 
THE THERAPEUTIC WINDOW

By Steve Low

Copyright 2013 Steve Low

Smashwords Edition

Ah but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

Bob Dylan

Book 1

Chapter 1

Seeing the photograph of Joanna brought the song into my head, and with it came a flush of wellbeing, an incongruous feeling, standing as I was in the home of Graham Davenport - the place where I had failed to meet many expectations. I descended the stairs to the main hallway, slipping the picture away into the back pocket of my jeans. A familiar sense of unease arose in my stomach, as I made my way along the dim corridor to the sunroom. The French doors were thrown open, bringing in the autumnal sound of cicadas, the volume swelling and thinning like the static of short wave radio. I was grateful for that background racket, for inside the sunroom, there was only the sound of his breathing, a quiet but prickling whistle. I lowered myself into a vacant chair, opposite to where he sat, looking up to acknowledge him. Erect, on a high backed chair, he returned my gaze over his newspaper and managed a cursory nod. As he continued reading I was able to study his face for a few moments. After a few years away, I was curious to see how the passage of time had treated him. He was sixty-eight years old, quite an age to have a son of twenty-nine. Under scrutiny, there was little discernable change. His hair, which he now combed straight back from his forehead, was the jet black of old – rather limp looking but untarnished by any grey. The face which had always been infused with the colour red, now had tints of purple, where the blood struggled to pass along tortuous stagnant veins. The facial skin was slack, a loose fold now hanging below the chin, running down to the large Adam's apple like an inverted pup-tent. Although he wasn't leaving the house that day, he was dressed in tie and braces above baggy grey trousers. He continued reading on with a steadfast gaze, as though all the big talk the previous night, the night of my arrival, was sufficient for the time being. This I knew to be out of character – he had formerly always been rather voluble. His opinions had been his hobby.

"Are you still working in private practice?" I asked. I knew he had retired from the public hospital at the age of sixty-five. My mother had alluded to this in a letter. He hated retirement apparently. I had exploded in mirth when reading about that – a cynical belly laugh – because it was so entirely predictable.

He didn't answer me straight away, offering only his lateral profile. His eyes remained fixed on the desiccated grass of the tennis court. Finally he cleared his throat, the resonant fruity sound of a pipe smoker. "Yes I am," he said. "I'm not out to pasture yet." He looked at me with a wan smile. And that gesture confirmed what Julia intimated. Graham had lost the zest for life he once had. Graham had never done wan smiles before in my memory. He was the man who was always on top of his game – and who was quick to confront anyone who wasn't. Later, when I quizzed Julia, I learned that his consulting rooms were indeed open; however referrals had dropped away to a trickle. His working life was virtually over.

With our conversation stalling, we waited awkwardly for Julia. My eardrums ached for the rattle of cups on saucers. Silently I mused about his minimal effort so far to enquire about my year out of the country. After all, there had only been the evening catch up and a night's sleep since I had climbed off the Wellington-Nelson Fokker Friendship. The silent treatment I was getting in the sun room didn't fit with the person I remembered form my childhood. Graham could be an old fashioned irritant but silence had never been his way. He was opinionated. There were other differences to this modern-day Graham. There was the uncharacteristic droop to his shoulders - an outward sign of a new insecurity? In addition to his career coming to an end, I could surmise another reason. Perhaps my unexpected success had thrown him. My bulging wallet annoyed him. Maybe, he was full of resentment over the new order of things.

The cicadas' incessant drone carried on. Unable to stomach the depressing atmosphere, I stood up, walking into the open doorway to lean against the white frame. The early summer sun warmed my face and I lowered my gaze to accommodate the glare. Shading my eyes with the palm of a hand, I surveyed the lawn tennis court and adjacent garden. The grass was stunted and straw coloured, with large areas denuded by the months of sunshine. I recalled the fastidious watering of yesteryear, and the resulting sumptuous crop of green. One particular Sunday, Graham had been seen on hands and knees, clipping an errant tuft of grass with nail scissors. The court was bounded on two sides by hedging. There was rose garden between the court and the house, while on the remaining side of the court, a brick stairway breached a metre high wall, to access an adjoining area of garden dominated by a leafy summerhouse. This too was showing signs of lack of care. Ragged outgrowth was evident in the roof, where intertwining branches were trained along wooden beams.

