After my first trip to Dawson’s Beach, Lorna finally gets round to commenting on my dinnertime eating habits. I’ve been expecting it. ‘Bel, do have some peas,’ she says offhandedly, waving a dish in my direction. ‘Only picked yesterday. Couldn’t be sweeter or fresher.’
‘I don’t eat vegetables.’
Tracey draws in a big breath. Lorna looks puzzled. ‘But everybody eats vegetables.’
‘Not the way my mother cooks them.’
Lorna’s eyes widen. The dish of peas hangs from her hand. ‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Kate’s cooking. When we stayed with you I could barely swallow the mushy cabbage and lumpy potatoes.’
‘And the leather steak,’ Steve contributes, giving me a slow smile.
‘And the soggy sponge cake!’ Tracey shouts.
‘We only got a decent meal when I volunteered to do the cooking,’ says Lorna.
‘That’s why Bel is so skinny and pale,’ Tracey says smugly.
I glare at her. Stupid little cow. Can’t she understand that I want to look the way I do? Lorna reaches out to take my hand but changes her mind. ‘Bel, I simply can’t sit at the table with you for three weeks and watch you refuse all the lovely fresh food I grow in my garden. Thinking of all those vitamins and minerals you’re missing. It’d break my heart. Truly. Can we come to an agreement?’
‘What?’
‘Could you eat just a tablespoon of the vegetables with each meal? Six peas and four sticks of carrot? Please, please?’ She clasps her hands together on the table as if she’s praying.
I look at her suspiciously. Her eyes twinkle back at me. Oh, why not? If that’s all it takes to keep her off my back. ‘No worries,’ I say, shrugging. ‘Chuck over the peas.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Steve rumbles. Ridiculously, I feel a rush of happiness. I can’t recall my father ever saying that to me.
But a minute later my good mood is shot to pieces by Lorna’s announcement that we’re all going into Picton for church tomorrow morning. ‘Boring,’ Tracey groans.
For a few seconds I can’t speak. No way am I going into Picton. I have to go back to Dawson’s Beach to see if Lizzie was real or a dream. ‘I don’t go to church,’ I announce. ‘God doesn’t exist.’
There’s a dead silence. Tracey stares at me wide-eyed, obviously waiting for lightning to strike me dead. ‘How do you know God doesn’t exist?’ she asks.
‘God is a figment of man’s imagination, invented to help people cope with the idea of death,’ I tell her.
It’s too much for Tracey. ‘Death?’ she repeats in a squeaky voice.
‘But how do you know God doesn’t exist?’ Glynn asks suddenly. ‘You can’t prove that he doesn’t.’ He leans back and folds his arms and grins at me.
I stare at him. It’s exactly the answer Rae would have come back with. While I’m trying to think of a suitable reply, his mother speaks up. ‘Figment or not, we’re all going to church. That’s definite,’ she states.
‘I’m not going,’ I say.
Lorna and Steve exchange a glance. I hate it when adults do that. My parents used to do it too until they stopped looking at each other altogether. ‘Bel,’ Lorna says carefully, ‘we don’t go to church every Sunday but when we do, all of us go. We make a day of it. We have lunch afterwards at a café and do some shopping and maybe see a few friends. I don’t want you here on your own all day. Certainly not this early in your stay.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ I say. ‘I’m used to being on my own.’ What do they think I’m going to do — top myself?
Uncle Steve puts down his knife and fork. ‘Bel, we do expect you to come with us,’ he says evenly.
I open my mouth then shut it again. It could be my father talking, but somehow I’m not angry. My eyes drop under his steady gaze. ‘I suppose,’ I mutter, despising myself for caving in again. Twice in five minutes. What a pea-brain. I can’t bear to look at Tracey or Glynn and see the expressions of scorn on their faces.
‘Right,’ says Lorna briskly. ‘We leave at eight a.m. on the dot.’ Then she reaches out and gives my hand a quick squeeze. ‘Bel, you’ll enjoy it when you get there. You can’t spend three weeks cooped up on the island. You’d go mad.’
‘Yeah.’ I reach for the gravy to drown my peas.
