Trilemma (20 page)

I open the door by the pantry to see a small shower room and a hand basin.

“The toilet is outside. A long drop over a long drop.” Alison giggles.

“Do you remember him at all?” I ask.

“Of course we remember him, dear, but we don't talk about him. Mum couldn't bear him being mentioned, and Gran would always tell us off. So I guess we just got out of the habit.”

Alison gives a small sigh, and then opens the door and holds it for me to leave the studio. After she relocks the door, we walk back on the path between the trees to the field.

I glance at my sister's broad face and ever-present smile. I want to know why they never tried to make contact, but I'm afraid to ask.

Now that I've found them, I don't want to run any risk of losing them again.

“The brakes feel jerky.”

“For God's sake, Ben, stop beating up on the car!” I say. “It's perfectly all right.”

At the turn of the bend, I look back and can just glimpse Vivienne's house behind the trees. Sometimes you see something that is so beautiful that it makes you feel small because you know you could never create anything quite as perfect no matter how much time or money you have.

“Magical.”

“The house?” Ben asks.

“Every room is perfect and every piece of furniture perfectly chosen. The floorboards are some lovely old wood waxed to a perfect shine. In the living room, the walls and the ceiling are paneled, and she'd lime washed the wood.”

“Wal puts lime on the driveway. Did you know they have an old limestone quarry?”

“And she's filled the rooms with a mix of old antiques and modern pieces of furniture. Everything either coordinated or completely contrasted. You should have come. You would have loved what she's done.”

“Wal was keen to show me the farm. Did you know there's a special bug that eats thistles?”

“And the art and the sculpture. She has originals all over the house. The colors were just right. When I came last time, I only saw what was hanging in the hallway. But she has gorgeous pieces everywhere, from some of New Zealand's best artists, I'd say.”

“Wal makes his fertilizer from fish heads he buys on the
wharf in Napier. Brews them up in a big iron vat until he gets this stinky black rotten mush. Then he sprays it on the paddocks with this twin-armed thing—”

“Vivienne has a bronze twin-armed fertility goddess in the garden.”

“I bet her garden smells better than Wal's paddocks.”

“I have never seen such a beautiful place.”

“It seems funny she goes to so much effort to make the house beautiful for a blind man to live in.”

“I never saw their bedroom. Perhaps she doesn't bother putting any art in there.”

“Was she any friendlier?”

“Not to start with.” I give a sigh. “She didn't look at me. Rushed me round the house. Ignored my compliments. So I walked back to Alison's, but when I went back for a swim she seemed a little friendlier.”

I stare out the window, searching the green hills. “Alison showed me our father's old studio. It's several paddocks back, on the edge of the same cliff as the zigzag road. He built it himself, she said.” I turn in my seat. “I think it must be just over there, to our right. The road takes a long loop north before cutting back to the ridge. The farm isn't far away from here as the crow flies.”

We reach the top of the ridge and start the descent.

“I didn't see the spectacular view when I came the first time, the weather was too shitty. But you keep your eyes on the road, Ben.”

“You're beginning to sound like Alison.”

“Tha—”

We're going too fast, heading toward the bend in the road and the cliff face beyond. Ben stamps his foot on the brake, but nothing happens.

“Ben?”

Ben fumbles with the handbrake, but it is not enough, the car is still accelerating.

“Ben!”

He slams the gearbox into reverse and the car shudders and then skids into the fence line on the edge of the road, twanging against the wire.

The car teeters on the edge, the front end over the edge, held by three slim strands of barbed wire. In front is a long drop onto the final twist of the road below.

I can hear the fence posts creak and creak again as the heavy weight of the car's clumsy metal body pushes against the wire.

“Undo your belt and climb out! Carefully.”

I press the belt release, but nothing happens. Ben leans down and presses it for me and holds the belt away as it slips loose.

“Won't me moving make it worse?”

“Please, Lin, get out. I want you to be safe!”

The handbrake is creaking, and I can almost feel it shudder.

“If the car starts to slip, I can jump,” I say. “But I'm not moving until you do.”

The sun shines down oblivious to our plight. Birds fly across the sky in front of us, their calls disappearing with the wind. Animals graze in the pastures just beyond us, the safe side of the pasture, where the land is steep but not perpendicular as it is here beneath our car's wheels.

The brake is still holding.

“Let's both get out slowly.”

I open the door and edge my way across the seat, trying to keep my weight balanced, avoiding any sudden lurches. I look back and Ben is doing the same.

“Count of three, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Ready? Three, two, one, jump!”

I roll free and immediately turn to make sure he is out.

Ben is safe. He is standing beyond the car, which is rocking but hasn't slipped off the edge.

My pulse slows.

Ben drags a broken fencepost over, shoving it under the car,
in front of the back wheels. I push a stone over, wedging it in front of the post.

“I think it will hold.”

I take my cell phone out of my handbag. “I'll call Wal.”

“Yeah. But give it to me.”

Jess answers the phone and Ben asks if her father is around.

