I shook my head, but then attempted another sip. ‘Chur, bro!’ he said. I didn’t want any more beer so left the other five cans to him.
‘That don’t sound right to me,’ he said, when I told him what had happened when I’d stayed with my mother for the weekend. ‘You shouldn’t have kicked your mum, especially when she was pregnant.’
I shrugged. ‘Dad said I could.’
‘Don’t sound right to me,’ he repeated, and I felt uncomfortable. I regretted telling him anything.
‘My Auntie Georgia says it’s never right to hit a woman.’
I thought of his old aunt and her long days spent cleaning other people’s houses and then her bar work in the evening. I suspected that Dad wouldn’t think much of Auntie Georgia’s opinions. Why did Rangi think women were so great? His auntie was a drudge. His mum was violent. I changed the subject and soon we were talking excitedly about the rugby as the Lions Tour was coming to New Zealand again that winter. I had begun to take a greater interest in rugby since I’d met Rangi. He would have loved to play for his school team, but it wasn’t worth the hassle he would get from the other kids.
I got into the hot pools, which were shallow. At their deepest, they only came up to my neck. Rangi joined me and we bobbed around for a while. ‘Sweet as,’ he said. When we got out, the sun was hot on the surrounding rocks.
‘We have to cool off,’ I said. ‘Let’s go over to the cold lake.’
‘Nah, Stevie, I’ll stay here,’ said Rangi. He was clearly uncomfortably hot as sweat poured down his torso.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you’ll bake if you stay here.’
‘Can’t swim, can I?’ His voice was slightly slurred by the beer.
I felt special that Rangi had shown those scars to me. We were best friends.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘so you can’t swim and I can’t drink beer. We’re even, but at least I tried.’
He followed me to the cool water side of the cliff. I clambered down some rocks and slipped into the water. He followed me and sat on the edge, dangling his feet in the lake. ‘Man, that feels good,’ he said.
‘Jump in!’ I encouraged him. ‘You can hang on to the grass at the sides.’
‘How deep is it?’
‘I don’t know, deeper than me.’ I dived under the water and swam around for a few seconds and then I saw and heard the surge of bubbles as Rangi entered the water, too close to me. I swam away.
I’m not sure what happened next. Maybe the beer made him brave as he tried to swim out from the safety of the rock to join me, but I was nervous that he was getting too close and I swam out further away from him. Then I noticed that he was in trouble. Less than three yards away from me, he was out of his depth and beginning to panic. I could see him underwater. His head craned towards the surface but he couldn’t break it. I surfaced and tried to shout at him and point him towards the rocks just six feet away, but he never rose above the surface. If he’d pushed his body horizontally he could have touched the rocks and felt safe, but his eyes were scrunched closed. I wanted to help him. I wanted to guide him towards safety. It would have been so easy to lead him, grab his arm, but touching him would have meant my death, my agonizing putrefaction, and I was too afraid. There was nobody around to help. He thrashed around, gulping more water instead of the air he couldn’t reach. I surfaced and dived, surfaced and dived, screaming at the top of my lungs for help, while his lungs filled with water. I watched my friend drown.
Later, I thought of all the ways I could have saved him. I could have broken a branch off a nearby tree and pushed it into his hands. I could have used one of our towels and pulled him in with that. I don’t know how long the drowning took. It seemed like years. It seemed like seconds. It seemed like hell.
33
Sally
Uncle Donald died on 29th June. Aunt Christine asked me to come to the funeral in Dublin. She and I had been in regular contact. I had kept her up to date with all the news, my therapy, my new friends, New Zealand, selling the house, etc. She was so like my mum that it almost seemed as if she was back in my life. But I didn’t know Donald and I didn’t particularly want to go to the funeral.
Obviously, I had lived in Dublin in captivity for the early years of my life and I had been to Dublin once or twice when Mum was alive, and a few times to see Aunt Christine in more recent months, but when I went with Mum as a teenager, I was completely overwhelmed by the size of it, the noise of it and the masses of people. I watched lots of programmes set in cities all over the world, and even though Dublin is a small city in comparison to London or New York, the scale of it frightened me. I couldn’t imagine negotiating it by car or bus.
Tina and Angela both said I should go to the funeral, and that I should go out of kindness, after all that Aunt Christine had done for me. Angela suggested I should ask a friend to go with me. Tina thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to put into practice all of the things I had been working on, touch, empathy, patience, diplomacy, self-control, etc.
I asked Sue to come with me. She offered to drive. She was on her long summer holidays from teaching and an overnight in Dublin was exactly what she needed. She said that she would deliver me to the church and then go off to meet her cousin. The day after the funeral she would collect me from Aunt Christine’s and we could go on that shopping spree we had talked about in Dundrum. She said we could have our lunch there and then get straight on to the motorway afterwards and come home. I could bring earplugs for the noise, and we could go to the shopping centre first thing, before there were too many people around.
Sue picked me up from my house early on the Monday morning of the funeral. I was wearing my funeral outfit, the same one I had worn to my dad’s funeral.
‘Sally, please don’t be offended, but the red glittery hat? It’s not quite right,’ Sue said.
‘What? But Dad said I should wear it on special occasions.’
‘I think he might have meant festive occasions, like wedding or party celebrations. It’s not the right tone for a funeral.’
‘But several people commented on how they liked it at Dad’s funeral. Was everyone lying to me? Why would they lie?’
‘Nobody wants to upset the chief mourner. Because of what happened with the incineration, everyone was probably delighted that the hat was a distraction? As far as I can tell, few people knew you well enough to say anything.’
I felt a flush creep up my neck. ‘Do you think people were laughing at me?’
‘No, but it is a little bit odd.’
‘I am a little bit odd.’
‘When we go shopping tomorrow, we’ll pick out clothes mindfully.’
‘Mindfully?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Sue accompanied me into the church. We were a little late. It was more than half full of people. She advised me not to look at anyone but to go straight up to the front pew and stand beside Aunt Christine. She left then, saying she would collect me at Aunt Christine’s in the morning. I had taken a tablet to deal with the strangers. Angela warned me that, in this case, I must not do anything to cause Aunt Christine any distress. It was better for me to be subdued. She was only giving me tablets these days on rare occasions.