Beneath the Blonde Page 15

  Back at school after the holidays, the year before they went reluctantly into double figures, Gaelene took the only route she could find around the enforced separation of the sexes. She became a leader of the girls, as tough as any of the boys, heading the little groups of girls who would meet at morning break to play four square or marbles. And when one of the boys would steal their four square ball, the other girls would not fight him themselves but come running for Gaelene. She would chase the boy, catch him and, often as not, give him a good hiding before taking the ball back. The second time she gave a boy a black eye, Mr Stephens the headmaster came into the playground himself and, in front of the whole school of almost two hundred children, Gaelene was given the strap. If Mr Stephens had thought that the punishment—and what he assumed would be humiliation—would deter Gaelene from her violent activities, then he had reckoned without the heroine factor. To see Gaelene given a punishment reserved for boys, to see her hold out her hand and not flinch as the strap came down, its leather twice as thick as that of her dusty red roman sandals, was to watch a little girl become a star. The girls thought she was brave beyond belief and even the boys had to admire her courage. That night, walking home from school, Gaelene was surrounded by other little girls all offering her glow hearts and pineapple chunks and bites of their peanut slabs. Not pretty like other little girls, not startlingly clever like her best friend Shona, Gaelene was, for the first time, basking in her own glory—and loving every minute of it. In fact, the only person who didn’t like it so much was Shona. Other people wanted to play with Gaelene now, and Shona wanted her all to herself.

  Their friendship continued through Intermediate, through Spelling Levels one to seven, it continued through Gaelene’s father’s promotion and their subsequent acquisition of a colour TV, it even survived Shona’s new dad and the sickness of the new baby and Shona having to stay with Gaelene’s family for two months, sleeping on the floor of Gaelene’s bedroom. It went from Janet and John books to a shared library of Trixie Beldens. But, like so many other friendships—adult or child—it couldn’t withstand geographical relocation. And when Gaelene’s father’s promotion meant a move to Auckland, Shona waved goodbye to her best friend, not knowing that they could never be best friends again.

  Shona visited Gaelene in Auckland, they went out to Devonport on the ferry, admired the reaching span of the harbour bridge, went to the zoo and walked down Queen Street, Gaelene proudly showing off her new home. But the city was too big for Shona, the cars too fast and shiny, the people too many and the next time Gaelene invited her up, Shona said she was too busy to come. She had a place in the marching team now and needed to practice.

  Gaelene went to Ruby’s for the next two summers, told all the kids about how they’d finally got that big house she’d wanted. Everyone was enthralled by her stories about the Farmers’ Christmas parade and her new big school, everyone except Shona, who told her she was skiting and should just shut up about boring bloody Auckland. After that Gaelene didn’t really bother any more, she wrote to Shona a couple of times but Shona didn’t reply and before the next summer came round, Gaelene had found a new best friend and her unanswered letters to Shona became unwritten.

  Gaelene eventually forgot about Shona, or if she did remember her, it was only in passing. As an adult, Gaelene preferred not to think much about her childhood at all; as far as she was concerned, she had been a completely different person then. But Shona never forgot Gaelene. She always remembered Gaelene’s birthday, just two days after her own. And she always remembered how hurt she felt when Gaelene had left to go to Auckland. How she felt deserted. Gaelene had been her only real playmate, the only one she could really talk to. Even when there were other kids around, it had always really been just the two of them, ever since Gaelene had first started kindy. Just the two. Shona blamed Gaelene for leaving her. Blamed her for wanting to move away, for being excited about Auckland, pleased about the new house, happy to be living a new life. Shona blamed her and eventually, damned her.

  Gaelene had no idea she’d left such pain behind her. No idea at all.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The late eighties’ coffee wave trickled down the West Coast of America from Seattle to San Francisco where it gathered a Pacific momentum, rolling in a great percolating swell across the ocean to New Zealand, smashing against the harbour bridge in Auckland and splattering itself in small cappuccino-coloured pools the length of the two narrow islands, leaving sticky puddles and stains all the way down to Queenstown and beyond. Saz had sampled the pleasurably pretentious delights of groovy “speciality” coffee shops in several cities in the States and in the few places that were starting to infiltrate the filter coffee hell of central London, but she had hardly expected to spend her first morning in Auckland accosted by menu after menu detailing in a variety of coloured chalk fonts, the allure of thin latte and double latte and moccachino and triple mach and double espresso freeze and pale black regular with choc sprinkle. Her second postcard of the morning to Molly catalogued the charms of excess caffeine intake and how very much their London sanctuaries could do with such improvements. She also sent a guilt-laden double dose of her love.