At last, the sound of the tea cups. I interrupted my garden survey, turning back into the sunroom where Julia was setting down a tray upon the squat mahogany table. Her smile flashed - a brief elongation of closed lips - an acknowledgement that Graham was having a bad day. I watched her set the cups out onto saucers. Her arms were thin and pale, despite the Indian summer. She had been a beautiful woman in her day. You could still see the fine bone structure of her face and neck. Beneath the greying hair (tied into a knot on the back of her head), the skin of her face was taut over elegant cheek bones. The many years of living were etched around her mouth - a plethora of fine lines, running perpendicularly away from her lips. She poured the tea, white and strong for Graham and herself, black and weak for me.

The aroma of the tea reminded me of my school days. Returning to the house at four o'clock or so, Julia would be sitting on a high stool, a cup of tea cooling on the bench top, listening to The Archers on the radio. On the kitchen bench, beside a long stainless knife, the preliminary preparations for the evening meal would be heaped onto a chopping board - orderly piles of cabbage, diced carrot and parsnip. Alongside would be a pot containing peeled potatoes in water. Hearing the door open, Julia would turn and smile. Often I'd wander out to the kitchen annex. Julia's latest canvas would be there, stretched over a frame – mounted high on a stand. I loved the smell of drying oil paint and turpentine and it made me linger by the artwork, staring at the clumps of paint on canvas.

Shafts of light crept deeper into the sunroom. Julia artfully sought a conversation, one that might involve the three of us. It was an awkward task for her and I almost laughed out loud as she tried to soften up Graham. Julia - always the tactician! When I was a child it had been commonplace for her to be gently curbing Graham's rabid opinions, as he over enthusiastically challenged the changing times of the sixties. And now – how was she to get the conservative surgeon to warm to the return of the wayward son - the son who hadn't followed the prescribed pathway. Here I was, twenty nine, and still there was the long hair, and the loose violet tee-shirt above ragged pale jeans. It was the dress code of the 1960's youth rebellion a time and attitude he had loathed right from the start. And today, in 1985, I had salt for his chronic wounds – this lay-about was loaded. The bad news throbbed in his temporal arteries and pinched at the corners of his mouth. It was as if I had won the national lottery without buying a ticket. He was incredulous.

I unearthed the envelope holding the photograph from my jeans. Graham eyed the package suspiciously, as if it might harbour a further insult for him to bear. I slipped the photograph out, offering it to Julia. It was a picture of a pretty girl leaning against a harbour-side stone wall. A long suspension bridge joined the foreground to the steep wooded suburbs behind. Hazy purple mountains completed the backdrop. As if a member of some unofficial club, the girl was also dressed in jeans and tee-shirt. Her face, framed by long fair hair, was open and vivid, her wide mouth pressed into an ironic smile.

"She's lovely dear," Julia said. "What is her name?" Laid back into an uncomfortable antique armchair, Julia's voice was barely audible, the phrases cracking and fading away as she spoke.

"Joanna," I said. "She's Canadian." I didn't mention the ex-boyfriend, lately exposed to a change in circumstance. There was a divided couple in the hill suburbs of Vancouver. There seemed no point in adding another complication to the rigours of the morning.

"Will we meet her?" she enquired. Her voice trailed off, as if she had decided such a meeting was unlikely. With an effort, she leaned forward in the armchair and extended the picture towards Graham. I sensed a ghostly image of my sister Isobel floating in the periphery of our conversation. I felt sure that for Julia, the photograph of Joanna had brought Isobel to mind and she missed Isobel dreadfully.

My father had maintained his semi reclined posture – still surveying the vista beyond the doorstep. At first, as the offering hung in his peripheral vision, he made no move. I suspect sheer curiosity overrode his current belligerence, for he took it from Julia's grasp in a swift singular movement. I held my breath as he scrutinised the picture, crow's feet appearing at the outer edges of his eye sockets. He grunted and handed it back to Julia. He turned to me and for the first time since my return I saw his face lighten – an almost impish expression on his face. "Good God," he exclaimed. "It certainly is the year of Gerry Davenport."

