she couldn't go on any more. It was a strange, sensual feeling.

In the afternoon the landlord, who was making preparations to evict her, had sent a man around to mow the back lawn. The gardener had found Roza slumped on the back step, and called an ambulance.

Her mother's idea of recovery had been for Roza to find her way back to G.o.d, but Roza had told her calmly that she blamed the church for her woes. She said she would never set foot in a church again. The more her mother persisted, the more obvious it was that they were estranged.

Roza had said, 'Mum. If you keep on with this, you'll have to go away.'

'What do you mean?'

'If you can't accept I've given all that up, you'll have to leave me alone.'

Roza had been admitted to a recovery centre, and they were in the visitors' room. Her mother said, 'But don't you see, your giving it up is what's brought you here.'

Roza had looked away with a hopeless feeling. There was too much they couldn't say.

'I'm here because of your f.u.c.king G.o.d.'

'No, don't say that.'

Roza remembered standing up in sudden fury. 'All that h.e.l.lfire rubbish, that bulls.h.i.t.'

Her mother made a gesture of disgust. 'Hysteria,' she said.

'You messed up my mind, you and Dad.' Childish, impotent words.

'I saved you. Or I tried to. You were just the most immature, wilful child. It all fell on me. Your father didn't know what to do with you. It wasn't easy. I suffered.'

Roza struggled to find words. 'Your religion ... you call it choosing life, but you deny life.'

'Everything I ever did was for you.'

When Roza walked out her mother hadn't followed, but sat staring angrily at the floor. Later, Roza had watched the black Mercedes drive out of the car park, and cried for the first time since she'd been in the place.

The following year, when her mother was dying in hospital, she'd told Roza, 'I didn't want you to be like me.'

'What do you mean?'

'I didn't want you to be just a wife. I wanted you to have a job, be a success. You were so bright.'

Roza remembered a still, blue afternoon, her mother in a patch of summer sun, her grey hair trailing on the pillow. As the hours went by the sun moved, the colour bled out and faded, her mother had gripped her arm and whispered in her ear, and Roza said, 'Yes, I understand,' and held her hands as she died, held them tight as if she could keep her back from the other side.

Later the priest, Father Tapper, had arrived outside the door. He'd put his hand on her sleeve as she was leaving, but Roza had told him to go f.u.c.k himself.

A month later, she had taken stock. She had money, her parents' house, and she was back to being sober. She went regularly to AA meetings, which were boring but necessary, and comforting too. She'd enrolled for an arts degree at Auckland University, rediscovered reading, realising that it was a way to stay sober in the evenings, and had started to enjoy her studies. The only problem was that she was lonely. She'd had to leave a lot of destructive old friends behind.

She'd graduated with a degree and found work with a publisher. She liked the women with whom she worked, and she'd begun to be happy. Later, she'd met David, whose first wife had died, leaving him with the two children. During the months she and David were getting to know each other she'd tried out the sober Roza on him, and found, to her surprise, that the new self was a success. He'd seemed to believe in it.

Everything depended on the mask, and she never took it off, until she started to feel she'd become the person she was impersonating: someone cheerful, tough, focused, steady. She had her own money and a good job; she was a person who was not ashamed.

David had started out buying struggling companies and turning them around, and after he and Roza had got together he'd used her inherited money to increase his empire. He'd gone into packaging, food manufacturing and investment, and in a relatively short time they were seriously rich. He'd turned his mind to politics, made progressively bigger donations to the party and finally, after his astute use of Roza's money had made him a tyc.o.o.n, he'd been funnelled into leadership. The National Party rated anyone who had vast wealth.

For Roza, success in her new life had depended on not looking back. She'd felt that to turn back, to talk about what lay in the past, would be very dangerous. She'd avoided anything that reminded her of bad old times, and that was the way she'd stayed sober and well. She thought of that dragon, Trish, needling her about her new role. She would be the prime minister's wife. It had seemed impossible and surreal, laughable, and suddenly it was in front of her.

Now, in the radiant morning, in the sudden silence after the children had gone, she looked up at the house and felt suffocated.

'You all right?'

'Yes.'

'You look like you gunna fall in the pool.'

'No. Sorry. I'm fine.'

But she was dizzy and panicked; her nerves were scattered. The gardener, Conscience, hesitated and then, as she swayed, stepped forward and took her arm. He smelled nice, of sweat and cut gra.s.s. She looked into his wary, bloodshot eyes and laughed stupidly. 'Perhaps I'm getting the flu.'

He walked with her to the open French doors and bent down to take off his boots, but she said, 'Oh, don't worry. Leave them on.' They stepped inside and she sat down at the table, embarra.s.sed, staring at the light glancing off the pool, and trying to pull herself together.

'Thanks, Conscience.'

'You want me to call someone?'

'No. You could just put the kettle on, make us both a coffee.'

He filled the kettle and turned it on. 'If you okay, I'd better get back to work.'

'All right. Thanks.'

He went to the door. She said, 'Probably just a migraine,' hearing how artificial she sounded and he nodded and slipped out, happy to get away.

She made a cup of coffee and watched Conscience climb a ladder and go at the creeper on the wall with an electric trimmer.

