He told me how at the house, Prue, Issy and himself had divided up the furniture. Even then, I noticed how it was just the blood relatives. It wasn’t pretty, he said. He told me vaguely what was happening to the sideboards, the big dining room table and chairs, and how some things would be sold to the new owners, who were white South Africans. How it was kind of heartbreaking, but it had to be done because his parents obviously couldn’t squash everything into their Wellington house. I nodded a bit, I watched him. He was sort of twitchy. He sat forward, reached into his pocket and dipped out a handful of earth and told me he’d literally knelt down and scooped it up before he drove off the land. He held it out to me and I looked at the earth but I couldn’t tell if it was good earth or bad. I thought how his jacket pocket would be all dirty. He’d shed tears, he said. Yes, shed tears.

  ‘It was heartbreaking,’ he said again, ‘but even so, even so,’—he groped for words—‘GoGo, it was wonderful.’

  I screwed up my face. ‘Was it?’ I asked.

  He said it was, it was wonderful. He kept telling me about the stuff in the house and what was happening to it, the portrait of the old guy, Woolthamly, being gifted to the National Gallery, the big chiffoniers auctioned. And how they’d stopped Grandma giving the twenty thousand quid to Danielle who was marrying royalty, in the nick of time. We sort of laughed at that, but as he was talking I was thinking about the walks over the hills with Bert, the battles and the skirmishes, the camping in the summer, free as a fucking bird, the girl who was murdered, and how the farm was carved up and carved up among the siblings, and the lions at the gate. When he’d told me it was gone.

  He said again, there was a moment when it all could have been saved.

  I asked, ‘What was that moment?’ Well, I had to.

  ‘When the Murus left,’ he said, ‘and production at the plant stopped. Completely,’ he said. ‘Did you know that? Completely?’

  I said I did know.

  ‘And you know why it stopped?’

  And I said I did, but it was okay.

  ‘It was,’ he said. And he laughed, but it wasn’t his usual laugh, it was a cackle. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘and then, an investor made an aggressive offer, yes, a very aggressive one, and it was sold for a song, a song.’

  He was falling asleep, wilting on the couch.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He blinked at me, trying to focus. ‘But in the end, you know, GoGo, you have to do what makes you happy.’ He was flickering asleep, his bright eyes shutting down. ‘Do what makes you happy.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. I put a blanket over him and went out of the room.

  •

  In the morning I turned on the vacuum cleaner. Art sneezed. This won’t be pretty, I yelled. He went to LambChop. I did the whole house, which took ages, was like hoeing up the dust. Then paced about. It was back to normal. It felt foreign. There might be clients. I’d almost forgotten. Probably not, the first few days.

  In the passage I touched the phone. It was still. I didn’t have his number—I’d never had it, hadn’t thought of it. He had mine, of course. My docket.

  What I realised was: those clients, they didn’t love their wives, their husbands. They loved the lover.

  Somehow there was dinner (the oven), and chilled things from the fridge. I was distracted. He even said that, Art—GoGo, you’re distracted. It’s the electricity. Back on, he said, and I said, Yes, back on.

  (Oh, and by the way, there was a false start with the power—it went out again for a few days, but that’s another story.)

  The next day I thought, I thought of taking a novel to bits. I thought, I am the granddaughter of the storytellers. Stories are over. Now we can just undo them.

  I felt like absolute shite, in my own words. Whatever shite feels like when it’s at home.

  •

  The next day I went downtown. I set the answerphone.

  I expected the city to be bustling. It wasn’t. Trolley buses were whining up the steep bit of Queen Street. The big shops were open, banks, and a few neon signs were blinking. The water sculpture by the Art Gallery burst on and a bunch of kids jumped in, screeching like monkeys. But overall the city was still on reuptake inhibitors.

  A lot of small shops—lunch bars, tobacconists—were dark. They were like strips of land from which the serfs have been turfed off for not paying their rent. I walked and walked. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I remembered the day I dropped out of university. I remembered a pencil rolling over the wooden floor.