Julia's face broke into a cautious smile. At last some animation from her husband. Although Graham didn't say much more that morning, he was content to eavesdrop on the two way exchange between Julia and myself. She asked me about my recent time in Vancouver, and in London before that. What was my apartment like - my companions? How was it that out of the blue, I had found success? And how was Isobel getting on?

In the afternoon Graham disappeared. His absence from the scene was a welcome relief. I slept on a couch for a time, arising later to take a wander around the second storey rooms of the house. I walked along the upstairs landing, peering firstly into the bedroom of my parents. I noted that they still slept in single beds. Graham had considered the double bed an unfortunate by-product of sixties' radicalism. And I'm sure Julia was happy to have Graham sleeping at greater than arm's length. The furnishings hadn't changed. Lacklustre brown drapes descended to a milky mauve carpet. There was a threadbare area in the carpet near the head of Graham's bed. Maybe he needed to rise a number of times each night to relieve his bladder. The bedspreads were off-white but the large square pillows had a floral pattern in brown, orange and yellow. With the drapes pulled the room was dark and solemn, invoking a feeling of lifelessness. I returned to the passage. At its terminal end were three doorways leading to rooms that I was very familiar with - two bedrooms and a bathroom. I noticed the right-hand door leading to Isobel's room was pulled closed. I started towards it, sensing change. I felt sure Julia had cleared the room out – thinking that her daughter was unlikely to return. I pressed on, grasping the brass door knob with resurgent unease. As I edged it open, the hinges gave a deep groan, perhaps indicating a lack of recent use. Inside it was dark, warm, dry and dusty. I crossed the floor carefully to the window on the far side. I could see insipid light sneaking around the edges of the dark blind. I gave the cord a hard yank, hoping to trip the roller mechanism. Instead the cord separated from the blind with a dull snap. Eventually I managed to roll the blind up manually. With the room flooded by afternoon light, I gasped involuntarily at the revelation. It was 1969 all over again. From the day that Isobel had quit the house as an errant teenager, Julia had altered nothing. On the walls were pinned up posters of the Beatles, the Stones, Dusty Springfield and the Byrds. I gazed at the pictures, my truncal skin prickling, temporarily sidetracked from the surprise of confronting my sister's childhood haunt. Brian Jones with the pout - McGuinn's rectangular glasses - Lennon's meretricious smile. I grinned. And now there was me, Gerry Davenport. In my own small way I had joined the long train of musicians who had followed the calling of the sixties.

Moving further along the wall, beyond the array of befringed musicians, I was drawn to a large photograph of Isobel. It was taken I guessed, when she was about 15 years of age. I had no recollection of seeing it before. Perhaps Julia had commissioned an enlargement to be made from an old negative. I gazed at Isobel's face, my throat beginning to constrict upon a halting swallow. I was blinking to stem a gathering of tears. Her burnt sienna hair was seductively dishevelled, a few fly-away strands across one eye. A smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose brought the picture to life. She had a half smile, as if she was uncertain about something. I found myself reaching forward to touch the slightly plump face, to run fingertips over elliptical freckles. But the matt finish was all I could feel. I murmured a phrase of affectionate remembrance, turning away from the rawness of the visual stimulus. I thought of what she had gone through and contrasted that with the beautiful potential of her youth. I was drawn to her bed, falling face down amongst her neglected pillows. Hyperventilating, I momentarily recreated the fragrance of her hair upon the pillowslip. With the power of such a recall, a convulsion engulfed me. Aware of its cathartic value, I wallowed in the declining grief until the moment when I regained my composure. Thereupon I sat on the edge of her bed, scanning absently her bookcase, her dolls and bears, and some ancient toiletries neatly arranged upon her chest of draws. In my nostalgic state, I might have quit the room then and there, but some masochistic streak drove me to even greater depths. I crossed to the wardrobe and threw open the door. As I suspected, her clothes - the ones left behind - remained untouched, hanging from the rack like sleep drugged bats in a long undisturbed cave. I dove into the garments, sifting through them quickly, pulling them out to inhale each smell and to touch the texture of the cloth. I recognised a pretty blue and white striped sundress with narrow shoulder straps. I was plunged straight into the recalled memory of one particular summer holiday we had spent at the family lake-house. I sank into the reverie - into the warm arms that had encircled me, and the sun-drenched flesh that was a soft cushion beneath the flimsy dress. Typically she would have been playing the joker - perhaps imitating the bellicose face of Graham. And I, looking reverently up at her face, would have giggled and burrowed deeper into her warm and inviting shelter. How she loved to make fun of Graham. And yet, she was the person to whom he showed the most warmth. She had been the apple of a jaundiced eye.

