‘What’s wrong, honey?’
‘Everything. Everything’s wrong, Lily.’
‘Like what?’
‘Bloody . . . everything. All these poor kids, with no hope in hell of actually doing anything useful with their lives, you know, anger management issues, alcoholism, domestic abuse, useless parents, chronic unemployment, underfunded schools . . .’
‘Oh, Darren.’
‘And then there’s me, trying to put some of the Gestalt therapy crap from uni into practice on these hopeless drug-fucked teenagers . . . Jesus Christ, Lil. Jesus bloody Christ.’
‘It’s OK, Darren. Just keep squeezing my hand, sweetheart.’
‘Why the hell did I become a counsellor, Lil, why?’
‘Squeeze harder.’
‘And when I go to check the news on The Custodian website in my bloody lunch break, what do I see? After hours of speaking to these poor miserable souls going to waste, what do I see on the bloody internet?’
‘What, honey?’
‘Corpses, Lil. Bloody corpses. Photos of half burnt, badly beaten corpses of these poor American Indians, indigenous Peruvians or Mexicans or something, massacred by their own government . . . Why Lily? All they wanted was the bloody corporations to leave them alone to live their lives in peace in the Amazonian rainforest . . . and, you know, there they were, spread out on the ground, poor, poor bastards, butchered like animals . . .’
‘There, there, Darren. Don’t cry honey.’
‘Bloody horrible, Lily. Just . . . awful . . .’
‘Listen honey. Do you want me to . . .’
‘Oh god, Lil. Why does the world have to be such a fucked up place? And then there’s bloody global warming, and all these pathetic gutless governments who don’t have it in ’em to stand up to coal and oil industry giants so the bastards are gonna keep polluting the atmosphere with CO2 and . . . bloody hell, Lil . . . I can’t take this anymore. I just can’t . . .’
‘This is the house of love . . .’
‘Oh stop it, Lil. I can’t do it anymore . . .’
‘C’mon Darren, sing with me . . . We pray in the church of love . . .’
‘I want out, I’m sick of it . . . sick of my job . . . sick of Christchurch . . . sick of this bloody world . . .’
‘Oh it’s the house of love . . .’
‘Please Lil . . . help me . . . help me get out of here . . .’
‘Where we sing the hymns of love . . .’
‘I just wanna be happy . . .’
Lily’s own day at the law firm has been exasperating. And now she has to muster whatever energy is left in her to console her husband, on their very expensive, extremely stiff and uncomfortable leather couch. Darren’s emotional equilibrium has certainly deteriorated. It’s been three months since they decided to finally abandon IVF treatment. Nothing but paying off the mortgage for their Merivale house galvanises them to get out of bed in the morning. A middle-aged couple increasingly losing faith in owning a prestigious house in an up-market suburb, boutique wineries on the weekends, grinding and drinking obscure blends of fair-trade coffee beans. Darren weeps; Lily perseveres.
‘We’ve searched for this place so long . . .’
‘I just wanna live a normal, happy life, Lily . . . I’m sick of this . . . so sick of this . . .’
She breathes deeply, pets Darren’s head and continues.
‘Now we’ve found our own house of love . . .’
‘Oh god . . .’
‘C’mon Darren, baby . . . This is the house of love . . .’
Darren sniffs and mumbles bittersweetly, ‘We . . . play . . . in the fields . . . of love . . .’
‘A totally sustainable home, with zero carbon emission. That’s what he wants.’
‘And you can’t do that with your Merivale house? It’s such a lovely place, Lil.’
‘I know, Liz. We can get ceiling insulation and a solar hot water system, but Darren doesn’t think that’d be enough.’
‘Well, what do you think?’
Lily takes a small bite. It’s toasted grilled vegetables and cheese focaccia. She stares at the huge, inverted steel cone – ‘the Chalice’ – stabbed into the centre of Cathedral Square. Three Asian tourists circle the post-modernist monument, amused by its sheer oddity, before wandering back towards the nineteenth century Christchurch Cathedral. They take photos in the shade of the far more comprehensible edifice. Lily and her oldest high school friend have been coming to Cathedral Square to have their lunch, feed the remains to the pigeons, exchange increasingly more rudimentary gossip over the past twelve years. It’s an excessively sunny day. The Chalice has become blindingly bright. The women understand that things are about to change forever.
‘I reckon he’s right, Liz. We can’t just sit idle and let global warming melt the planet. We have to do something about it. That’s why we’ve also both become vegetarians.’
‘What . . . how does not eating meat help with reducing global warming, Lil?’
‘It’s less energy being used to produce meat, feed cattle, refrigerate the meat, that sort of thing. And it’s so much healthier, and more humane.’
‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to say, Lil. You’re starting to make me feel bad about eating this ham sandwich!’
‘It’s just a personal decision, something Darren and I are doing. I didn’t mean to preach.’
‘But whose decision is it, Lil? Yours or Darren’s? I mean, are you sure this is what you want? You’re going to throw away everything, your house, your career, your car, your social life, everything, for this utopian ideal, to go and build . . . what was it again?’
‘A passive solar house.’
‘A passive solar house. I mean, is this what you want, Lily? Or is it like a symptom of Darren’s midlife crisis? I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I really care for you, Lily. You’re my oldest friend. You’re like my sister. I know how hard it must’ve been for you not being able to have a . . . but, look. Why won’t you consider adoption?’