  33

  It had been a week, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. Art was at home, packing his papers morosely. I said I was going out to buy a dress. He looked up—a dress? I suppose it sounded odd. I flung out the door, took the car. Soon I was nosing along Ponsonby Road like a fish. I found a miraculous park, and I actually did go to buy a dress. In a posh shop, first the lovely sensation of my hands in racks, then a Marilyn Sainty dress. Navy blue, very fine cotton, almost like tissue, it clung like tissue. I ended up not wearing it to the thing. Long story. But I knew where I was going. I got back in the car, and drove to the client’s house.

  Yes, the client’s.

  It was down one of those dinky little Ponsonby streets lined with everyone’s late-model BMW. I cruised along rubbernecking at the house numbers, all in brass. Soon I found number 96. I wasn’t going in or anything. I just wanted to see. I purred with the brake on over the driveway. It was a cottage, cute as a button, as they say in America. Periwinkle weatherboards, white lacy veranda. I got out of the car, and instinctively looked around for Milly. I felt a sick thrill at the possibility she might be home. I know, book me in for therapy. The front garden was neat, jasmine trailing delicately over the picket fence, a path of crushed white shells and little box hedges lining it. And shrubs, hebes. The front door had new-looking stained glass, red. Which I knocked on. They had a security system, a little piss-off sign. No answer.

  I was at the Lilliputian picket gate on my way out when I caught a drift of smashed-up jazz, all tinny, coming from around the back. I hesitated. I crunched down the side path, ducked under banana palms and arrived on a little patio with a wooden table and chairs, red like a redhead, and a grapevine all tendrilly above it. I looked out into the garden. Big band was coming from a boom box on a chair under the clothesline. This seemed strange. I couldn’t picture the client listening to any radio program, let alone early-evening jazz. It just went to show I didn’t really know him. So what the hell was I doing? Which made this all the more exciting, and at the same time made me feel lonelier than I’d ever been in my life. I turned my head.

  An oldish man, grey-haired, was sitting on a stool by the far corner of the house, carefully painting a windowsill oxblood. When he saw me he stood up and winced from his back. He wasn’t that old, sixties, but wizened, prematurely.

  He called out over the radio, ‘You’re after Milly, are you?’

  I knew it was the client’s father from the accent, and from the likeness. The same long arms, the blue-green gaze.

  I hesitated for a second, then: Yeah, I was after Milly.

  The father walked over to the clothesline and turned the jazz down to a squeak. ‘She’s in Wellington. She stayed behind to, ah, wrap things up after the Blackout, apparently.’

  Well, thank Christ for small mercies.

  ‘And he’s out of course, working late.’

  I said never mind.

  The father stood holding his paintbrush, waiting for me to leave.

  ‘I’m painting my son’s house.’ He walked back over to the house, easing his back, and spread one hand as if to introduce me to the painting.

  ‘It looks nice.’

  ‘It does. Not bad, though I say it myself.’

  When I just stood there under the grapevine like an idiot, he went on.

  ‘For six months we’ve been going back and forth about it, while the wood deteriorates. I thought if I don’t let him toss some money my way, the whole house is going to go, so I’d better do it. I’d do anything for my son. I even let him pay me so I won’t have to stand by and see his walls rot.’

  He laughed and I laughed.

  ‘He can afford it,’ I said.

  The father looked at me sharply.

  ‘I mean, Donovan Brothers,’ I said.

  ‘They’re big, aren’t they? They’re players.’

  I said yeah.

  The father creaked down onto the little stool and started painting again. ‘Between you, me and the gatepost, I always thought he was doing alright. But didn’t like to pry, you know?’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, quite sombrely, but I felt excited—this strange circumstance, being drip-fed information about the client.

  ‘He’s had some big thing happen, just the other week,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I was blazing.

  ‘A sale. He brokered a sale, for some big company—ah, if I could remember the name. Made a mint.’ He glistened. ‘They’re out celebrating. As we speak.’

  I sidled around the garden furniture and stepped off the patio onto the grass. It was the wall-to-wall-carpet kind. Springy. I loved this. I loved that I was having a conversation with the father about the son! No preamble, straight into it. God, it was great. Because I had been fucking the son, not to put too fine a point on it. Talking to the father made me feel horny as hell. Rabid. I can’t quite explain it, but I was at some inner temple. I pictured the son, and wished I could tackle him to the ground and fuck him stupid.

