In a Fishbone Church Read online

  The freezer is bulging with baking.

  ‘I think we’ll have to get rid of some of these ducks and things,’ says Etta, rummaging round the very bottom. She produces a frost-encrusted bundle about the size of a rugby ball and tries to read the label on it.

  ‘Muttonbird 27.5.83,’ she says. Are you ever going to eat that?’

  ‘It’s a vintage specimen,’ says Gene, clutching the cold hard package to his chest.

  That night he listens for the voice, but everything is quiet. He catches his breath when he hears a single hard cough, but it’s just Etta beside him, and he drops off to sleep.

  When he looks out the bedroom window the next morning, the front lawn is strewn with colour. The rubbish bag, which Etta had propped against the lamppost the previous evening, is lying slashed and leaky in the middle of the road.

  ‘Hell,’ he mutters, pulling on his thick green dressing gown that Etta gave him for his twenty-first. It’s still as good as new – a fact that is remarked upon every winter when it is brought down from the high storage cupboards – and against his wrists and neck, where the pyjamas don’t quite reach, it scratches like a blanket that has slipped away from a restless sheet. He grabs a new rubbish bag from the laundry. The girls’ white underwear has been soaking there overnight, and in the tub there are glimpses of narrow lace trim; small bras puffing above the suds. The water smells of NapiSan. Etta swears by it.

  Gene glances up and down the street to see if other bags have been attacked. They have not. He begins picking up the spilled egg cartons, toilet paper tubes, orange peel, sticky tins.

  ‘Oh, bad luck,’ calls Peter Fitzroy from his letterbox, tucking the paper under his arm and patting back up his drive in his slippers.

  Gene’s toe nudges a cracked lipstick case, sending it rattling along the footpath. He bends to pick it up and the transparent cover, smeared with Hot Fuchsia, stains his hand. It is not a shade he recognises, nor does the plastic casing seem to have anything in common with the cool metal tubes lined up like fingers in Etta’s makeup drawer. A bottle of curdled nail polish – Sizzling Coral – lies in the rose bed, next to an empty pot of Maximum Hold hair gel. They clink against baked bean tins as Gene drops them into the bag, holding them between his thumb and forefinger and wondering whether the scattered rubbish might not have been mixed up with someone else’s after all. Beside the heady daphne bush he picks up an empty tampon box, two worn emery boards, a makeup sponge stained the colour of someone’s skin. He chases the last few wisps of plastic bags that are blowing around the lawn, snatching at them as they press themselves against the hedge, the foundations of the house, the smooth trunk of the silver birch. The labels on the bags have all been fairly well chewed, but Gene is still able to recognise his own writing, denoting dates, locations, identities. Paradise duck, Wairarapa, 4.6.85. Canada goose, Cambridge, 27.5.85. Swan, Wairarapa, 12.7.84. Rainbow trout, Otamangakau, 25.12.84 (8lb). Muttonbird, Bob’s, 2.5.85.

  Gene has a sudden image of a pack of dogs snarling open the items he has so carefully plucked, cleaned, filleted, smoked. Yellow teeth tearing raw thawed skin, carcasses picked and gnawed and discarded under the white glow of the street light. He looks around the lawn, but there are no bones, no fragments of transparent fin. Just the plastic, clinging to his ankles now, almost tripping him.

  What the Stiltons need, he decides, is an extra freezer. One that can be reserved just for his things. He will talk to Etta about it.

  Gene stretches out in his armchair, a glass of whisky resting on his stomach. Saturday afternoons are his favourite time of the week. Etta usually does some gardening, Bridget goes off to her church group, and nowadays Christina spends her time either on the phone or down at the shops with her friends. Gene likes to have a snooze in the patch of late sun his chair is positioned to catch.

  He shuts his eyes and tunes the radio to the rugby. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, however, and the excited voice of the radio commentator is blurring with the memory of the frozen birds, there is a crash that seems to come from the hall. Gene levers his footstool down.