Making an escape from the time warp of my sister's bedroom, I descended the dark staircase again, down to the silent lower floor. I moved down the hallway towards the front door. A side-door in the right hand wall held my attention. As I looked at this windowless slab of rimu, I felt a familiar sense of foreboding. For behind this barrier was Graham's office, a place I had sought to avoid in my youth. When residing in his office, Graham had assumed a distant and arrogant persona. The clinical scenario brought out the worst in him. Should we have strayed into his lair, 'run along now' was his typical greeting. As I stood and contemplated the door, I wrestled with the tentacles of the past that threatened to strangle me and leave me paralysed at the door. I told myself not to be so stupid – to get in there and confront the past. I pushed my way through the door and stood on the threshold blinking, adjusting to the dim light of the interior. The translucent window on the far-away wall was coated with mildew. I shivered, my jaw muscles tightening. There was a smell of formaldehyde, emanating from several anatomical specimens displayed on high narrow shelves. A skull sat on one corner of his desk, while a vertebral column and pelvis hung silently from a standard, turning slowly in some insidious airflow. I slipped across to his bookshelf, noting the titles in anatomy, physiology, and surgery. There was a golf primer and a guide to walking in Central Otago. Apart from a hazy painting of wild blue flowers and distant wintry mountains, the room was Spartan and clinical.

Curious about the interests of my enigmatic father, I moved to examine a draw in his desk. At that moment I heard the nearby front door open. I froze. In an instant I was transported back twenty years. I was a nine year old in trouble, with an accelerant heart rate to match. I knew he would spot the open office door straight away. Sure enough, there, in the frame of the doorway, his imposing bulk appeared. His face was quizzical, his eyebrows hooded like scanning eagle.

"Getting acquainted with some anatomy?" he asked

."Just absorbing past memories," I said.

"Going to write a song about it?" he said, his face reddening in self amusement. "This is a place of scientific contemplation – not your typical bohemian disco." He was positively buoyed by his own wit.

"Yes," I countered. "I could feel the vibe of Galileo.'"

"Hilarious," he boomed.

I pushed passed him out of the room and into the corridor. I continued on into the living room, a formal lounge that shared a wall with the sunroom. I stood before the large bay window that overlooked the long axis of the tennis court. My mood was flattening as I took in the familiar scene. I was 29, a latent success, and yet the environs of my youth had the power to bring me down. I realised how hard it was going to be to break away from the old roles that we were used to playing. Part of me wanted to pack up and leave Nelson as soon as I could, to escape the drowning sensation.

However there was more to consider than my mood responses to the past. I remembered the lustre seeping into Julia's eyes when she had hugged me at the airport. I recalled her tears at morning tea, when I had produced my photograph of Joanna. Yes, I had to stay a while for her at the very least – three weeks maybe. I would have to stomach the old memories as best I could. As I ran my eyes over the frayed tennis net, I felt a need also to reveal a few home truths to Graham – let him learn something . . . about himself. Let him know that all his buffoonery and fixed ideas hadn't gone unnoticed.

I turned away from the window, instinctively moving to a familiar corner of the room where there stood an old radiogram. It was supported on thin mahogany legs, a great box of a thing with a heavy lid that was propped open with a wooden rod. I looked at it with affection, for I had invested my youth into the sounds that it had once produced. I had been more than ten years away from my adolescent record collection. Captivated, I forgot about the dragging mood and lifted the lid.

