‘About four I suppose. Why?’
‘Four.’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘You’re a miracle of anti-materialism.’
Bub stopped what he was doing and frowned at her.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What about the pa site?’
Bub said that, while they were smooching, he happened to be staring at the bush on the Point and he’d remembered the pa site.
‘I should have given you something else to stare at,’ Belle said.
Bub was unperturbed by her teasing. He went on. He said he thought about the mystery of the pa. ‘You know there’s a mystery, right? You know how Te Rauparaha came over from Kapiti and attacked settlements all around Tasman Bay, but not the pa on Matarau, because it was already abandoned. They reckon about four hundred years ago.’
Belle knew all this, but didn’t say so.
‘Archaeologists were up on Matarau Point in the fifties, digging in the midden, looking for adze heads and stuff. That Stanislaw bloke hadn’t ever grazed the Point, and it was still all virgin bush. The earthworks were overgrown. But archaeologists poked about and found the pa—remnants of fortifications and storage pits. Do you know about the storage pits?’
Belle knew what storage pits looked like. She’d taken a good look at some in the Marlborough Sounds. The ones she saw were shallow oblong excavations with built-up lips. The lips were foundations: all that remained of huts with frames of manuka branches, and raupo walls and roofs. The walls were designed to overlap the lip of the pit—that way, rats were kept from the stores of kumara, and yams, and dried fish, and gourds packed with preserved kereru. Belle had an odd feeling that there was something particular she should know about the storage pits on Matarau, something she had skimmed over while reading about something else.
Bub was completely dressed now; his boots were on his feet and his shirt buttoned. He’d paused for a moment to discover how much or how little he’d have to explain to Belle. When she looked at him he went on. ‘There are five pits on Matarau Point. They were filled in, but the archaeologists could see what they’d been. Besides, there were stories. They had a local, Bill Waiti, helping on the dig. The old fellow said the pits had been used as graves. Back then, in the fifties, they didn’t think twice about digging up graves. So they excavated one pit and it turned out that it was true. Altogether, between the five pits, there were over a hundred skeletons—men, women and children.
‘The most plausible story the archaeologists came up with about what happened was that, around four hundred years ago, one group of people had attacked another—they were possibly all Ngati Tumatakokiri, the people who were here when Abel Tasman arrived. Anyway, the attackers killed mostly everyone in the village, and took their stores. And, since they were so few, the survivors chose to abandon the pa and to bury their dead in the empty storage pits. Possibly the survivors wanted to make it hard for the raiders to come back, settle, and use everything.
‘So,’ said Bub, ‘that’s what they reckon happened. That’s what I’ve heard and read.’ He stopped speaking and regarded Belle, expectant.
Belle, of course, was thinking of how they’d thought to use a swimming pool as a mass grave. And then, all at once, she thought of the rock drawings under the curling limestone escarpment at the highest point of Stanislaw Reserve. She felt herself flush. Her face and neck flashed red, not with embarrassment or shame, but as if her body was driving her to run or to fight. ‘Jesus!’ she said. Then, ‘You have to come with me now.’ She jumped up, grabbed a sack, and scrambled down the beach to the dingy.
Bub was up too. He shoved the boat into the water and put the other sack on board.
‘We should stop by the spa,’ Belle said, and added, practical, ‘Drop the mussels off and get someone to start steaming them open.’
Bub picked her up and put her in the boat. Belle was in turmoil—she needed to take another look at those rock drawings before saying what she thought she knew—but she knew, she knew. She was adrenalised and distracted, but being scooped up and swung in the air and placed in the dinghy’s bow made her dizzy with infatuation.
The sun was low and the bush made runnels of shadow on the ground. As they climbed, the track branched and diminished. The forest thickened till it was the sun that was the intervention, sunlight in streams and splashes, then splatters, and finally only a fine dappling on the brown confetti of fallen beech leaves.
