The Spriggan pub was thick and hot and lively. Locals everywhere, now. Some looked as though they’d returned from day jobs over in the city. Others perhaps young mums and dads, starting families in a place where property prices were still attainable. Knots of older folk perched in the corners. Some who looked as though they had Tempest Bay generations in their blood. The overall chatter and glasses clinking and arguments and laughter and occasional snatches of song. Pubs are universal everywhere.
It finally felt like the town had life in it. But still that undercurrent, that crackling strangeness, that he’d felt since first arrival on the bus. A mystery buzzing in his spine.
And the townsfolk were watching them. Not aggressive. But they were in the corner of every eye.
They’d split the tasks. Hedy was drinking, he was eating. Scotch and potato skins. Talking with their mouths full. Arguing. Lucia left to her own devices outside with an ice cream, and strict instructions not to go more than a hundred yards from the pub.
What’s your final destination? Hedy said. On this journey of yours.
Survival. Shelter. Just like anyone else, the man said.
You on the run? she said.
In a manner of speaking, the man said. Though not the manner you might imagine.
But you read my stupid book, somehow.
I did. Came here to understand the impulse behind it.
He’d been hoping to draw her deeper into her ideas, that lined up so disturbingly well with the things that had sent him on the long journey south with Lucia. Felt like it was working.
Hedy sighed. Downed her scotch in one gulp and chased it with a beer she had standing by.
Everyone knows about physical climate change, Hedy said. But it’s not separate from the change in our emotions and imagination. Did you ever read J.G. Ballard? The Drowned Earth?
The man shook his head.
In the Drowned Earth, Hedy said, the icecaps have melted, there’s runaway greenhouse effect, and cities like London are twenty feet underwater. Giant mosquitoes, all that. But there’s also this hallucinatory quality to everything. People go mad. I think that’s happening to our world, now. I think emotional climate change is mounting. Everyone feels it, everyone knows it, we just don’t yet accept that maybe our inner landscapes are actually part of something connected and real.
And Tempest Bay is a place to investigate that? he said.
I’m here for my own reasons, Hedy said. But I am still also a bloody meteor—meteorologist. Used to study weather, now it’s just a different kind. And Tempest Bay might be ahead of the curve. The ends of the earth and a new beginning. Old ways and next ways. Storms passing through.
I’m skeptical, he said. Based on what I’ve seen so far.
And yet you’re here.
Stopping through on our way elsewhere. Not staying.
Others have said that, Hedy said. You saw some of them down on the beach today. There’s a storm coming soon, and they’re hungry for it. So am I. Maybe so are you and Lucia.
• • •
Pictures lined the Spriggan walls in great historical variety. Antarctic expeditions and whaling ships and grim men hoisting carcasses. He looked at one nearby, a circle of people in fish masks with a faded label: courtesy of the Idle Hour Second Hand Bookstore.
Hedy waved her hands unsteadily at the images.
This town eats bad people and good people alike, she said. You should know that.
So tell me about them, he said. These people and this town.
For your curiosity before you leave?
My curiosity before I leave. And I’m betting you like to talk while you drink.
• • •
With two more scotches and a refill on the potato skins, Hedy warmed fast to the subject. She’d had a lot of time up on the clifftop to observe Tempest Bay.
This is an old town by New Zealand standards, she said. Roots right back to the whaling days in the 1860s. It was a smuggler’s den and an artist colony and even a town planning experiment. There’re families here whose line and memories go all the way back. The old houses, the old ways. Names like the Plumbers and the Starlings and the Sandersons are infused into the landscape. They’ve been through all the storms. Felt the horrors and joys and disgraces. Done the bad things we don’t talk about. They’ve degenerated over the years. Bloodlines thin. People escape to Wellington city. It’s not like the old days any more. But there’s a hard, nuggety current in Tempest Bay that says, if your people weren’t here a century ago, you’ll never belong.
But at the same time, new families keep coming, she said. Rugged charm. Low house prices, especially at Tomorrow Shines—that’s the housing development. The broadband internet out here is rubbish for some reason but maybe that’s a good thing. And the kids do love to roam the shoreline.
It’s a spot where you can get away from it all, be creative, find yourself, she said. But there’s more. You’ve felt it already, I bet. This place calls and haunts people. We’re right on the edge of the southern ocean that stretches all the way to Antarctica. The ocean that terrified ancient navigators and whalers.
That’s where you get the third group, she said. Beyond the old families and the newcomers. Some people come here because they’re crazy. I don’t mean that in any bad sense, not at all. I mean people hard-wired into the strange, swirling, emotional currents that wash through Tempest Bay. That work like weather systems.
She was well into her drink but stopped then, a bitter look on her face. The man chomped another potato skin and pushed.
So people come here to go mad, he said. Is that you?
I’m just here with my idea, she said.
An idea’s not enough to keep someone, place like this.
No it’s not, she said. Maybe I’ll catch a taxi out of here. Go whoop it up in Dargaville.
I don’t think you will.
You don’t know much, then.
• • •
The atmosphere in the pub was getting denser, closer, rowdier. Whatever had happened down on the beach earlier seemed to have been a success.
Two figures joined their table. Jessica, the old woman from earlier in the Doris cafe, and the fussy woman named Angela. He noticed that Jessica wore a faded emerald ring that nearly dwarfed her bony finger as it clutched a gin glass.
Hello, dearie, Jessica said to Hedy over the din. We don’t see you down in town much.
Only when I’ve got someone to watch my back, Hedy said.
Did you enjoy that bit of free cake? Angela said, nastily. Looks like you needed a break from the liquids.
I did thank you Angela, Hedy said, a bright unnatural smile on her face. What a delicious treat from a splendid establishment.
Tension circling.
Now when’re you going to come off that clifftop and live a bit more of life, Jessica said. Leave off digging holes and looking through things.
I’m here now, Hedy said.
Yes, with a fancy man I see, Jessica said, winking at the man.
He ain’t fancy, Hedy said. And he’s leaving right soon.
Is that so, Angela said, eyeing him. Most men at least shack up a little when they shack up. Quick caravan special, was it?
The girl and I are leaving after I finish these potato skins, the man said to Jessica, ignoring Angela. We’ll walk out through the tunnel and catch a ride on the far side.
Well fair enough then, Jessica said. It’s been a pleasure having such polite visitors.
No it bloody well hasn’t, Hedy said—
But then a shiver ran through the Spriggan pub, and everyone felt it, and everything changed.
• • •
Like a breeze that wasn’t a breeze. A surge of emotion that you could see in the air.
Beer spilled from glasses. A mix of smells as body chemistries changed. The music of the conversation paused then shifted into a different key. Something heightened. Alive. Intense.
It felt like falling from an aeroplane while having sex and reliving your worst childhod memory, all at the same time—
Distorted echoes hitting him. Guilt and everything else he was running from, had been running from, winding his way across their travels to near the end of the earth—
Hard glittering eyes on Jessica. He thought he saw someone slipping out the back door. A sense of panic and urgency rose in him.
Lucia—
• • •
Outside in glowing twilight. The sky streaming colours like the aurora. But no twelve year old girl munching an ice cream.
Hedy right there with him. They looked at each other.
We need to get up to the clifftop, she said.