  The afternoon before in LA, Saz had tentatively suggested to Siobhan that perhaps it would be more sensible if they all just went back to London, maybe they should even give the police at home the description of the flower sender and see what connections they could come up with, but Siobhan would have none of it. Tired of restraining herself for the press and the cameras, terrified to believe that Steve’s drowning was more than it seemed (while simultaneously incapable of accepting it as just an accident), she was still not willing to give up any of her travel arrangements. Saz turned to Greg for some support, to try to get him to convince Siobhan of a more sensible course of action, but Greg had retreated into a safe musical world with Dan, churning out new songs and rehashing old ones, anything to keep their minds off what was really going on. With her lover hiding in the safety of his music (to Cal’s delighted relief), this long-planned trip was all Siobhan had and she was determined to hold on to it. To the trip and, as her access to sanity, to Saz. Nine years of becoming The Blonde, concentrating on her work, locked in the silk worm cocoon of her four men and all the attendant band paraphernalia, meant that Siobhan had pretty much rid herself of any of the female friends she’d ever had. As far as Siobhan was concerned, if everything else was falling apart and if her demands on Saz’s time meant that Saz wasn’t able to get on with her first unofficial function, she was at least very well placed to contribute to the second—being Siobhan’s girlfriend. Girl friend.

  A few hours after the funeral, they were back at the LA airport, bags repacked, tickets reissued just ten minutes before checkin closed. Siobhan then presented Saz and the remaining members of Beneath The Blonde with their itinerary. Arrive in Auckland Wednesday midday, stay there until Friday morning, catch the early flight to Queenstown for one night so Siobhan, Dan and Saz could see the mountains Greg kept bragging about. Fly back to Rotorua late on Saturday afternoon, pick up a hire car, drive to Greg’s aunt and uncle where they would spend three whole days in one place before returning to Auckland and their direct flight back to London exactly a week after they had arrived. Greg looked aghast at the hand-scribbled sheet of paper, “You can’t possibly be serious. This is stupid, babe, we’re exhausted. There’s no way we can do all this. Even if any of us had slept at all in the past two days, this would be mad—we can’t possibly hope to cover all this ground, you don’t know what the roads are like in New Zealand.”

  Siobhan ignored him, “Darling, they’re roads, aren’t they? You’re the one who’s always telling me the old homeland is so very modern.”

  “New Zealand is, the geography’s not. It’s all mountains and lakes and winding roads two lanes wide—it’s hardly the same as a straight bloody motorway run from London up to Birmingham.”

  Siobhan ignored him and handed the sheets of paper out to the others. “Fine. At lea
st if you’re concentrating on the bumps and curves, you won’t get bored driving. Anyway, you haven’t lived in New Zealand for years, they must have made some improvement in all that time?”

  “That’s not the point. You just don’t realize what you’re suggesting we do. This whole thing is ludicrous.”

  “Maybe, but we’ve done plenty of ludicrous things in the past and I don’t intend to stop now.”

  She countered Greg’s other claims by pointing out that if he and Dan were going to continue shutting the world out and being “creative”, then at least she and Saz should be allowed to do some fun things. And when Greg said he didn’t feel much like having fun, nor did he really care whether or not they went to his aunt and uncle’s place, Siobhan finally rounded on him. “No. But I do. I want to meet your family, Greg. You know I do. I want to know where you come from. That’s the whole point of going all that way. For you and me. Remember?”

  Siobhan was gripping Greg’s hand, pinching his knuckles with her manicured fingers and spitting her love into his face. Saz, listening to the half-whispered, half-shouted interchange and watching the minutes tick away while the airline’s ground staff tried to hurry them on, could see the determination in Siobhan, hear it in her voice. As could half the airport terminal. She didn’t quite know exactly what Siobhan was after but she did understand that at least part of it was to help her recreate her relationship with Greg. The two of them were completely tied up in Beneath The Blonde; their relationship was at the centre of it. Siobhan obviously felt that not only had the events of the past month taken the strength of the band from her, but they were also starting to take Greg away too. And Siobhan would lose everything before she lost him. Greg glared back at her for a moment and then cracked his angry face into a smile. He pulled her away from the group that surrounded them and their pile of bags and reached his arms tight around her body, squashing her breasts to his chest and his groin into hers. And then the two of them kissed for longer than most LA airport attendees had seen since the last time the dingy building was portrayed as a place of glamour in a 1970s jetset movie. Saz allowed herself to feel the full vent of jealousy twisting her stomach. She promised to beat herself up later and, sitting back down in the red plastic airport chair, forced herself to swallow the gritty dregs of her watery coffee, muttering quietly into her empty cup, “Serves you right, you silly bitch, we don’t fall in lust with straight girls, remember?”

  So Saz had come to New Zealand with no idea of what she was going to—The Piano and an Australian-centred view of what the Antipodes might hold had not prepared her for streets of cafés, groovy clothes shops and beautiful ceramics. To be fair, it was only four or five streets, but it was four or five more than she’d expected. What’s more, it was lit with stark white southern hemisphere sunlight and dotted about with the Victorian villas of central Auckland, all packaged up in balmy late spring weather. Delightful for the day and a half of jetlag recuperation Siobhan had allowed them. And that only under duress.