Belle’s hair was a beacon, brightening as the day got darker. Once she turned back to say to Bub, ‘I hope there’ll be enough light.’ Another time she came to a halt and caught his hand and pointed till he too could see the substantial but somehow buoyant kakapo flutter several feet up on to a log and stand, hunched and peering. Bub put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.
There were kaka in the trees along the ridge, taking off two by two, squawking, as if they were offended and making their exit shouting abuse over their shoulders. Bub watched some drop into a treetop farther off, not settling, but just coming to a dead stop like jets landing on an aircraft carrier, arrested by cables. They snatched at branches and stopped, bobbing back and forth, one horizontal and fluttering, the other upside-down and apparently comfortable with that.
The crest of the hill and the curling escarpment had sun on it still. The rock looked like a breaking wave. It was almost a cave, its interior coated with a beige and velvety marble, its outer rim fringed by vestigial stalactites.
Belle led Bub in under the overhang, and they clambered across tumbled stones to reach the back wall and the rock drawings. Bub had never seen these drawings in actuality, but as soon as he laid eyes on them he knew he’d seen them reproduced somewhere—perhaps in a magazine.
‘Look,’ said Belle, and pointed at one drawing.
It was circular, as if in a frame—something Bub hadn’t ever seen before in a rock drawing. The frame contained figures painted with a red pigment. Thin, semi-squatting human shapes. They were in a ring, their hands raised and pointed outwards. They were like the decorations around the rim of a plate. There was no up and no down in the picture. There was only the frame, and people pointing at it. Bub counted nine figures. Then Belle touched his arm and drew his attention to another drawing, to the right of the first and further down the wall.
Bub crouched to take a closer look.
This drawing too was framed. Again there was a circle, but whereas the first had been rendered in red pigment, this one was black. Again there was a rosette of figures, arms raised to the frame. But at the centre of this drawing was a larger figure, a man, not in a partial squat, as the others were, but straight-limbed. This alone struck Bub as unusual. Human figures in rock drawings usually had postures similar to those of tekoteko in a wharenui—braced as if load-bearing, yet twisting and supple. This central figure was rigid, and isolated, despite the way it dominated the drawing. It looked foreign. And it was rendered entirely in black pigment.
Behind Bub, Belle was silent. It was almost as if she’d disappeared. When he turned to her, he saw that she had been holding her breath. She lifted her arm and pointed at the black figure. ‘That’s him,’ she said.
Bub’s eyes wandered. Nine red figures in the first frame. Five in the second—only five, and the black man. The figures were facing away from the black figure. They were pointing at the line, as if warning: ‘Yes, it’s here too.’
‘That’s the No-Go,’ Belle said. ‘Those are the people who buried their dead in holes already dug for them—in their case not swimming pools, but storage pits. Those are survivors. And that’s him.’
Part Four
The first morning of the hunt they set off eager and early. Theresa had her Glock, Bub and William had rifles they’d taken from one of the cleared houses, and which they carried on their shoulders, safeties on, pointed harmlessly up. Dan had a shotgun. He bore it comfortably cradled, like a Hollywood Apache. He told everyone that he w
as used to guns and that, every May, he’d be in some maimai on the south bank of the Raikaia River, duck hunting with his mates.
Oscar followed the hunting party as far as the arboretum and watched as they cut up through it. The morning was misty, and the hunters faded away, watercolour figures between watercolour trees.
They came home late that afternoon, and Theresa announced that she was going to institute a curfew. The hunting party were watching for movement and had been distracted by the sight of Lily on her run.
‘How about I confine myself to Bypass Road and the waterfront?’ Lily said, and Theresa reluctantly agreed.
‘What about me?’ said Oscar. ‘I take my bike out most days. I need exercise too.’
Theresa looked at him and simply shook her head.
For five days it was just the four of them, and their searches were thorough and determined, and they’d be worn out when they came in. They’d sit, the men with whisky and Theresa with a glass of wine, and give an account of where they had been and what they’d seen. Oscar would perch at their feet and listen. Eventually he made a suggestion. They liked his idea, and on the sixth day of the search they sent Belle up to the edge of the subdivision with a pair of binoculars and her radio so that she could call Theresa if she spotted the man moving away from them.