There were two compartments, one containing the turntable, the other holding the records. The turntable was as I remembered – a thick circular rubber mat for the discs to rest on, and lying on its rest, the shiny wooden lever arm harbouring the stylus. In the foreground was the three speed control – 33, 45, and 78 rpm. I was soon delving into the second compartment, seeking the records and their sleeves. I began flicking them up, my skin a Mexican wave of goose bumps. Graham's classical and jazz collection dominated the top of the pile. Further down there were a few long-players with the name Isobel Davenport inked on the covers. I imagined her figure, a child of the sixties, bent into the radiogram cabinet, sorting through the covers. I carried on deeper into the layers of long undisturbed vinyl strata. I came across the refracting prism of Dark Side of the Moon. Below that, To Our Children's Children's Children. I studied its gatefold, nostalgia rising like nausea, remembering adolescent visions of journey, of a figure in a long slow cartwheel through the cosmos, of uplifted melancholic faces. Yesterday, musicians were the gods. I dug deeper, knowing it was going to be good.

I came across Help! Here was a Davenport icon. It had a name scrawled on the cover. Richard Davernport. I looked at his name in wonder. I raised my gaze to the ceiling, as if to prevent a tear from rolling off the edges of my eye sockets. I carried on, coming across Pet Sounds, Beggar's Banquet, and Odgen's Nut Gone Flake. Below that, the big one – the one to make my spine creep. The jet black cover . . . five figures distorted inside a sphere . . . Mr Tambourine Man. I had known it must come, somewhere in the pile. It was merely a plate of vinyl, slipped inside a square cardboard cover. Yet I felt the driving of blood, starting in my chest and disseminating in all directions, out into my forearms, down into the groin. I turned the cover over to find the mosaic of black and white photographs adorning the back. McGuinn, Crosby, Clark, Hillman and Clarke. I re-read the ridiculous 'fab' prose of Billy James, describing the union of the Byrds and Dylan at Ciros. I tipped the cover, sliding the disc out onto the palm of a hand, taking another nostalgia hit with the sight of the old orange CBS label. I tilted the disc back and forth to enjoy the way the light highlighted the black grooves and the smooth areas between tracks. I brought it up to touch a side of my face. Here within its grooves, a jangling noise of hope, the artefact of a previous existence – my adolescence. I shuddered at the bare bones of the exposure. I knelt down in front of the cabinet, as if lowered by the immense gravity of the past. The amplifier and valve radio were accessed by opening double doors on the front-side. I rotated a circular knob clockwise and was rewarded by a popping sound, redolent of an electronic last gasp (if you didn't know better). The valves were still functioning.

I stood up and threaded the eye of Mr Tambourine Man over the long centre spike. I slid the switch towards on, watching as the lever arm whirred and clanked its way into position, dropping neatly onto the start of track one. There was considerable hiss and crackle, a momentary lull and then . . . Ah . . . The magic of the twelve string guitar . . . The chime and the jingle jangle. I turned the volume way up, as high as it would go without distortion. And the voices broke in, harmony that ran straight down my backbone to the pelvic floor . . .

Hey Mr Tambourine Man

Play a song for me

I'm not sleepy

And there aint no place I'm going to.

Hey Mr Tambourine man

Play a song for me

In the jingle-jangle morning

I've come following you.

Propelled by sound, I drifted across to the window. The shadows across the court were longer – there was loss of definition – I could sense the garden was cooling. The summerhouse leaves shimmered in a last lazy gust of wind while McGuinn's young strident voice burst through the room.

Take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship.

All my senses have been stripped

My hands can't feel to grip

And my toes too numb to step

Wait only for my boot-heels to be wandering.

I turned back to face the room, to take the sound head on, to walk slowly towards it, like wading against a divine current. Looking up, there he was again. Graham. He was motionless, filling the space of the door frame. "What on earth is this rubbish?" I heard him ask, his words intermingled with McGuinn's.

I was annoyed by the interruption – the breaking up of my reverie and the pointless negativity of his question. "What?" I retorted, the tone imbued with a little venom.

