All the Way to Summer Read online

  It’s over. We’re forming up to leave. She and I look at each other across the church again. Suddenly, it’s all bustle and go, and what none of us have thought about is the way we get out of the church, but there it is, as old as the vows, or so it seems, the rituals of teaming up, like finding your partner for a gavotte, step step step, an arm offered and accepted, she goes with my husband and I go with hers, that’s the way it’s done. Delicate, light as air, we prepare our entrance to the dance, to the music, but before we do, she and I afford each other one more look, one intimate glance. Hatted and hatless, that’s us, blessed are the meek, it’s all the same now. We’re one, her and me. We’re family.

  Red Bell

  1

  A Short Chronicle

  From its outward appearance, there is nothing to suggest great change about the supermarket. Believe me, I know that building through and through. I also know the parking lot better than most, not just because I’m so used to manoeuvring into its parked spaces, between the Audis and the Mercedes, or the Mercs, if you like, and the ridiculous SUVs that sound like a sexually transmitted disease, in which young women tote their children around these days. Although that should give you a clue, if you know the place at all, because it wasn’t always like that. The lot was more likely to fill with pick-up trucks and dented family wagons, small-nosed cars like my own. I know it so well because a year or so back my dear friend lost her husband, meaning he died, and she was lost to herself, the love and light of her life snuffed out. A month after that, she lost her engagement ring. A thing is just a thing, she said staunchly to her friends, over and again, but her mouth trembled and her hands shook when she said it. The ring was a beautiful antique oval opal, blue fire in its heart, edged with a fine filigree of gold. It stood for all the years she and her husband had been together. More than once, she had recalled the moment when he was a bearded young student, wearing roman sandals and socks, who had asked her humbly whether she would consider him good enough. Of course, she had said, and it was she who swept him off his feet. As she would, she is nothing if not bold. And, of course, there was the music, which he made all his life and for which he became famous. How could a man resist her, or a woman his melody.

  But there she was, the ring gone, her finger grown thin as the last months of his illness had ticked by. She had lost it, she thought, somewhere in the supermarket. This is how I came to scour that car park for a week, looking in every crevice and around its kerbs, scuffling through rubbish from cars, old parking tickets, cigarette butts, the whole disgusting detritus.

  For all sorts of reasons, then, my relationship with supermarkets feels intimate. When I go inside, there is a turnstile, leading to the fruit and vegetables: the firelight glow of the tomatoes, acid-yellow clumps of lemons, aubergines clad in deep purple, the whole panoply of exuberant edible colour. Sometimes I close my eyes for a second and inhale, as if somehow I can invoke the scent of the past, the rows of citrus trees my father planted up north, the grove of tamarillos that we called tree tomatoes, and the long wires supporting the kiwifruit vines. We used to call them Chinese gooseberries, but only because the plants had come from China in the beginning. Of course, it is inappropriate to call them that now.

  There is no smell now, or not of fruit anyway. Many things are wrapped in plastic, and the loose fruit has been chilled, the touch of the sun long gone, the earth dusted from the mushrooms. I have a friend who works in the fruit and vegetable department. We, that is my husband and I, have known him for years. His name is Phan, a man with savage cheekbones and tired eyes, his hair thinning on top. A long time ago, he was a monk in Cambodia, but he disrobed and immigrated to New Zealand. We knew him from his homeland, in the years when we travelled and my husband did his good works in that country torn by landmines, giving comfort to the afflicted. I remember the saffron shimmer of Phan’s robes in the heat, the way he held himself, unable to touch me — a woman — while my husband embraced him. And now he is married to a woman who is still back in Cambodia, and they have a daughter.

  Phan has been waiting for years to bring his wife to New Zealand, but it is never easy. The people in the Immigration Department aren’t always sympathetic to wives like his. So far as they are concerned, they are all a bunch of crooks using sham marriages to get into the country. The documents aren’t enough. They want to see photographs and videos of the wedding. I don’t like to think of a bunch of bureaucrats sitting at their desks thumbing through the precious albums, watching the videos, not understanding the rattling music or the pageantry of the promenade of friends down a dusty street to summon the bride from her house. Nor will this be enough to satisfy the officials. No, they want DNA samples to prove that the man is the father of his own child, which means that the wife must travel from her village to Phnom Penh, where the sample from their baby can be authenticated. They must have phone records to show how many times the husband has rung his wife. So, he’s broke because he’s paying for her to travel from place to place and can’t afford to phone her every week. Or her phone is broken. Well, that’s tough, they can see it’s all made up. You cannot believe the things they ask. Even the neighbours are invited to supply letters to say the couple cohabit when the husband returns now and then to Cambodia, in the long years that separate them. What are their friends supposed to do? Stand with their ears pressed against the rough thatch of the walls? I could go on about it, it makes us so furious, and we know that Phan is not the only one treated this way. There are dozens in his situation. Some days I feel like avoiding the fruit and veggies because it’s hard to face his misery. But that’s impossible because it’s the only way into the shop.