  The door to the toy cupboard is ajar, and the diaries are lying spilled on the carpet. Gene sighs and scoops them back into the bags, jamming the corners into the tight plastic. He shuts the cupboard door with a push of his shoulder and is on his way back to the lounge when the phone rings. ‘Gene Stilton speaking.’ There is silence at the other end. ‘Hello? Are you there?’ Not a breath. ‘Hello? Hello?’

  An abrupt cough is followed by a very faint voice.

  The police don’t put things like that over the air unless they have good reasons

  There is a pause, during which Gene can think of no appropriate response, and then the voice begins again, a little clearer this time. Certainly clearer than when he heard it in bed.

  It did not arrive but the sea is still acting very strange more earthquakes in Chile

  ‘Listen,’ says Gene, ‘I know who you are, and what you are doing is not in the least bit funny. If you don’t stop bothering my family, I’m going to call the police.’ And he hangs up.

  He refuses to let his hand shake as he pours himself another whisky. It wouldn’t be so bad if he did know who the voice belonged to, he thinks. He flops back into his armchair and tries to concentrate on the rugby game.

  You know when a fellow dies he loses fear of even Atom bombs but I think if he really is as brave as all that he should insist on no funeral nobody likes them anyway

  The voice drowns out the rugby commentary. Gene reaches an unsteady hand over to the radio and turns it off. For a moment there is silence, and then it starts again.

  I did not rise early around the Gorges a little cemetery on the estate even a monument to the horses killed in the War such a peaceful place, even the deer from the hills spend time there I noted droppings all over the grounds built of river boulders no telephone no wireless no lighting except the moon no motor cars no roads nothing except strong hearts and a will to live I wonder how far away the nearest doctor was

  Gene switches the radio back on and turns it up as loud as it will go. He jumps as the sliding door opens and the drawn curtain billows.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ says Christina, heading for the kitchen with two other girls Gene doesn’t recognise. Their plastic earrings jangle as they walk.

  Bridget strolls home humming. The meeting was so vitalising she feels like singing out loud. She manages not to; Drummond Crescent is a quiet street.

  ‘Come to the water, you who are thirsty,’ she sings in her head. ‘Though you have nothing, I bid you come – ’

  She glides through the front door, beaming at the hall stand, the tui print on the wall, the lightswitch.

  ‘Call me your father and know I am near,’ she hums, ‘I will be father to you.’

  ‘God, you’re not in love are you?’

  Bridget smiles at her sister. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Well don’t bring him round here. You’re more than enough geek for one household.’

  Her friends snigger from the kitchen.

  ‘All right,’ says Bridget, still smiling.

  ‘Is she on drugs?’ she hears one of the friends say as she goes to the lounge.

  Gene is sitting at the table with a screwdriver, poking around inside the radio. Various wires and pieces of metal are scattered across the tablecloth. He glances up at Bridget, then goes back to dismantling the radio. Bridget smiles at him anyway. She takes her Bible out of her bag and opens it at the passages the Group had been discussing that afternoon.

  There was a violent earthquake, and the sun became black like coarse black cloth, and the moon turned completely red like blood. The stars fell down to earth, like unripe figs falling from the tree when a strong wind shakes it. The sky disappeared like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the rulers and the military chief, the rich and the powerful, and all other men, slave and free, hid themselves in caves and under
rocks on the mountains.

  ‘Nuclear winter,’ she grins.

  ‘Where are you?’ mutters Gene.

  Whoever worships the beast and its image and receives the mark on his forehead or on his hand will himself drink God’s wine, the wine of his fury, which he has poured at full strength into the cup of his anger! All who do this will be tormented in fire and sulphur before the holy angels and the Lamb.

  ‘The Bomb,’ nods Bridget, smiling hugely.

  Gene throws the screwdriver aside and stands up from the table.

  ‘Bridget!’ he almost shouts, as if he has just remembered her name. He grabs her arm. Bridget presses back into the chair in surprise, as if she is in a rapidly ascending aeroplane.

  ‘You know about religion, don’t you,’ says Gene, so close she can feel his breath. She eyes him for a moment, then smiles. Perhaps it is not too late for him to be saved. Although the Jim Reeves records would have to go.