A vertical line appeared in the middle of his forehead. I'd seen that line before, when he'd been struggling to grasp some new unwanted concept of the new youth. It was his marker of doubt. "You're not seriously still listening to this junk," he said. He had shuffled forward through the door as he spoke, but was now stopped in his tracks.

And I (probably not the Gerry Davenport that he had expected) marched halfway across the room towards him, the sound of Mr Tambourine Man fading out in the background. I was laughing at him. "Why don't you wear an eye patch?" My voice was high pitched – my tone betraying my incredulity. "You . . . you're so bloody negative. . . If you don't like the music . . . you should have stayed in the surgery with the skeleton."

His mandible came forward, puckering his mouth up towards the tip of his nose. His eyes were blinking. "Good God, what a speech," he said . . . "Churchill would have been proud." He turned away shaking his head as if frankly bemused by this new generation music ideology.

With him gone I circled the room in thought, as my heart gently pummelled my rib cage. Comically, I'll feel a whole lot better was in mid-song, another jangle of twelve string resonance, its refrain of I'll feel a whole lot better when you're gone mirroring my thoughts. I'll feel a whole lot better when I'm gone I thought. Graham was harmless but he did get under my skin – under most people's skin. I went over and uplifted the stylus from the vinyl. Graham had interrupted my brief reminiscence and I couldn't get myself back on track. In the abrupt silence, I felt like a refugee. I was back in the 60s – the 50s even. And Graham Davenport was the architect of this transformation.

In the aftermath of the confrontation, Graham had been flippant and whimsical, saying little at the dinner table but snorting and raising his eyes at many of the things Julia and I talked about. The next morning, a Monday, Graham had left the house by the time I got down to breakfast. Julia poured out the morning coffee from her old stainless percolator. She was upbeat, humming an obscure tune. Her pace about the kitchen floor was brisk, There was colour in her face and a gleam in her eyes. She began to ask me again about my work and about my relationship with Joanna. I wondered whether she might touch upon the delicate subject of Isobel. During my time abroad, I had posted many a letter home but had fallen short of describing the parlous state of my sister's life. If she had known the truth Julia would have come over to try and arrest the slide – to get Isobel home to New Zealand even. But at the time Isobel had changed and wasn't remotely biddable anymore. Graham would have been difficult to leave for a month anyway. He was anchored at home to his private practice and his place in society. Perhaps Julia was wrestling with herself about whether to broach the issue of the apparent black out with regard to news of Isobel. Isobel herself had barely communicated with Julia for a year and my letters had probably seemed like a stone wall when it came to information. And likewise I, harbouring knowledge of Julia's own life history, revealed not a thing of my thoughts. I kept a lid on my information, and on its source – Isobel herself.

After breakfast I made a beeline for the dining room. During the previous evening, I had spotted a cluster of old photographs adorning the polished surface of Graham's antique liquor cabinet. This collection had been there in much the same form, right through my childhood and adolescence. However I now looked at these artefacts in a new light. One photograph in particular had caught my eye. It was a picture of Julia's best friend Margo in the early 1950's. There was something about the photograph I hadn't noticed before. The right edge was not quite even, as though part of it had been carefully cut away. With Graham out of the house, and Julia ensconced in the wash-house, I was able to scrutinise the collection closely. There was a wedding picture of Graham and Julia. Graham looked dapper in a morning suit, his jet black hair parted in the middle. Julia, partially hidden under a descending veil, looked out at the world with a posed smile. Perhaps she had already guessed that her husband would make her life a battle. There was a photograph of each of the children. I had a rather silly expression on my face, as if I didn't have the self composure to endure the photography session. Isobel's face betrayed a different sentiment. Her picture radiated humour and intelligence, a portrayal suggestive of a future that held great promise. I put her photograph back down and scooped up the one of the third child, Richard. I gazed at him with interest. I had not spent much of my life with him. He was dressed in military attire and looked much like a younger version of Graham. His hair was the same jet black, the face dominated by prominent eyebrows above sunken eye sockets and a replica of Graham's aquiline nose. I myself had facial features which were recognisably Julia's. This resemblance was not restricted to the face – I had a thin streak of a frame and fair skin. I looked at Richard's eyes and wondered what he had been thinking at the moment the camera had snapped. His face looked tolerant and serene. Graham had put him up on a pedestal, the first son – inevitably destined for medical school. Momentarily I dwelt on the contrast between first and second sons. For a few moments I had a feeling of distaste . . . anger. I put Richard back amongst his siblings and moved along to the photograph of Margo. She was laying back in a deck chair, cigarette held aloft between two fingers. There was a hand resting on her left leg. The right hand edge of the photograph had indeed been cut away. The owner of the hand appeared to be wearing a white sports jacket. Intruding into the bottom right hand corner was part of a white shoe. Someone had gotten rid of the person in the white suit. Someone had torn away Francis Urquhart, Margo's ex-husband.