  At least he can touch me now. We give each other awkward little pats as I stand and sympathise with the latest twist in the saga. He chooses the very best fruit for me. When my friend lost her ring, he and some of the other workers, who are Indian, or Cambodian like him, upended the lettuce bin where people chop the outer leaves off the Icebergs before bagging them. They sorted through every leaf. Once before they had found another woman’s ring. That had given great happiness.

  That was then. These days, people get impatient when we stand and talk, say EX-cuse me in loud nasal voices. I did mention things have changed. It’s the film studios along the road that have done it. It’s hard to believe that this quiet suburb has become one of the centres of the movie world, but it has. This is the home of The Lord of the Rings and all that has followed from that cinematic extravaganza, never mind my friend’s beautiful beloved ring. There are studios and workshops and cinema complexes that, should you have the opportunity to glimpse inside as I have once or twice, will reveal a vast empire of glamour, crimson waterfalls of light, Oriental scenes, people dashing around with clipboards in their hands. All of this is hidden behind high timber fences so that only the few can know what’s behind them, a sort of false modesty.

  But there’s not much modesty on show here in the supermarket. If you’re local, you need to know your place. There is nothing like testing the ripeness of a cheese and finding the slender fingers of Cate Blanchett alongside yours to inform you that things will never be the same here again. I think she might be nice, but you keep your furtive Kiwi eyes down in situations like this, don’t let on you’ve twigged. Should I have said hullo? Probably not. Friends have reported sightings of Orlando Bloom prowling the aisles, but on this I have yet to score. The lesser mortals — the producers, the directors, the cameramen and women, and assistant camera crews, and PAs to the hierarchy — stride around with a kind of tousled splendour, an impatient swagger that says we have more important things to do but there it is, we must eat. I’ve worked in the screen trade. I confess, for a time, I was not unlike them. These days, I’m on the small side and grey haired. Although I’m invisible, I can pick them at twenty paces.

  Something happened just the other day, which brought this sense of dislocation into focus. True, I’d noticed it happening. But the sense that things are so easily displaced, that people land
in random situations without exactly knowing how or what will happen next, hadn’t before occurred to me with such force. I should have been more alert. There are the earthquakes to the south that have tossed everything and everyone around with reckless disdain, but because the ground here is still, you let down your guard, think things can’t happen to me. That is nature, you say, beyond control. You feel fortunate, and guilty too, because you are unhurt. Where you live, everything looks the same. Never mind the small tremors.

  On this day I’m referring to, the day of the ‘incident’ as I’ve come to think of it, I entered the store feeling on top of things and happy, my feet carrying my body around lightly. When I saw Phan, his face was glowing. He had had good news from Immigration. His wife and baby had been granted visas to come to New Zealand. Just visitors’ visas, but enough to make him exultant for the moment. He would have to go to Cambodia to fetch them because his wife didn’t have the language to enter the country on her own. This would cost him four thousand dollars, but he had worked many extra shifts in order to save the money. All would be well.

  I couldn’t help asking anxious questions about his preparations. Would his wife have warm clothes for when they arrived and did he have proper heating in the flat he rented? She would be cold, I knew, and I kept asking things like did he have a doctor and did he know about getting the baby immunised. I was mentally summarising the fearfulness of immigration, how frightening it could be, and how alone this woman might feel, even with all the love of Phan to comfort her.

  It was he who stood there reassuring me. I was afraid I might have worried him, so I entered back into the spirit of rejoicing. We laughed too loudly and did a high five. A woman wearing a trench-coat and dark glasses said one of those excuse mes, and I saw that I was blocking her from the silverbeet, so I smiled and said ‘so SO-ree’. Besides, I realised I was running on the late side of the day.

  I skimmed my trolley past the meat department and along to dairy. That’s when I checked my list and saw that I’d left out the red pepper I needed for the ratatouille I was planning for dinner. I parked my trolley neatly at the end of the aisle so that it didn’t get in anyone’s way, and rushed back the way I’d come from fruit and veggies. When I saw Phan, he grinned as I pointed, mid-flight, at the red peppers. By the time I got to the compartment, he had chosen one. He held it up for me to admire, a sweet red bell pepper, so sensual, so plump in its red sheath that it took my breath away; the kind of object I imagine Georgia O’Keefe might have painted, so suggestive was its cleavage. I held it and paused for a moment to caress its silky exterior — or was it satin? — I couldn’t decide, it was just lovely to hold. There was even a freshness about it, as if it hadn’t been long picked. It had a faint prickly scent. My father grew these too, and we called them capsicum.

  ‘Must dash,’ I said, and by then I was truly late. I scampered back to milk and dairy and dropped the pepper into the trolley, leaving it before glancing off to cereals. It occurred to me at that moment that something was not quite right.

  The trolley wasn’t in exactly the same position where I’d left it. Or was that the spot? Where had I been when I abandoned the trolley in the first place? Milk and dairy, I told myself. Retrace your steps. Where did you go? The trolley I had thought was mine was half-full, just as mine was when I left it, but only the gleaming red pepper was familiar amongst its contents. It contained tinned food: baked beans and peaches, coconut milk and a packet of sliced bread. I was buying only fruit and vegetables.