  ‘What do you know about spirits?’ he demands. ‘Hauntings.’

  ‘Dad,’ she says, as if she is talking to a very young child. ‘Evil is real. It’s everywhere. Evil,’ she says, taking his hand, ‘is the opposite of live.’ And she turns back to her Bible.

  The foundation-stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation-stone was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh yellow quartz, the eighth beryl…

  Gene twists his head to see what she is reading. Bridget looks up again, watches her father frown and twitch his mouth. She waits for him to speak. He keeps twitching.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’

  ‘Is there … is there anything in there about …’ He gulps. ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Ghosts.’ Bridget stops smiling, puts a hand on his forehead, the way Etta sometimes still does to see if either she or Christina has a temperature. ‘Possession by demons, you mean? Dad. Have you been possessed by a demon?’ As if he has done something very naughty.

  ‘I don’t know. I heard … a voice.’

  ‘Did it tell you to perform evil deeds and to make Satan your king?’

  ‘Ah … is that what they normally say?’

  ‘Prayer time!’ Bridget announces, and kneels down on the swirled mustard carpet, motioning for Gene to do the same.

  ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,’ she begins.

  Gene doesn’t know the Our Father by heart, or any prayers, for that matter, so he just closes his eyes and concentrates on Bridget’s voice.

  No doors between rooms paintings of birds on the walls on the walls themselves a tui a bellbird a fantail strangely there were two native pigeons outside quite tame and the colours in them very beautiful

  Gene opens his eyes and looks at Bridget, and it’s as if he is watching a dubbed film. Her lips are moving, but they don’t match the words he hears.

  ‘Bridget,’ he says, very quietly. ‘Bridget.’

  She opens her eyes.

  ‘Thank you. I feel much better now.’

  Bridget opens the hall door and listens. She can hear shrieking and laughter coming from Christina’s room.

  ‘Don’t you want me baby?’ someone – possibly Christina – is singing. ‘Don’t you want me, oh, ohohoh.’

  Bridget tiptoes into the kitchen and opens the pantry. Tins are lined up on the shelves, labels facing outwards. Beetroot, sweetcorn, spaghetti, beans. They shine at her. Pineapple, tomatoes, fruit salad. She grasps a large tin of baked beans just as Christina appears at the door.

  ‘Stocking up for the End of the World again, are we?’ Christina grabs a bag of chippies.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Your stash,’ says Christina. ‘In the toy cupboard.’

  Bridget flushes.

  ‘Everyone knows about it. Half my class know about it. Just leave the beers for me, okay?’ Christina drops her voice to a whisper. ‘I’m going to sneak a couple of cans for tonight.’

  Bridget nods vigorously, too stunned to tell her sister that those who would be saved would have no need for liquor.

  ‘Actually,’ says Christina, you do have your uses. Dad’ll just think you stashed them away for Armageddon.’ And she pinches Bridget’s cheek.

  ‘Wait a minute! Does Dad know too?’

  ‘Everyone knows. Mum, Dad, Dr Kerr, the guidance counsellor. Everyone. You’re the weird Stilton girl.’

  Several whiskies later, Gene decides that the voice can only belong to one person. Clifford.

  ‘Dad,’ he mutters, and Etta, who is just coming in from the garden to put dinner on, peers at him and says, ‘Anything the matter?’

  Gene clears his throat. ‘We lost the rugby,’ he says.

  At the office there are murmured sympathies, apologies. Little is expected of Gene for the first few days back; people are unnaturally cheerful and shield him from anxiety. He is not told, for instance, that all the linoleum in the new science wing has had to be lifted and replaced because the contractors used the wrong glue, or that five of the pine doors have warped and will no longer lock. Statements are, nonetheless, loaded; ordinary words are given strange emphasis.

  ‘I made your coffee with full cream,’ says the receptionist. ‘I know how you like it.’

  ‘Perhaps you could sign these.’

  ‘Do you really want to look at that today? It can wait until you’re ready.’

  Gene plays along for a little while, accepts the extra biscuits, allows his phonecalls to be screened. Until about the fourth day.