Chapter 2

I was born in 1955, three years after Isobel and ten years after Richard. We grew up in the same street as the Kandy Korner dairy, the Presbyterian church and the Nelson Central primary school. The street was broad and flat, lined on either side by solid Plain trees growing out of openings in the asphalt. Our house was the stand-out of the street, a large wooden double storied edifice, white with navy trimmings. It butted hard up against the street – our front door virtually opening directly onto the footpath. A tortuous pepper tree grew between footpath and the house, covering much of the street-front aspect. The tree exuded a piquant sticky sap, a viscous adherent syrup which was a liability for any unwary hand that sought the support of its wandering branches. Year round, its tapered leaves would float down and become glued to the sidewalk. In the spring, a fine yellow dust was released, certain to promote a bout of sneezing should you push your way through a hanging cluster of leaves.

By the time I was old enough to create memory, Richard was already a teenager. He would come and go from the house in his navy blue blazer, his school cap perched above an imperious face. He was a reliable straight bat for the first eleven and more than adequate on the rugby field. On match days, Richard would emerge from his room smeared in liniment, pausing in the hallway to flex the impressive musculature, a giant of a man from my perspective. Even Isobel's jaw seemed agape with awe. "Richard's in the fifteen," Graham would announce to visitors, his pipe held aloft, its blue smoke curling away towards the ceiling.

In his final year at school, the intercollegiate quadrangular tournament came to town. Isobel and I were allowed off school to watch the games. On the match days, we would board Graham's Vanguard Six and drive up the hill to the college. There, standing proudly on the embankment, we shouted and cheered for the navy and sky blue hoops of Nelson College, as they were pitted against the other great schools of central New Zealand. There was Christ's College in black and white, the all white strip of Whanganui Collegiate School and Wellington College in majestic black and gold. The waxing cacophony of a thousand schoolboys brought a lump to my throat, and a flashing pilo-erection through the skin. Julia was brought to tears as the haka roared and I would be not far behind, my chest swollen with importance. Isobel appeared amused and excited by it all, lifted by the transient exposure to these big city boys and their gregarious families. Graham seemed in his element, standing erect, shoulders back, offering a benevolent face and the odd quip about the game..

When it was all over, after the referee (in pristine whites) had blown his terminal note, Graham would have an inclination to linger and savour the moment. As the shattered players wheezed off the field, he would go to shake hands with the opposition parents. "Damned good game," he would say, and the respective families would stand smiling at each other, warmed by the realisation of their success. Isobel would have half an eye on the developing after-match celebration. However Graham would usher us to the Vanguard. It would be 'time to go' and we would park ourselves on the back seat, the car beginning its silent glide down the long school drive. I would be watching through the windows as the adrenalised footballers clattered their sprigs up the concrete steps to the Spartan change rooms of Rutherford House.

Graham didn't indulge in small talk – he was a big talk man. Once the relevant platitudes had been uttered to the appropriate people at the game, he was out of there. And as soon as he arrived home, he would disappear to his office, a lazy puff of smoke folding its way through the hall behind him. Julia, left to her own devices, would smoke enjoyably, perhaps ghosting into the room where Isobel and I might be playing. There she would perch on the edge of a chair to watch us at play, occasionally making a suggestion or joining in the contagious laughter whenever it arose. Her eyes were forever darting, full of a life of their own. Between Isobel and I, there was an unspoken acceptance of this quirky figure. We instinctively accommodated her enigmatic presence and her pleasure in our company. Julia liked the theatre, movies but above all she was a reader and a painter. Much of her life was spent in books or working on a painting. There were the three of us, then there was Richard . . . and there was Graham. Looking back, it is strange that we called him Graham rather than 'Dad' or some other term of endearment. Julia always referred to him as 'Graham' rather than 'your Dad.' We had picked up on that.