Lily purses her lips. She tears up the last quarter of her focaccia into tiny squares, hurls them gradually at the pigeons. The light reflected from the conical metallic sculpture illuminates their wings. The fluttering of the shiny feathers mesmerises her. She’s bedazzled. Enchanted by the effervescent beings. She turns around, offers a genuine smile.
‘Darren’s right, Lizzy. You see how shiny the Chalice has got? It’s a lot of solar energy just going to waste every day. We can harness it. It’ll be so exciting, Lizzy. I can’t wait. You’ll come and visit us, won’t you?’
All things considered, in the context of the global financial disaster, the decimation of the property markets around the world, etc., the offer they receive for their precious house – from an Indian couple, new New Zealand citizens – is rather reasonable. Lily and Darren use their life savings to pay the deposit for a remote rural property. The money from the sale of their city house shall be used for laying down the renewable energy infrastructure. For irrigating the land to start planting seeds, to support the couple financially for the first two years of their new, rural life. They must then start to live off the sales of their organic produce.
Darren handed in his resignation letter at the Armstrong Social Work Centre one month ago. He was thrown a farewell party at the centre’s conference room yesterday. He tried not to seem too pleased about leaving, about not having to lay eyes on his controlling boss and mediocre, competitive colleagues ever again. He grinned, gave a brief speech, wished his young replacement the best of luck, and sauntered out. He put the goodbye present (a garish picture frame with a group photo of, yes, the counselling team) in a rubbish bin in the shopping centre. He picked up a few bottles of champagne and two gourmet vegetarian pizzas.
Today he’s nursing a mild hangover, reading through glossy booklets in the sparse living room of their denuded house. They’ll be handing it over to its new owners in five days. Lily is revising the list of items and prices for the yard sale.
‘Such a bloody waste of paper, all these pamphlets. The least they could’ve done was use recycled paper.’
‘Have you decided which one yet, Darren?’
‘I dunno, Lil. I reckon we’ll have to switch to CSP over time, but I’m not sure if that’s the best option to start with.’
‘What’s CSP again?’
‘Concentrating solar power.’
‘And what’s the alternative?’
‘PV, photovoltaic. You see, if we’re planning to fully go off the grid in a year’s time, we’ll need to plan this well. Intense concentrated sunlight is good for CSP, but PV is better for a larger area with more scattered, weaker solar radiation. So depending on what sort of sunlight we get on the farm, we should either go for solar cells or solar troughs.’
‘Most people get cells, don’t they?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t think you get to store as much energy if you use cells or panels. With the panels you just directly convert solar energy into electricity and use it on the spot, but with troughs you can save energy and even sell the excess to power plants. So, if we wanna go totally solar, we’d need to go CSP, I reckon. So bloody confusing.’
‘Relax, Darren. Remember, we’ll have no computers, no TV, no microwaves, no vacuum cleaners. We’ll be electro-frugal. Energy abstemious.’
‘Electro-frugal? That’s great, Lil. Sounds like you’ll be getting back into writing poetry, eh?’
Lily smiles.
‘We’ll see Darren. We’ll see. I’m sure as hell over legalese.’
A few hours later their front yard is crammed with all manner of people. Darren is astounded. So many people have converged to scavenge through their discarded things. In this affluent neighbourhood residents turn their noses at the whiff of a secondhand object. But thanks to Lily’s posting information about the sale on online forums, their possessions dissolve amid the throngs of ebullient bargain hunters.
The first things to go are the cot, pram, stroller, potty and toys. Darren is almost shocked; Lily feels no regret or reluctance in selling the remnants of their great disappointment. She throws in free gifts – teddy bears, eco-nappies, pregnancy and toddler rearing books – with the larger items. And she has also decided to sell her precious Cheyenne and the Hungry Ghosts record collection.
‘Of course, Darren. We’re not taking a record player to our solar farm, remember?’
‘Yeah I know, but . . . you really love these. I mean, it’s your youth and uni years and all the memories and stuff. You sure about this?’
‘I’m sure, Darren. You see those Goth kids over there. I think they’re interested in your guitar. Go on, be a good salesman. See how much you can get for it.’
‘But this one, Lil. House of Love . . . it’s the original seven-inch single, from 1980. It was her first real hit, wasn’t it? A real post-punk classic. It’s a bloody rarity, Lil. We can sell it on E-bay and fetch . . .’
‘But we won’t have access to the internet anymore, Darren. Remember? That’s one of the things you were most upset about. Being exposed to all the horrible things in the world through the internet. All the terrible news and stories. Look, I thought this is what you wanted.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘Not buts, Darren. No buts at all. This is really exciting, and I’ll be really cross with you if you don’t manage to sell your guitar to those Goths. Go on. And throw in House of Love as a freebie. Go on Darren. Chop chop!’
That night, for the first time in years – perhaps for the first time since they started to try to have a baby – Lily gets on top. She rides Darren. She moans and climaxes, continues to gyrate her pelvis until Darren growls with pleasure, with amazement. His mouth stays open for some time afterwards as he recovers from his petite mort.
‘Jesus Christ, Lil . . . if only we could convert that into electricity, we wouldn’t need bloody solar power, would we?’
She smiles and rolls over to send herself asleep while visualising their future crops of eggplants, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, basil, oregano, artichokes, carrots, turnips, green beans, snap beans, celery, rhubarb, asparagus, capsicums, cucumbers, okras, avocados, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, bamboo shoots, sweet corn, mung beans, parsnips, oregano, sweet potatoes, shallots, carrots, snap beans, onions, green beans, eggplants, onions, eggplants, egg . . . plants . . . plants . . . lots of lovely, green plants . . . lots and lots . . .