Despite their organisation, they could find no sign of the man in black and, by the end of the week, they were feeling discouraged. They began to set out later, once everyone was up—everyone except Warren, who would be nursing a hangover.
‘Nursing a hangover or opening another bottle,’ Bub said.
‘Don’t ask me to talk to him,’ Jacob said. ‘There’s no point in getting into all that. When you find this guy, we’re going to get answers.’
‘And we’ll blow his kneecaps off if he doesn’t give us any,’ said Dan.
‘Please don’t. I’m not up to treating gunshot wounds.’
Theresa handed Jacob the binoculars and Belle’s radio. It was his turn to keep watch.
Warren appeared, sat beside Oscar, and casually ruffled the boy’s hair.
Holly brought them their packed lunches. Jacob pressed his packet to his nose and made a loud, pleased exhalation. ‘Banana bread!’
‘That’s the last of the bananas,’ Holly said, then, ‘You’re going to be hearing that a lot from now on. It will be the last of this and that. And, in case no one’s told you, Jacob, you’re doing Belle’s job because she’s out scouring the houses we’ve cleared for macadamia nuts, which she tells me her kakapo will accept at a pinch.’
Bub said, ‘She’s low on feed?’
Holly nodded.
Jacob turned to Oscar. ‘There’s no need to see us off, buddy. Warren can pick up my game.’ They went out the door.
Oscar had let Jacob use the wireless controller, so now Warren had it. Oscar played Halo 3 and Gears of War with William, Bub, Jacob, and Warren—whose playing was amazingly unimpeded by his being drunk or stoned. He played with Theresa, who was good, but always got bored within about twenty minutes.
They were playing campaign Halo. Oscar tried to get into the game, but his attention had wandered off after the hunting party. He wasn’t allowed to follow them. Theresa didn’t want anyone extra out there with all the firearms.
Oscar did appreciate the way they all looked after him, but someone should think to use him. They were searching a map, basically, and he was good at figuring out maps. Like the map in this game. Sure he knew where he was because he’d he done it before, but even if this was his first time he’d still be several hills ahead of Warren and waiting, like he was now, his avatar—the Arbiter—dancing in place while Warren struggled to shake off his fog and catch up.
‘I’m over there, under that green arrow,’ Oscar said, pointing at the top half of the split screen—the landscape from Warren’s point of view.
‘You’re teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, kid.’
The Arbiter danced around under his arrow. No one was shooting at him just yet, though Oscar could hear the Australians-on-helium voices of Grunts coming his way. ‘Hurry up then, Granny!’ he said.
On Warren’s screen the Arbiter came into view, spinning about for a second longer then taking off to lead the way.
Suddenly Oscar got the scary air-in-his-stomach feeling he’d have whenever he realised he’d forgotten something—left his phone at a friend’s place, or his favourite jacket on the back of a chair at Burger King. There was something he’d failed to notice. He looked away from the screen and around the room. What was it he’d missed?
Lily was on her way out, heading off for her run. She was limping, and the tights that, weeks before, had clung to her lean form, now flapped as she walked. Holly was at the long dining table sorting packets and pill bottles into various filing boxes, apparently making an inventory of the supplements from the health food section of the chemist shop. Her expression was grim and harried. Sam was out on the lawn throwing a stick for the dogs—they too were confined to the spa while Theresa and the men were walking about with firearms.
That was it. It was Sam. The sight of the Arbiter reminded Oscar of how Sam would dance, spinning, in her invisible ‘wind’.
Warren recalled Oscar’s attention to the game. ‘Now you’re the one lagging, buddy!’
On Oscar’s half of the screen the Master Chief was showing the Arbiter his heels, sprinting down the hillside and into the crossfire of a couple of plasma cannons, the green arrow above his head just there to say ‘He’s here’ to Oscar—because the arrow was nothing in itself, was only the game being helpful.