  I pointed to a white sill. ‘Shall I?’

  He considered the possibility for a moment. ‘Ah, it’s fine.’

  His sill was becoming more and more bloody, the window underlined as if for emphasis.

  ‘And how do you know Milly then?’ he asked. ‘Out of curiosity.’

  And out of bloody nothing-else-to-pass-the-time.

  I hesitated, then lied through my state-funded Child Dental Service teeth. ‘From a long time ago.’

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, Milly.’

  Suddenly the father hobbled across to the boom box, more agile than before but you noticed the cacky knees. He twiddled with the volume and listened with his ear cocked. As he returned to the house, he gave a light guffaw, just like his son. Gawuff.

  ‘Missed it. The Black Caps playing South Africa at Eden Park. Never mind.’ When I looked blank he added, ‘Cricket. I listen to that bloody thing a lot.’ He lightly kicked the air in the direction of the boom box. ‘It’s quite good, you know, I shouldn’t complain. The National program’s quite good. I quite like that Wayne Mowat in the afternoons. Have you listened to him?’

  I hadn’t.

  ‘I like that Kim Hill in the mornings, but she’s a bit aggressive, mind.’

  He’d killed someone.

  He moved to another windowsill. Without its red trim, with its empty stare, it had a picked-clean, skull-like quality. The sun was still pelting down on the house. I’d go in a minute.

  He pushed the tin of paint, which was as dark as a scab, towards me.

  ‘Maybe you could after all, if you wanted to.’

  I looked about. ‘A paintbrush?’

  ‘Good point.’ He tromped down the garden and ducked into a rustic little shed that had a climbing rose weeping apricot petals on one side. Reappeared. ‘No weapons of mass destruction in there.’ Laughed. Handed me a narrow paintbrush. ‘Did you see that in the news? Resolution Seventy-One or whatever it is.’

  I hadn’t. Knew all about it later, of course.

  But mass.

  Mass destruction.

  ‘We watch the news at ten o’clock every night. Me and herself.’

  He watched it day and night. I knew that. The client had told me.

  He stood up. That crick in the back again. This time he groaned. ‘Were you affected by the Blackout, then?’

  Right in it, I told him, for five weeks.

  ‘Give over,’ he marvelled.

  I’d loved it. I dipped my brush in the oxblood.

  ‘Bloody Pinnacle Power,’ he said. ‘Ah well, at least the weather was warm.’

  He knew what winter without electricity was like. He wasn’t letting on though. He wasn’t a blabbermouth like the client. I don’t mean that pejoratively. We painted in companionable silence for a few minutes. I was buzzing, excited. I was painting with the client’s father.

  ‘Will he pay you too, d’you think?’

  He laughed. I laughed too much.

  ‘Nice house,’ I said, for something to say.

  ‘He’s doing well for himself then.’ A question, but he knew the answer.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Donovan Brothers, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If I could remember the name . . . And Milly, of course. She’s doing well.’

  I didn’t have a clue about Milly, nor did I give a rat’s arse, but I nodded vigorously. We kept painting. The oxblood was going on like nobody’s business.

  He said he was proud of his son. He looked at me with that green-blue stare. ‘Between you, me and the gatepost, I’m so proud I could burst.’ I was reminded of a Go-Betweens line, Da de-de-de-dee de-de-dee. Didn’t say it of course. He looked away quickly. I didn’t know why his pride had to be a secret. Yes, I did know. I just did.

  ‘For me,’ he said, ‘it was all over a long time ago.’ He smiled at the wall, or it was a grimace. ‘But for himself, well.’

  He listened out for the radio again, the cricket, then gave up. ‘Ah.’

  I’d go soon. I should.

  ‘We hoped he’d marry a girl from home,’ he said. ‘At one time. Between you, me and the gatepost. Lovely girl, but no. No. But it turned out alright.’

  I nodded. He couldn’t see me. He was painting.

