‘Wait, wait for me,’ I cried. My voice was picked up by the wind, shredded carelessly into fragments and thrown out to sea. Unheard.
‘Wait.’
I found myself running faster than I imagined I could, trying desperately to catch up to the figure paused at the cliff’s edge, contemplating the ocean and its restless movement. A fishing boat bobbed far out, a dark smudge on the horizon. Sea birds floated easily above the mica sea. Bearing witness.
‘Wait,’ I whispered. My voice harsh and incomplete. Escaping from my broken mouth in ragged sobs. ‘You can’t leave. Wait. Don’t go.’ Still running, still trying to catch up. He disappeared as I watched. I knew that he would be scrambling down the track that led to the half-moon of pebbles and wet black rocks that he jokingly called his private beach. I also knew it would be for the last time, because he was leaving, really leaving, not just talking about it.
Finally I too reached the edge of the escarpment, stopping to draw in great gasps of air. From where I stood I could see him, halfway down the track, walking carefully like adults do. One foot after the other. He looked up and waved. Gesturing for me to hurry up. He shouted something I wasn’t fast enough to catch. And again, I ran. Following the vagaries of the pathway to the sea.
Then, from nowhere, a flash of white shot between my flying feet, as our dog joined in the chase. I lost balance, toppling, tripping, falling forward, cartwheeling uncontrollably down the narrow track. With a dull thud, that I felt rather than heard, my descent came abruptly to a halt against something which held for a moment then inexplicably vanished. Opening my eyes slowly, I took in the expanse of the sky and the blossoming white of the scudding clouds overhead. My cheek and knees stung, the skin abraded by the stones and tussock that had grabbed at me as I had tumbled past. Wriggling my fingers and toes experimentally, I was pleased to discover that nothing other than the grazes and my left eye, which I could feel already swelling and discolouring, really hurt.
Where are you? I thought, surprised he wasn’t there, picking me up, exclaiming over my bruised face. But he wasn’t. Then I saw him. Below. Splayed out like a washed-up starfish, waiting for the tides to return him to the deep. His blond hair feathering over the stones.
What have I done?
A sharp yip made me look up and there, the dog we called Circus stood at the cliff edge. The spectre at the feast. As always.
I jump as Nanny Smack, reading over my shoulder, snorts in a very unghostly fashion.
‘I wish you wouldn’t creep up on me like that,’ I tell her.
She’s hovering above my desk and is small and incomplete today. The art on the wall behind her can be glimpsed through the mists and dreamscape of her corporeal being. Her inconstancy is a dead give-away.
‘You’re not even supposed to be here, are you?’
She giggles, unrepentant as ever. ‘No, no, sorting out some disaffected Maori boys on the East Coast at the moment. Tea break. Thought I’d pop in, have a squizz, say “kia ora”. It’s what Nannies do, you know. It’s in the job description.’
‘Liar.’
She rereads what I’ve written.
‘Another murder?’
‘Well yeah,’ I say. ‘As a largely unsuccessful writer of one murder novel already, it pays to keep with a theme, which means I have to have an actual murder. Almost mandatory really. Nature of the beast and all that.’
My ghost looks sceptical. ‘Why don’t you tell a real story instead of these whodunnits?’
‘I thought you liked my stories.’
Nanny looks evasive. She feels bad about finding the first thriller that I wrote simplistic, although I know that her assessment is spot on. I don’t have a talent for it. Too much planning. That’s the problem with murder.
‘You know, Cookie, I’m pleased that you’re doing what makes you happy. But sometimes I think if you tried a bit harder you might surprise yourself.’
‘Yes Nan,’ I say dutifully, because she’s right. I sigh. ‘And I wish you’d stop doing Open University papers because to be honest it’s starting to scare me. Where are you going to put all this information when you run out of room in your head?’
Nanny pats her kete with one hand and looks long and hard at me with her kauri-gum eyes. Stupid question. Where indeed would she put the stuff she has in her head, the knowledges that are as much a part of her as breathing?
‘Think of it as downloading to hard copy,’ she suggests playfully. Eternally abreast of the times.
Lucky old me.
‘You’ll be late,’ I remind her. ‘Morning tea doesn’t go on forever like it used to.’
Nanny tilts her head to the side, listening like a terrier and with a brisk, ‘Later,’ fizzes off to another frequency.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a beginning, not an end. The women in my family have a talent for forgetting.