As I chew the yucky green things, I glance surreptitiously at Uncle Steve. How can he be so different to my father? I don’t mean in looks, but in temperament. Steve laughs a dozen times a day, while Dad doles out smiles as if he’s being charged for them. They’re brothers with barely a couple of years between them, but they could be total strangers. Maybe it’s because Dad was sent away to boarding school in Wellington when he was 13, but Steve flatly refused to go. He wouldn’t leave his beloved island.
Uncle Steve catches me watching him, and winks broadly. I look away, feeling my cheeks turning pink. Somehow it seems disloyal to wish your uncle was your father. But I can dream, can’t I?
To be honest, going to Picton the next day isn’t all totally bad news. I choose some really funky clothes to wear — a pink and gold sari skirt with a handkerchief hemline, a black shoestring top, and a short denim vest. The whole effect is finished off with black fishnet stockings and boots, and at the last minute I shove a beaded beret on my head. When Aunt Lorna sees my outfit, she gulps and mutters something about taking a spare parka for the boat.
I actually enjoy the boat trip up the Sound. The water is like a sheet of silver. The hills have a long, thin layer of cloud resting on their peaks, just as if someone very large has carefully wrapped them in cotton wool.
As we come round the point into Queen Charlotte Sound, the fast ferry is heading towards us. What an ugly thing it is, a great white crab crawling across the sea on crooked legs. It drones past and a minute later the swells in its wake make us rock violently. Lorna pulls a disgusted face. ‘Thank heavens it’s only allowed to do eighteen knots in the Sounds,’ she says in my ear. ‘It can do forty knots, you know. When they did that sort of speed the damage from the wake was absolutely devastating.’ We both look at the long foamy trail of the wash spreading out behind the ship like a scar on the skin of the water.
I think how nice it would be to listen to silence rather than to the chug of Queenie’s engine. Maybe Glynn’s kayak isn’t such a bad idea after all. If I can survive his attempts to teach me how to paddle I could go by sea to Dawson’s Beach.
The church at Picton is little and old and dark but it has really neat stained glass windows. And it’s good to get a chance to sing again. Okay, it’s just the boring old hymns that we sing at school assembly, but I love singing in a group regardless of what kind of group it is. Steve stands next to me, rumbling away in a rich baritone. I wonder if my father sounds like that when he sings. I’ve never heard him sing. ‘You’ve got a lovely voice,’ Lorna says to me as we file out of the church. ‘Are you in a choir?’
‘I was. At my old school. I was going to sing my first solo at prize-giving. Then I had to resign.’
That certainly shuts her up.
After we eat a very unhealthy lunch of sausage rolls and lamingtons and Coke in a café on the waterfront, Lorna informs us that she and Steve are going shopping. ‘You kids can do what you like but make sure you’re back at the boat by three o’clock.’
For a few seconds the three of us stand outside the café, not looking at each other. Then Glynn mumbles something about fishing rods and slouches away. Tracey looks across at me with a hopeful smile. ‘Want to check out the shops with me? Some of them will be open.’ She doesn’t sound quite so sure of my answer as she would have been a day ago, so maybe I’m finally getting that sisters idea out of her head.
I shrug. ‘Why not? I don’t mind, as long as you don’t mind being seen with me.’
‘Bel, why do you wear such weird clothes?’ Tracey blurts.
I shrug again. I have a dozen answers to that question. ‘I like giving people a thrill.’
‘I wish I could wear clothes like yours,’ she says wistfully. ‘Jeans and shorts are okay, I guess. But … I don’t know … sometimes I feel like I want to wear something really funky. But I don’t because I’m scared I’d just look stupid.’
‘It’s more than what you wear,’ I tell her. ‘It’s your whole attitude. If you want to say, “Stuff the world,” then you’ve got to wear stuff-the-world clothes.’
Tracey giggles. ‘Cool as. “Stuff the world.” Hey, maybe I should get my ears pierced? We could do it today, seeing you’re with me?’
‘Well … what does your Mum think?’
‘She says I have to wait till I’m sixteen.’
‘Right,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘Well, you could always get your navel pierced. Then she wouldn’t see it for ages. Or your tongue. What about your tongue? That’s really cool. Once the infection has cleared up, of course.’
‘Yuck!’ Tracey looks revolted.
‘How about a transfer tattoo instead? I brought some with me.’