  ‘Lovely girl, Milly. In Wellington for another week, after the Blackout. They relocated.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hope to get there myself some time. I’ve only been to the South Island once. Been here fourteen years and never got the ferry across the straits. Like to though. With this’—he held up the paintbrush—‘me and herself’ll get the ferry.’

  He was a wanted man. He’d had the Wanted card.

  ‘What’s your name?’ It suddenly occurred to him. I told him and he said, ‘Catholic name. There’s a town called Sligo. In the west.’

  Never say the West unless you want to spend a long time defining it. He could just say it.

  I asked him his name and he said it was Kevin, which I knew anyway because of the stories. Not stories, the truth. You’ve got his blood on your hands, Kevin. Etcetera.

  He balanced his dark red brush (I know, the colour, but this is true!) on the rim of the paint tin and straightened up. Groaned a bit, then bent to unscrew the lid from a thermos. He poured a cup and offered it to me first. Tea? I shook my head. I smiled to myself, remembering the cups of tea I’d offered his son, which the son had declined, often. The father swilled down his tea, his eyes on me, and an expression of curiosity crossed his face as he noticed my silly grin.

  As we painted, again there was a silence apart from the low squawk of the radio. The pips sounded. It was seven o’clock. He studied his watch as if to confirm it.

  ‘Missing Coronation Street. Ah well. I want to finish up that side wall.’

  He’d had the Mass card.

  ‘I’ll head off then,’ I said. I was on top of the world.

  ‘I’ll tell Milly you came around.’

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said, too panicky. She wouldn’t have a clue anyway, who I was. Yes, she might. The mender. She might remember.

  I misremember.

  ‘No need. I’ll email her,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, so.’ He started cleaning his bloody brush at the tap and the water ran red and twisted like veins. ‘You seem like a nice girl. You come to see your friend and you end up doing painting and listening to me raving on.’

  ‘It’s been great.’

  ‘It has. It’s been grand talking to you.’

  We shook our oxblood hands. It was fantastic.

  And I would’ve gone then, full of the client, but Dreadful and Frightful arrived.

  Kevin saw them first out of the corner of his eye and I heard him say, Here we go, under his breath, and our hands fell apart. They were twenty years older than the client had described them, but unmistakable. Hey-ho as they picked their way over the lawn, one dark, one a redhead. They were like spinning tops, top-heavy in their frilly blouses, reducing downwards in their spindly white slacks, down, down to their strappy spiky heels. They stopped when they saw Kevin and me.

  ‘Hey-ho,’ said one of them again, who may have been Dreadful or Frightful, and who was wearing a red blouse. ‘Where’s the missus, Kev? We thought the missus was helping you today.’ She craned her neck as if the missus might be inside.

  ‘Ah no,’ said Kevin, wiping his hands. ‘She’s been cleaning today. She’s had her rounds today.’

  ‘And who’s this then, your lovely assistant?’ asked the other one, the one in a green blouse. They both cackled, and the green one tottered forward and fell onto my cheek in her attempt to kiss it. I got a whiff of Winebox No. 5. She razzed her brow. ‘Has he got you helping him then, the old sod?’

  ‘Give over,’ said Kevin. ‘She’s a friend of Milly’s.’

  Names were exchanged. The green blouse was Deirdre, the red Finoula. I looked at Kevin. There was something wrong. He kept on painting. He didn’t like them. And now Deirdre was shaking my hand. ‘Look!’ Oxblood stained my palm. ‘Honestly, this family. Where’s himself, anyway?’ More craning.

  ‘Ah, out,’ said Kevin.

  ‘We thought the whole fam-damily would be here this evening—except for herself, of course. When’s she back, Kev?’

  ‘Next week, I believe.’

  ‘Which is why we came around, didn’t we, Finoula?’

  ‘We did,’ said Finoula, ‘which is why we brought—ta-da!’ She looked down fondly at the sloshing box of chateau cardboard she held tucked under her arm. ‘Join us,’ she said to me, and they set off weaving across the grass to the lacy white wrought-iron furniture that nestled under the trees at the edge of the garden.