But if Sam’s strange dance suggested an arrow to Oscar what would that arrow indicate? Would it be just, ‘Look at this mad chick’, or would it be pointing out something that was invisible, but there?
Bub, William, and Theresa had set off along Matarau Point, leaving Dan posted at the intersection of Beach, Peninsula, and Bypass Roads. While he waited for them to work their way back to him, he kept his attention on the bush behind the houses on the point. He watched for movement—their quarry creeping away from this latest sweep.
One house had a terraced back section, and its washing line was up on the top terrace. There was a wash someone had put out that last morning. The clothes were flapping and, try as he might, Dan couldn’t make his hyper-alert brain eliminate them and only watch for other movement. He had his gun at the ready, and he longed to let off a shot at those taunting, twitching clothes.
The shadow of a gull slid over the intersection, and Dan shuddered. He wanted to blast everything back into stillness. It was windy and the sun was catching the sides of choppy waves in a way that seemed to make slits of white open up in the sea, as if the water was a tattered material through which a light was shining. A light that, as Dan stood there, began to represent to him the energy behind the thing that was keeping them all its prisoner, that was keeping him from Faye and the kids, with Christmas five weeks away now and the six-day holiday he’d booked in the camping ground out at Sumner Beach. It was time to clean the barbecue. It was time to take the training wheels off Kayla’s bike. Where was the man hiding? The man who was behind it all, who was like a switch they could throw that would turn the No-Go off and make everything go away—the sheeted shapes stacked in the motel swimming pool, the blobs of soured milk that had splattered onto the road when Dan had finally thought to empty the milk tanker—the mess, the stench, the hours and hours of work left for them to do the job right, and the waiting, like he was now, here, while some dead person’s clothes made crippled gestures at him, and the few trapped gulls gathered where they knew sooner or later someone would appear with scraps, with vegetable peel, and bits of those too-sweet frozen muffins that no one would eat.
Dan detected movement out of the corner of his eye and whirled to face it. But it was only Lily, running along Bypass Road.
Lily raised a hand to acknowl
edge him, and turned down towards the beachfront walkway. She was favouring her left knee.
Dan thought of a boar he’d once clipped with a bullet. It had staggered away through the bush, and he’d had to chase it to finish it off. Dan found he had the shotgun stock against his shoulder and that he was staring across the black notch of its sights at Lily’s receding figure. He stroked the trigger. The trigger was an open quote mark. ‘Open quote,’ he thought, ‘and then the gun says something.’
Dan lowered the gun. He was trembling. He was horrified at himself, at what had just gone on in his head. It was true that he felt sorry for Lily, the poor woman running herself into nothing, as though if she was thin enough and fast enough she might slip away somewhere. And it was true that he was as tired of other people’s misery as he was of his own. But he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger, would he? And whose thought was that anyway—about the trigger being an open quote? Dan might occasionally use air quotes, but he wasn’t very confident about how to use quote marks on paper.
It wasn’t his thought. It was malicious and perverted and savage and clever, and had come as a soundless whisper from the centre of his skull as if there was something inside him, something that wasn’t him, stirring like a hatchling in an egg.
As for Lily: she passed Dan and ran on, ignoring the twinge in her knee. All she was thinking was this: that after a long run she’d feel euphoric and pleased with herself. She’d have discharged a duty. Her first duty, which, despite cold mornings or that reedy feeling following a bout of illness, despite injuries that had dogged her, remained a simple duty. Get out, hydrate, warm up, run, stay hydrated, warm down, rehydrate, eat plenty. Every day she’d face forward and go. That was how it worked, and it had always made her happy. No one but she knew where her barriers really were, not her trainer, or doctor, or physiotherapist, or the sportswriters who watched her career.
Lily ran through the pain in her knee, she ran past exhaustion and into crisis and the exultation of her body trying to save her life. She would swear she could feel her cells at work, and she was reminded of this thing her brothers used to do at Guy Fawkes.