She grins, rather relieved. ‘Cool. What’ve you got?’
‘How about a creepy crawly spider?’
With the tattoo safely applied, Tracy and I walk up the main street of Picton. There are flowers everywhere, spilling out of baskets hanging from the blue lamp-posts, and crawling over the planter boxes in the middle of the road. Mum would love it. I get slightly mesmerised by the wavy patterns in the paved footpath and find my feet veering to follow the curves. My progress along the footpath is slow but Tracey’s is a canter. She zigzags here and there, galloping ahead to peer into shop windows or trotting over the road to giggle with a friend.
We both end up staring into the window of a little bric-à-brac shop. It’s the kind of shop I love. ‘Christmas,’ Tracey cries. ‘Christmas, Christmas.’
I glance at her. She doesn’t look as though she’s swearing.
‘I’ve got to buy one more Christmas present,’ she explains. ‘This is my last chance. Let’s go in.’
Christmas! I am swearing. Before I left Auckland, Mum bought presents for everyone and packed them into my suitcase so that’s not a problem. What I’m dreading more and more is all the Christmas stuff — carols and presents and crackers. I just wish it would go away.
There’s an old glass cabinet at the back of the shop full of knick-knacks. I make a beeline for it. I pick out a little carved figure and as soon as I feel its smooth, curved shape in my hand I know I just have to have it. It’s a dolphin leaping out of the water, made of some kind of bone. I take it over to the woman behind the counter. She looks sharply at me over her spectacles. ‘How much?’ I ask.
‘Let me see, that’s ninety dollars,’ she replies.
‘Ninety dollars!’ I stare down at the dolphin, wanting it desperately. But it would use up nearly all my holiday cash.
‘It’s a genuine antique,’ she informs me. ‘Real whalebone. It was carved by a whaler in the nineteenth century.’
‘Fifty dollars,’ I say boldly.
A look of disgust creases her face. ‘It’s a fixed price.’
I turn away. ‘Stuff you,’ I whisper under my breath. I long to slip the dolphin into my pocket. But the old dragon is watching me, obviously expecting me to do just that. Carefully I deposit the dolphin back in the cabinet and turn round and glare at the woman. She drops her eyes to her knitting.
‘Wow. Ninety dollars,’ Tracey mutters in my ear. ‘What a rip-off.’
I shrug and fiddle with a crocheted collar, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘No big deal.’
Tracey buys a china shepherdess which I sincerely hope isn’t my Christmas present. We wander out of the shop and stand blinking in the sunshine. Tracey nudges my arm. ‘Look over there,’ she hisses, pointing across the road. ‘It’s that old bag, Mere Ihaka and her gang. They’re so up themselves you’d think they owned the whole place already.’
‘Who?’
‘You know!’ Tracey says impatiently. ‘The Maori who want to get their land back. Mum read it out of the paper the other day.’
I look across at a group of about a dozen people sauntering along the footpath, taking up so much space the other pedestrians have to step out into the road. Mere Ihaka is easy to spot — a tall, bony woman in a long, black dress with grey hair tied back in an untidy knot. She’s ancient. And she looks like a real witch, too.
She walks slowly at the front of the group, knowing that her retinue is right behind her. Some of the men are very big, with massive chests and shoulders. The two biggest ones have shaved heads. They all have tattoos on their arms, thick swirling patterns, and some of them even have tattoos on their faces. There are a couple of young women with them, one heavily pregnant and the other leading two small children by the hand. They’re all laughing and joking with each other, except for the old woman and a young guy supporting her elbow.
I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s different to the others, totally different. Really spunky. He’s wearing jeans and a black, sleeveless T-shirt, and his body is smooth and lean. His olive skin is unmarked by tattoos. His hair is black and dead straight, falling to his shoulders, and he wears a black band tied round his head. He reminds me of the Native American Indians on TV. Sort of graceful, not all clumpy and awkward like the boys at school. ‘Who’s the one with the headband?’ I hiss to Tracey.
She squints at the group. ‘Oh, that’s Daniel Kelly, her grandson. He’s just finished high school. He’s so weird.’
‘Where does he live?’ I try to keep my voice casual but Tracey isn’t fooled.
‘Hey, Bel!’ she cries. ‘Haven’t you got a boyfriend at home?’