  ‘Michelle,’ he says, ‘I think I’d like to be on my own for a bit. Sort through some things.’

  And Michelle freezes for a moment, then scuttles away saying of course, Mr Stilton, of course, and his door is gently shut and he is alone.

  And then the man walks through the office.

  He looks about forty and is dressed in a musty pair of corduroy trousers and a Swanndri.

  ‘Can I help you there?’ says Gene, very much hoping this isn’t one of the unfortunates Shirley Davis keeps asking them to take on. The last one couldn’t even hammer a nail in straight. ‘Are you looking for someone? Is it about the labouring job, did Mrs Davis send you?’

  ‘I walked out in the paddocks for two hours,’ says the man. ‘They had quite a pub there. I drank five rums and lemonade and was I sick.’

  ‘Oh great,’ sighs Gene. He’ll have to have a word to Etta about Shirley’s good deeds. He puts out a hand to take the man’s arm and says in his most soothing voice, ‘Come on, now,’ but the man shakes him off.

  ‘Come morning I hadn’t died. Up before dinner, singing loudly to allay suspicion.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Gene.

  ‘Went for a drive and we took our guns just in case.’ The man’s voice is rising. ‘It rained like hell. The lake is very high and he put his maimai in such deep water, I would say dangerous. Went sour at him.’

  ‘I can ring the police and they’ll be here in five minutes flat. Probably less, probably more like two.’

  ‘Mum and the girls mushrooming in the afternoon. A treble of swans in one go. I don’t like the water too deep when the waves commence.’

  ‘I’m dialling, do you see?’

  ‘Talk about a gale, the poor bloody birds couldn’t fly,’ shouts the man. ‘My advice is,’ he walks over to Gene and places a finger on the disconnect button, his voice suddenly dropping as if to tell a secret, ‘take up indoor bowls. Don’t stand up to your arse in water.’

  Very slowly, Gene puts down the receiver.

  ‘The lake is very high. He put his maimai in such deep water. After the gale we shot till seven with the help of the moon.’

  Gene reaches his hand out and touches the prickly Swanndri. ‘This – ’ He looks into the man’s face. There was a gale, he remembers. And he’d put his maimai in too deep and his father was angry with him, and Gene thought it was because he wanted the best spot for himself. It must have been thirty years ago, just afte
r he and Etta married. They were building their first house, and she hadn’t wanted Gene to waste the whole weekend, she said, but really she couldn’t bear him arriving home with dead things to be plucked and cleaned and cooked and consumed. And then Gene was busy with night school and working for Conway’s, and Clifford was diagnosed with an erratic heart, and they didn’t go hunting much any more – or not with one another. But that day, in the gale, they shot one hundred swans between them, just him and Clifford. The air around them was filled with the dark shapes of the birds, and often they hit two or three with one shot. They piled them all on to the trailer, and driving home over the hills they could feel the weight of the birds pulling at the car. They had to give most of them away; only so many could be stored in the coolroom at Clifford’s shop. They donated a lot of the swans to an orphanage, and Gene remembers Etta tried to roast one for a family dinner and burnt it beyond recognition, and Clifford patted her hand and said, ‘Never mind, love, you’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  Gene swallows. ‘Dad?’

  The man is silent.

  Gene sits down at his desk. ‘You think I’ve forgotten all that, but I haven’t. I haven’t.’ He arranges his pens and pencils and highlighters in a row beside his blotter, brushes lead-coloured specks of eraser to the floor. The man still says nothing. ‘I was too busy after that. I had the house to finish, and night school, and work on top of that. I had no time.’ The man folds his arms. ‘I would have had more time. If you’d have let me go to university, I would have had more time.’ Gene’s voice is rising. ‘I would have had a degree by then, and a job with the paper. They wanted me, they said I had talent. Age sixteen, and they told me I was journalist material. And you said houses are what we need, not stories about houses. You’re going to be a builder like the Palmer boy.’

  ‘Mr Stilton?’ Michelle is standing in the doorway. ‘Sorry. I did knock.’