Just in Time (15 page)

“My grandfather died,” he found himself telling her. “In December. Just before Christmas. Sounds like a normal thing, doesn’t it? Not like a thing that should knock you sideways.”

“I suppose,” she said, “it depends how much you loved him.”

“Yeh,” he said. “Yeh,” he repeated after a moment. “And what happened. Because I was there. Because of…what he said. What I did. We were on a boat, on the lake. On Lake Rotorua. We were fishing.”

“Come fishing,” his Koro had said that day, as he would so often summon one of his mokopuna. You didn’t say no, because it meant the old man had something to say, and you were meant to listen, like it or not.

Koro waited until they had motored across to the mouth of the Waiteti Stream, where the trout would be biting in early summer. He waited until they had their rods out and were casting into the deep pool in the center of the stream, just downstream of the big rock. The spot where the big trout spent their days, fins beating lazily to hold them steady in the cool water of the pool.

“Glad you’re home at last,” Koro finally said. Taking the long way round, as always. “Been away too long, haven’t you.”

“Yeh.” Will shot a glance the old man’s way before flicking his arm back and casting again, letting his line settle as the day settled into his bones. Surrounded by the bowl of blue sky, the gentle breeze, the reflections of mountains and fern trees and the mighty giants of the forest shimmering in the blue of the huge volcanic lake. The young land, the old legends, both of them so alive here, as if you could touch Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother. As if they were still touching, still kissing each other, here at the heart of the world.

“And you’re glad to be here, I can tell,” Koro went on after another long minute. “Makes me wonder, though.”

“Wonder what?” Will asked despite himself, because he still cared. He’d always care. There was nobody whose opinion mattered more.

“You play rugby hard,” Koro said. “You play with heart. I see it more and more in you. You give it everything. You play with mana.”

“But?” Will cast again, his heart thudding despite the serenity of their surroundings. At the praise, and at what lay behind it.

“So when are you planning to take the rest of your life that seriously? You play like it’s work, like it matters. And you treat your life like it’s play.”

“Oh.” Will laughed a bit. “Is that all? You scared me.”

Koro was frowning at him. His hair might be gray now, but his face was still carved out of the hardest teak, and Will sobered fast.

“Sorry,” Will said. “Tell me.”

“Life isn’t a game,” Koro said. “But the game’s the only part you really care about, seems to me. And that hurts my heart to see.”

“I care about more than that,” Will protested. “It’s why I’m back here, back in En Zed.”

“Because you want to be an All Black.”

“Yeh. But I care about all of you, too. What else is there? I’m too young to think about the mokopuna.” Will laughed a little, tried for something lighter. “Got to have kids before you can have grandkids, eh.”

“Twenty-eight last birthday,” Koro said, because you’d never stir him from his course, not once he’d decided on it. “Not too young at all. Getting too old not to think about them, aren’t you. I want to know that you’ll be sitting in a boat right here someday, long after I’m gone. I want to know that you’ll be passing it all along to them, teaching them how to cast a line. And more, too. Teaching them everything they need to know. And I don’t see you getting there.”

“I’ll get there.”

“Yeh, you’ll have grandchildren. One way or another. We can all see that. But will you be sitting with them? Or will they be something you found out about, just like you found out about their mum, or their dad? That boy, that girl you paid the maintenance for, and barely knew? Somebody whose dad you never were?”

Will had forgotten about his line, was holding his rod slack in his hand. “I’m not…I don’t…I’m careful. I don’t have any kids.” As far as he knew.

Koro swung his arm back, cast his own line again, the transparent filament singing through the summer air, landing with a delicate kiss in the center of the pool. “And that’s a good thing?” he asked, not looking at Will. “That what you want your life to be about? That you’re careful, and there are no kids running around looking like you? Nobody running to you, asking for a ride on your shoulders when you come back from one of those overseas tours? No woman whose eyes are lighting up because you’re home, and this is the day she’s had circled on her calendar?”

“I’m twenty-eight,” Will repeated. He was a failure because he didn’t have a woman? Because he didn’t have
one
woman?

“What are you afraid of?” Koro asked. “That if somebody sees you, really sees you, she won’t be impressed? Your dad left, yeh. That doesn’t mean you will. You can stay. You can stick. Your choice. Your life. You can run away from it. Or you can run towards it.”

Will was getting angry now. It
was
his life. It was his choice. He wanted to say it, and he couldn’t. He yanked his own line in with a jerk of his arm, and the line went wild, the fly swinging straight for Koro. He saw it happen, and he couldn’t stop it. The fly flew straight into the top of his grandfather’s chest, the barbed hook catching hold in the collar of his T-shirt, just above the life jacket, startling an exclamation from the old man.

“Sorry.” Will set his rod down hastily as Koro looked down, began to reel in his own line, then stopped, grabbing at his chest with one gnarled hand. “I’ll get it out. Hang on.”

Koro began to answer, but he was gasping, the rod falling from his other hand and going over the side of the little boat with a splash that Will barely heard. Because both his grandfather’s hands were at his chest now, and his face was twisted, agonized. His mouth opened, but only a grunt came out.

“Koro!” Will was reaching for him even as he toppled, laying him down across both seats, then scrambling over him. He fumbled desperately with the straps of the life jacket, then lifted his grandfather’s heavy body to pull the thing off and shove it under the old man’s head.