  A woman picked the pepper out of the trolley with exaggerated care and advanced towards me, holding it in an outstretched hand. She was a large-boned woman, a head taller than me, wearing an office-cleaning uniform. I noticed the hand holding my pepper was calloused.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it from her, ‘such a silly thing to do. I’d forgotten where I left my trolley.’

  Her face was deeply unfriendly. ‘That is my trolley,’ she said.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m so sorry.’

  She stood, glaring and wordless.

  ‘Thank you,’ I repeated. I placed the pepper in my trolley, which I’d now located at the end of the aisle, where I’d left it. I was beginning to feel irritated.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ she said.

  My head was full of answers as the woman continued to stare me down. Bystanders had begun to stop and watch. An older woman was saying My, my in a worried way, wondering what to do. It occurred to me that none of the goods belonged to either of us, or not yet, until we had passed through the checkout, but I sensed there was something smart alecky about saying this that would make matters worse.

  ‘Look, it’s sorted now,’ I said. My good mood had turned sour.

  The woman suddenly turned her back and walked away.

  I had thought it was over, but it was not.

  A moment or two later, she was back. She walked up to me as close as she could without actually touching me. Her breath was hot on my face. I saw the bitter bruise of anger at the back of her eyes. ‘Why would you take someone else’s trolley?’ she said.

  ‘But I didn’t. It was an accident, a mistake.’

  ‘Mistake. People don’t make mistakes like that.’

  I backed away. She moved after me. I was trembling with the heat of the chicken rotisserie at my back. I had lost all my words, undone by the sudden violence of her look, the tone of her voice. In my head, I heard myself saying: Cut. Babe, you’re out of shot. You’re in the wrong location.

  As most of us are, most of the time. We are all lost, at some point or another. Such is the state of our anguish. For it seemed to me, that neither the misappropriation of the trolley, nor the presence of the red bell pepper, could in themselves be the cause of such fierceness, an expression so bruised.

  Somebody, I wanted to tell her, has given you bad directions. Try starting the scene over again.

  But you know how it is, self-preservation has a way of kicking in.

  2

  Another day, another place. A week had passed.

  I was in the art gallery in Auckland. It is a beautiful gallery with high, soaring spaces. I had been roaming for hours, transfixed. There was a whole room devoted to the Pink and White Terraces, the lost marvel in our history, consumed by the fire and ash of a volcanic eruption. The terraces were buried not far from where I had lived as a young woman. Gone, like the Temple of Artemis or the Colossus of Rhodes, the theamata as the Greeks would say, the terraces so lost that nobody knows any more exactly where they are, even though this disappearance happened in a time when records and paintings had been made. I had encountered some people the day before in the hotel where I was staying. I had known one when I was young and he a child. We had spent an hour or more unpacking the past, who knew whom, and how our lives intersected; old ties, histories and sorrows. The meeting had taken me back to another time in my life, when I lived near the place where the terraces stood before they disappeared, before the eruption. I was shaken by this encounter, reminding me of my own metamorphosis from a wild and unhappy creature to a woman with a considered and careful life.

  I walked into another tall room, pale-green and white, and stopped before a painting that took my breath away. The painting was called ‘Focal Point’. I had not heard of the artist: John Tunnard, from Penzance. This work consisted of softly washed architectural shapes, of precise geometrical design, which vanished at a central point, and that point was marked by a dark intensely red sphere.

  I recognised that sphere in an instant.

  The flame in an opal, a shining fruit, a heart, a drop of blood: call it what you will.

  Beside the painting was an account of the artist’s inspiration. It had come from a poem by Cecil Day-Lewis, written in war time: So shall our time reveal long vistas / of calm and natural growth, / a pattern mysterious yet lucid / for love is the focal point of the pattern / And our heirs shall unfold, / like a cluster of apple blossom in a fine tomorrow.

  That is how it is, I thought
to myself. We trace our way through our shifting precarious existence, questioning it over and again, watching out for landmines, sudden explosions, seeking the truth of every moment. There are losses and separations and red beating hearts and flare-ups wherever our gaze rests. Sorrows become wounds, and we each carry the burden of one another.

  But there is also love and the fine tomorrows.

  2

  Longing

  The Honey Frame

  When he saw the letter, the professor knew, before his wife handed it to him, that it contained discomforting news. The heat outside was almost beyond endurance, ninety-five Fahrenheit in the shade and still rising. He could smell the trees sizzling as he walked on the path by the river, sensed their exhausted trembling. It was the end of the wild-flower season, and the colours that had so dazzled him throughout the spring had faded, the bright gardens wilted. The high collar and cravat that Frederick’s position in life demanded seemed to be choking him. As he entered the shade of the sandstone house, he bowled his hat without ceremony on to the chair in the reception hall and mopped his face.