  Saz did what she could in the four spare hours allotted her. With seven phone cards, a copy of the Yellow Pages and a flimsy city map in hand, she called twenty-six florists, just in case. Telling them she was a researcher from the BBC, looking into flower-buying habits across the world, she asked each bemused shopkeeper to please make a note if anyone should possibly come in asking for yellow roses at any point in the next week. She gave them the number of the hotel in Queenstown and Greg’s aunt’s phone number on the coast. By the time she’d called the eleventh in the centre of town and worked her way around four others in the North Shore suburbs, she had her speech so well worked out that no one got a chance to tell her what the first six mentioned straight away: “Did you know that yellow roses stand for hopeless love, dear? Not a very good choice, really.”

  She quickly slipped in that the programme was about the lack of true love in modern Britain. The New Zealanders didn’t seem to have any problem believing her.

  Before dinner that night she called Carrie to check for any news from London.

  “Well, on the Kevin front, Helen called to say I should tell you that they’ve got nothing on him.”

  “Are they going to keep trying?”

  “Unlikely. They don’t think it’s him, doll. The guy can barely afford plastic flowers, let alone bunches of roses.”

  “Yeah. I suppose so. What else? Any developments on the flower woman?”

  “Nope. But Linda sends her love.”

  “She does?”

  “She called yesterday. Said your jacket got drenched in the downpour after we left them. Mentioned that the dye seemed to run rather a lot too.”

  “I hope it ruined his jeans. What about Ben?”

  “Nothing, sorry. But if they’re supposed to be calling me on this phone, won’t the batteries on it be dying soon?”

  “No, Carrie. Not if you’re only using it for incoming calls like I told you.”

  “Oh dear.”

  Saz sighed, “Jesus, kid, you can’t ever do what you’re told, can you? Give Moll a call and ask her to drop the battery recharger off to you. Tell her I lent it to you because your phone’s been cut off. She shouldn’t have any problem believing that.”

  “Why can’t I just tell her the truth?”

  “Because she already thinks you take far too much advantage of me and my innate generosity as it is.”

  “And there was me thinking it was just ex-lover sexual jealousy that made her that little bit off with me.”

  “It is, but it’s the other too. She can’t help it, she loves me. So is that all?”

  “I think so. Oh yeah, there is one other thing, Linda mentioned the flower woman has an accent.”

  Saz froze, “What sort of an accent?”

  “Australian she thinks. Isn’t that a coincidence? I told her that’s where you are now.”

  “Carrie, I’m in New Zealand.”

  “Yeah, sure, same difference. So I suppose if this woman’s an Australian, then maybe …”

  Saz interrupted her, “Which is it?”

  Carrie paused, not at all sure what she was being asked, “I realize the time difference is a big one, but you did wake me. Which is what? What are you on about?”

  “This might surprise you, but there is a difference between New Zealand and Australia; they aren’t the same country at all …”

  “Darling, we can’t all be brilliant globe-trotters like you.”

  Saz tried unsuccessfully to hide her frustration, “listen to me, will you? If the woman’s a New Zealander then maybe she’s here. Maybe she knows Greg. So what exactly did Linda say about her accent?”

  “Just that it was kind of Australian. So … I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I imagine ‘kind of Australian’ might also mean New Zealand.”

  “But you didn’t ask her.”

  “It didn’t occur to me.”

  Saz screamed down the telephone, “Brilliant, Carrie. That’s just fucking brilliant. Perhaps you might go and check today? If it’s not too much trouble? I mean, why didn’t she tell us sooner? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? What the hell’s wrong with you people?”

  Saz yelled a little more, then slammed down the phone and stalked off to the hotel gym to work off some of her fury. Two hours later Carrie called back to say she’d gone straight into town and Linda had confirmed that, as far as she was concerned, Australian and New Zealand accents were exactly the same, so it might well be that the woman was a New Zealander. A little calmer from her workout and long hot shower, Saz grudgingly apologized to Carrie and then hurried off to meet the others for dinner, rehearsing in the lift mirror the best way of breaking her new concerns to her employers.

  Saz wasn’t able to get a moment with Greg and Siobhan where she could tell them the news without involving Dan in the conversation and had to force herself to wait throughout the meal during which Siobhan, whose scant regard for the etiquette of traditional table manners had her eating sautéed potatoes and courgette strips with her
fingers, animatedly told them all about the great dream she’d had while taking an afternoon nap. It had been a sense-and-sex dream featuring the steward from the plane, Brad Pitt, a tiger cub and an empty yellow and blue painted building.

  Even as she enjoyed the bright and brittle entertainment, Saz quickly saw that Siobhan would no doubt flip from charm straight into fury if she told her the news tonight, so she jostled her off to bed as soon as she could. Siobhan readily went to her room and, once Dan had also done so, Saz managed a quick exchange in the hallway with Greg to tell him about the woman.

  “She’s a New Zealander?”

  “Or Australian.”

  “Your friend couldn’t tell?”

  “No.”

  “Typical. British cultural racism at its best.”

  “Sorry. But at least we now know the woman sending the flowers in London is Antipodean.”

  “But we don’t know if she’s from New Zealand or Australia. Nor do we know that the woman you saw with Steve in LA was the same person as the flower woman in England.”

  “No, we don’t. Unfortunately we don’t know anything for definite. But I just wanted to fill you in.”