“Wal? I've managed to put this dumb shit of a car into the ditch. Any chance of getting a tow?”

“Sure, mate! Where are you?”

“On the zigzag. You won't be able to miss us.”

“I'll be there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.”

When Wal arrives in the Land Rover, he gazes at the orange car in silence. “How the bloody hell did you manage that?”

“The brakes failed.”

He ties the towrope to the bumper and pulls the car away from the edge of the cliff. The men settle it on flat ground.

“Let's have a look,” Wal says and crawls in on his hands and knees.

He jiggles the pedal and then backs out of the car with something in the palm of his hand.

“Looks like this might have got stuck under the foot brake and maybe slipped sideways, jamming the pedal up,” he says, holding it out.

“A spring?”

Ben climbs into the car, presses the brake that now falls flat to the floor, and turns on the ignition. The brake holds firm. He puts the car into gear and drives slowly down the zag, testing the brake all the way.

“She's okay now.”

I climb into the passenger's seat.

Wal rubs his chin. “I won't tell the girls what a close shave you've had. Vivienne gets anxious about car accidents.”

We wave good-bye and head on down the road.

“Phew,” says Ben. “That was close.”

“It wasn't my lack of maintenance anyway,” I reply.

“In future, remember not to let junk roll round in the car,” he says. “Any idea where it came from?”

“Nothing that springs to mind,” and I giggle.

Ben smiles and pats my knee. I reach out and run my hand up and down his warm, strong back and let my head rest briefly on his shoulder.

When we get home, I set out some Stilton and crackers and open a bottle of wine.

“Alison asked if I want to join them for Christmas,” I tell him.

“I bet she'll put on a great feast.”

“Yep.”

“And Christmas is the time you're supposed to be with your family.”

We finish eating in companionable silence.

“Another glass of wine?” He holds up the bottle and smiles.

I look across the table at the man I chose to give up when they offered me the job. I still haven't written the report.

The wolves are calling me to rejoin the fray, but their calls have grown faint. Instead I hear the sound of the birds' distant cries as we teetered at the edge of the cliff, wondering whether we would live or die.

“Why not.”

We take the bottle up to the roof. The sky is dark now, and the ever-present breeze nips at my skin. Below us the lights of the city twinkle, like the stars above us.

“Ahhh!” Ben gasps as he lowers himself into the warm depths of the Jacuzzi.

“Do you enjoy
this
?” I say, reaching out.

I float across his body. “And
this
?”

Ben is still asleep when I wake, just before the alarm on my cell phone is due to sound. I lean across to switch it off so it won't disturb him. His face looks peaceful in the gentle light that intrudes through the crack in the curtains. Jaw relaxed, eyes shut, brown hair coiling over the white pillowcase.

I should get up. Yet still I lie, warm in the depths of my bed, my lover beside me. He sighs and rolls over. I snuggle against his back and reach my arm over him. His hand catches mine against his chest and he rolls toward me, and we make love again.

When I finally slip out of bed, it is nearly nine o'clock and Helen will be wondering where I am. I send an e-mail to tell her I will be late. Can she get Tom to summarize the figures and write the report for Stewart Hobb?

Ben is lying on his back propped up on the pillows. We haven't talked about when we will meet again.

He smiles as I hand him his coffee and climb back into bed. “Aren't you going to be late?”

“It's okay. I've got Tom to write up my report. Paper?”

“Thanks.” He takes the World section and I open the Business pages.

I finish my coffee and we swap sections.

“Have you decided to join them for Christmas?”

I glance over at him, but he is looking down at the newspaper again. “I want to. It's important I build some kind of relationship with my sisters. And, if I turn them down, they may not ask again.”

I don't want to lose them.

I don't want to lose Ben either. “When can you come back?”

He drops the paper on the floor and picks up the advertisement insert. “Perhaps you could come and visit Em and me?”

For a moment, I feel warmed by his invitation. But it's not really feasible. Getting there takes hours. I don't know when I'll be able to spare the time.

“It's easier if you come here.”

“It's pretty bloody expensive, Lin. I can't afford it.”

“I don't mind paying.”

“Well, I do. Besides, with Fay going away it will be hard for me to leave.”

“How old is Em now? Seventeen? Surely she could spend a weekend on her own.”

Ben frowns. “She's still only a kid. She gets afraid when she's alone in the house.”

“Perhaps she could have a friend over to stay? In America we did that all the time. Well, not me, but some kids did.”

He is shaking his head. “Parents don't like to leave teenagers to fend for themselves. You never know what might happen.”

“Oh, come on, this is New Zealand! The safest little country in the world.”

I can see by the way his face has set that he has no intention of leaving his little girl alone in his house, even with a friend to stay, whatever I say.

Reality crashes back down on me. Why did I think Ben and I could have any kind of relationship? We'd never managed to meld our lives together before. And even though I'd come to the same goddamn country, we were still a long long way apart.

Same old impossible situation.
Today he will leave like he always leaves me, with no promise of any return.