She was going to be late for work, but still she didn't move. The light made a burning prism in the side of the gla.s.s fruit bowl and tiny pieces of dust revolved in the rays of sun.

Everything, today, was loosening the rigid organisation of her There were her early days, before she'd started drinking heavily. And there was the raw, tentative time of recovery, when she'd taken charge of her parents' house and enrolled at university, and invented her new self. These were times that she was able to revisit, warily, without any danger. In between them was the dark place, the time she never wanted to think about again.

The steam from her cup curled and slipped in the bright air. She replayed over again her encounter with Simon Lampton. What was that word he'd used?

Hyenas.

It was her encounter with Lampton that had unsettled her, made her turn and look back. It was like allowing yourself to let go, falling forward into clear air, the terror of having nothing to hold. Roza remembering.

She heard the automatic gate creaking open as Jung Ha drove in. A voice on the radio said, 'A man is in hospital after being stabbed last night in the Civic car park in central Auckland. The man, who police have not named, was returning to his car after a fundraising dinner for the National Party.'

's.h.i.t. Is it nine o'clock?' Roza picked up her keys and hurried out of the house.

four.

Simon was in hospital for one night. He had a lot of bruising, and st.i.tches in his forearm. He found it humiliating being a patient, and was conscious of the golden rule with hospitals: get out as fast as you can. On the morning after he'd been admitted, he was interviewed by a policeman. The two boys had been arrested as they ran out of the building, by police responding to Karen's call. Simon felt vague and tired and gave a rambling account. Each time he was asked a question he felt a spear of pain at his temple, as if his weary brain was resisting being used at all. All he wanted was to be still and silent. The policeman spoke of an ident.i.ty parade. A pushy woman from Victim Support hung about and drove Karen crazy, wanting to talk about her own experience of violent crime, and taking up the cop's time asking questions. Karen said the woman was a voyeur and a nutcase. The woman gave them a spiel about delayed shock and post-traumatic stress, until Karen snapped that they were both fine and all they needed was a bit of peace. The woman gave Simon a hurt smile and left, ignoring Karen.

That first morning his side ached like h.e.l.l, and they dosed him up with painkillers. Karen was in overdrive making sure he got attention; she rang his secretary, and made sure his partners had all his patients covered. He watched Karen pacing and frowning, giving orders into her cellphone. She enjoyed taking charge, dealing with problems and he thought, secretly, that she had the slight air of putting it on, like a kid playing at dress-ups.

By the afternoon he'd got better control of himself and had a few hours of dreamy ease, lying in the sunny room high up in Auckland City Hospital. Karen had gone to see to the kids. His arm felt huge and hot and his fingers were bound and immobile. What he'd been afraid of was nerve damage, but the doctor had told him some time in the blur of the night that no nerves or tendons were damaged.

He lay remembering. The brutal glare of the emergency department, the sounds and smells of human distress, Karen and Trish and Graeme looming and bobbing in his blurred vision like tragic clowns, helpless and out of place in their expensive clothes. A bloodied, tattooed gang member had twitched up the curtain and asked Trish, 'Got a smoke?' Trish had snapped, 'Don't be ridiculous,' and after that there were waves of laughter and fruity, falsetto imitations from behind the curtains, 'Don't be rid-i-cu lous,' and then the great roar and stench of the big bro chundering into his bed and the shouts as his mates leapt out of range.

They'd watched silently as a pregnant woman was wheeled past the door, her huge belly sticking up under the sheet. Along the corridor a child's desperate screaming stopped abruptly, as if a hand had been clamped over its mouth. A doctor leaned over Simon and the bright light hurt his eyes. Simon had said, 'Look, I'm really sorry but I'm going to have to ...' and vomited, the hot spurts tricking out through his fingers until a nurse jammed a styrofoam cup under his chin. He'd smelled the wine he'd drunk and couldn't stop apologising, until the drugs had kicked in and he whirled away into a kind of shocked peace.

He was given outpatient's appointments for the doctor and physiotherapist and told he could go home; Karen arrived with clean clothes. He felt stiff and a bit dizzy but otherwise fine. He got dressed and was putting on his socks when Karen's phone rang.

'Oh hi, Trish. He's ... No. Really?' Karen went to the window and looked out distractedly. 'Now? Yes. No. Wow. Lovely.'

She turned to him, agitated. 'David Hallwright's coming to see you.'

He paused, holding his sock. 'Why?'

Karen had gone into a flap. Darting around the room, tidying up, she grabbed the shirt he'd been wearing in bed. He sat there, watching.

'Simon. He's coming. Now.' She threw the shirt at him.

He didn't move.

'Simon,' she squeaked.

'What?'

She threw up her hands in frustration, kicked a towel behind the cupboard and looked around, frowning, hands on her hips, a.s.sessing the scene. 'You'll have to get back into bed.'

'What?'

'Get back in bed. So he can visit you.'

'Why do I have to be in bed?'

'Because you're in hospital. He's visiting your bedside.'

Simon stared. A throb of antagonism started up in his temple. He knew his slowness was driving her crazy. 'You want me to get in bed so he can "visit my bedside". Is it a visit or an event?'

She tried to make a joke of it, laughing and fussing around him.

'What if I don't want to see him?'

She made a furious face, but the door swished open. They turned.