I shake my head. ‘Nah. Still waiting for Mr Perfect.’ It’s pretty close to the truth. Rae and I just can’t believe how all the guys we meet are either total nerds or complete jerks.
‘Well, I don’t know how far you’ll get with Daniel. My friends reckon he’s a bit crazy. He likes to be off by himself all the time, he won’t join in with sport and things.’
‘What else do you know about him?’
She frowns with the effort of remembering. ‘Umm … he lives with Mere. His mother is Mere’s daughter but she doesn’t live here any more. Hey, I bet he’s right into all that Maori land stuff just like his grandmother.’
He sounds more and more interesting with every word. But I’m not going to let Tracey know that. ‘Huh! I can’t be bothered with all that,’ I say airily. ‘It’s so boring.’
Tracey looks at her watch. ‘Shoot, it’s almost three o’clock. We’d better get going or Dad’ll throw a wobbly. He hates us being late.’
The waterfront is not in the direction Daniel and his family are going. With a last glance at the group, I follow Tracey towards the white war memorial at the bottom of the street. As we get near the grass strip bordering the waterfront I notice a familiar shape lurching along under the phoenix palms, scattering squawking ducks. ‘Hey, isn’t that Lenny over there?’ I whisper to Tracey.
She screws up her nose and nods. ‘Yeah. He must have arranged to get a ride back with us. Make sure you sit at the opposite end of the boat from him. Or you’ll get suffocated by beer fumes.’
‘You mean he drinks? Like real drinking? Why does your father keep him on then?’
She shrugs. ‘He’s not allowed to drink on the island, except for a can with Dad sometimes. He comes into Picton on his days off to see his mates but Dad’s told him that if he ever catches him drunk on the farm he’ll be gone the next day.’
‘He really freaks me out.’
‘Me too,’ Tracey says with a happy smile. She’s enjoying our little chat. ‘But Dad says he’s really good with animals and as strong as two men, and it’s always so hard to get someone to come and live on the island.’
I can understand that. Nobody normal would want to live on a prison island. ‘Well, I just hope I don’t see too much of him while I’m here,’ I say, shuddering theatrically. ‘I’ll have nightmares.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll wake you up if you scream,’ Tracey promises me.
I take her advice and keep away from Lenny on board the launch. He slumps on the seat at the stern and dozes so I grab the extra parka and join Glynn at his usual perch at the bow. He moves over to give me a bit of room but doesn’t try to say anything over the rush of the wind. Our shoulders rub together comfortably.
The next day I wake up praying that finally I’ll be able to go back to Dawson’s Beach. There isn’t another family expedition planned. I checked last night. I also casually mentioned that I wanted to walk over to Dawson’s Beach for a swim again. Nobody objected although Tracey said in a peeved voice that she’d practised on the new jump and wanted me to come and watch. ‘Look, I need to get away on my own,’ I replied, doing my best to look depressed. ‘I’ll come and see Apple another day, Tracey. Promise.’
The walk to Dawson’s Beach doesn’t seem to take as long as it did the first day.
It feels like only a few minutes before I come over the rise and look down on the perfect curve of the beach. It’s deserted. For a moment I wonder what would happen if a boat had anchored and a family was picnicking on the beach. Would Lizzie still come with other people around?
I settle myself in the stone chair and try to empty my mind of all thoughts. It’s not easy. I hum the old ballad, feeling the tune wrapping round my mind like a soft velvety ribbon. Verse after verse. It’s peaceful, calming. I’m sleepy … my eyelids are heavy. I can barely see the steel grey sea and the metallic sky and the tendrils of mist slithering towards me across the water.
Then my eyes spring open and I look round at the beach and she’s there. Walking soundlessly towards me, her black eyes fixed on my face, her hands clasped at her breast. Closer, closer, and I can see the coarse weave of her red shawl and the cracked brown leather of her boots. Closer, closer, and now she’s gliding over the rocks towards my stone chair and I can see the bruised skin under her eyes and the way her thin brown hands clench together as if she’s holding a terrible pain inside her chest. Then she’s beside me and I stand up and we gaze at each other. ‘At last,’ says a voice in my head. ‘You’re here.’ And I know without a doubt that Lizzie has come for me, and me alone.