The fly was still caught in his grandfather’s shirt, the rod dragging at it, and Will pulled it loose with force, ripping the cotton fabric, sending Will’s rod, too, tumbling over the side.

Heart
, he thought, because that was where Koro’s hands were. On his chest, grabbing, clawing.

“Koro,” Will said again, and the word sounded like it was coming from far away, from somebody else.

CPR
, he thought wildly. But should he get him to shore first? He didn’t even have his mobile, had come out on the water without it, because Koro hated texting, had always forbidden the intrusion of technology into family time.

No choice. Will had to do this, and he had to do it now. Because Koro’s hands had stopped clutching at his chest, had fallen away. His face was gray, and his chest…his chest was still.

No other boats close enough, nobody visible on the shore. And a person couldn’t live without oxygen.

CPR. Now.

He could never have said, afterwards, how long he’d tried. How many times he’d pressed on his grandfather’s chest, his own ragged breath the only sound, before the other boat came close, the motor cut out, and the voice floated across the water.

“All right there?”

“No,” Will said without stopping. “No. Get us to shore. Ring 111.”

He kept on while the other fellas got the tow rope on, while they hauled his boat to the marina at the holiday park. While he heard the siren approaching, and even when the ambos were running towards him. All the way until they were putting Koro onto the gurney, and Will’s hands fell away, and Will was scrambling into the ambulance after them.

The defibrillator, then, and the tears were streaming down Will’s cheeks as he watched Koro’s broad brown chest, the chest that held a heart that was surely too big just to stop. Too strong just to quit. Watching it jerk into the air under the paddles, then fall back onto the gurney again.

Stopped. Still. Gone.

“He died?” Faith asked.

Will sighed and ran a hand over the back of his head. “Yeh. He died. Then and there. Dead, I guess, all the way back there in the boat. From the minute he stopped breathing. And I couldn’t bring him back.”

“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

He made a hopeless gesture with one hand, then picked up the glass of wine again and drained it. “I wondered for ages afterwards,” he admitted, “if it was the fly. Sounds mad, I know, but…the shock. Or just…being upset with me. That was the worst. That I didn’t save him, and wondering if I caused it.”

“Oh, no. Surely not.”

“No. They said not. But still. When he went, he left a…he left a hole in our family. In our life.”

He looked out at the moon and thought about Koro up there somewhere. Up there being proud of him, and disappointed in him. He wished he could have said things differently that day. Done things differently. He wished so many things.

“Kua hinga te totara i te wao nui a Tane,”
he told Faith. “Means, ‘A totara has fallen in the forest of Tane.’ A mighty tree. When it falls…it’s not replaceable.”

“So you came here. Away from your family. Which seems exactly…”

“Wrong,” he finished for her. “Yeh. Wrong. But then, that was the point of what he said that day, that I was doing wrong. Or at least not doing right.” He hadn’t shared the details with her, because she didn’t need to hear that. And because he didn’t want her to know that. “So I came away, to have a change. To have a think, was the idea. At least that’s what I told myself. Probably just to run away from it, from all the bad thoughts.”

“I can see that,” she said. “I want to get away…oh, all the time. And after what happened? Of course I can see it.”

“You can? Seems like exactly the wrong choice now. But Christmas was too sad, with that hole bang in the center of things. Nothing to stay for, I thought. But now, I need it more than ever. The feel of it. The sky, the sea, the lake, the hot pools. The mountains, and the hills. All the greens, because there’s no green like it. I can’t live in the desert.”

He broke off with a laugh. “I sound like a travelogue for En Zed, eh. It’s just that he’s there, still. The ancestors are there, that’s the idea. That’s why a Maori is always buried in New Zealand. Why they still bring the soldiers back, if there’s any way they can. So their spirits can go where they belong.”

“It sounds like a good place.” She poured a bit more wine into the glass. “A peaceful place.”

“A slower place,” he agreed. “A happier place. I mean, nothing slow about rugby, not while you’re playing it. But when you’re not, you’re joking around a bit with the boys, having a laugh. All of that. I miss it. I’m ready to go home. But sad, too.” He looked at her, there beside him. The warmth of her radiated to his side, because he was almost touching her, and he wanted to touch her more. “Sad to leave you,” he said softly.

She looked down, took a sip of wine, and handed him the glass, but he didn’t drink. He set it down beside him and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.

It wasn’t small, and it wasn’t delicate. It was a strong hand, a capable hand, and it felt good in his.

“I’ll miss you,” he said again.

She was looking at him, her eyes huge in the moonlight, her mouth a little parted. She started to say something, stopped again, and Will leaned forward, put his other hand on her shoulder, and brushed his lips over hers.

He felt the shiver of it, the shock of contact. In her, and in himself. Her lips had all the softness her hand didn’t, and he had to kiss them again, then touch his tongue to that tiny mole for just a moment before he returned to her mouth, because he needed that mouth.

She’d moved into his arms now, her own hands coming up to clasp his shoulders. She was against the wall, and he was kissing her harder, his hand behind her head, cushioning it, his fingers lacing through the hair that tumbled below her shoulders tonight. The blood was pounding in his ears, and everywhere else, too, and he wanted to keep going. He wanted to take her inside and make love to her. He wanted to do it
now
.