Graham disliked socialising, unless it was important to him. For a visiting surgeon (an 'expert' from out of town), he would lavishly entertain at our home, exhibiting all the gracious airs he could muster. Generally though, he preferred to avoid social contact for its own sake, inevitably fashioning Julia to function within this rigid framework. As a consequence Julia had a 'mid-week' type of existence. Her close friends weren't the expected wives of other medical men or women she might have met through charity work. But with these women she would meet for morning coffee at each others homes. There seemed to be little depth in these relationships – the participants often reduced to trading on their husbands' names. Her real friends then were the arty type of women, other literary types, writers, musicians and thespians. Graham often referred to them as the 'arty-farties' and would feign fear of this outspoken crowd. However beyond that classification his comments about Julia's life were generally circumspect. He didn't tend to mock anything she did but occasionally made a joke about it to us, his children.

There was one other person who sought to tamper with the Davenport blueprint – beyond the efforts of the arty-farties . . . Margo Urquhart. From Wellington she would materialise, a shimmering flame that threatened to set alight the often dry Nile St home.

Before Margo's arrival, I would sense a lift in Julia. She would move more adroitly about the kitchen, banging pans together like cymbals, or laughing readily at one of Isobel's pranks. Playing an imaginary rugby game on the lawn, I would be halted in my tracks by the sound of Chopin on the living room piano. Julia always seemed to reproduce her childhood piano expertise when Margo was coming..

Come the day of Margo's arrival, Julia, Isobel and I would be waiting at the bus station, the air of expectation (or was it uncertainty) delivering an unusual vibrancy. Isobel and I would run to the nearby intersection, the junction of Trafalgar and Hardy streets, hoping to be the first to catch sight of the arriving Newman's bus. Often we would hear it first. A throaty roar as it changed gear through a distant intersection. And as it came up alongside us, we would see her, perched as always on a front row window-seat. I would see the silhouette of the immaculate coiffure first, then the gaunt features, as she brought her face close to the glass. There was the thin nose, and a flash of teeth between smiling lips. Isobel and I would dance and wave – for here was life itself – urgent talk about the house, animated faces, smoking and drinking. And Graham's opinionated presence would be diluted, since Margo often seemed to reduce him to awkward silence.

In the pleasant residue of trailing diesel gas, Isobel and I would sprint back to the bus station, arriving out of breath, to wave once again as the bus throttled down to a halt. Margot would reach out to pull us into her skirt. I would bury my face into the pleats, inhaling the big city aroma. She was thin and attractive like Julia, but more fashion conscious (a classic dresser), a wearer of exquisite perfumes, and her earrings sparkling as she clattered about on high heels.

Back at the house there would be excited talk about the year that had been. Margo was something of a rarity in those times – a career woman. She worked in government – a cog in the legislative machine. Of course, she must have been carrying a slight stigma. This was the 1960s and she was a divorcee. But I didn't know about such matters then.

Margot was a radiant light in an already scorching summer. It would be many years before I began to ask the questions. And long before my enquiry, it was always Isobel who got to the bottom of things. She was astute when it came to working out the subtleties in life. From an early age, she was quite well able to manipulate Julia, and over the ensuing years managed to exhume key information about the history of our family. Sometimes, to find the truth, Isobel would have to be underhand.

Isobel had ascertained that there had once been a Mr Urquhart. Her scouring of the attic had revealed old photographs of a holiday in the remote settlement of Pakawau. In residence were the Urquharts and the Davenports. That would have been the summer of 55/56. I would have been conceived about then, since my birthday was in the following October. Perhaps I was conceived at Pakawau. It's hard to imagine now, Graham and Julia prompted into a moment of closeness – perhaps by the stimulus of friends, fun, and alcohol – or the sounds of waves on the long desolate beach.

Margo, despite her big city exterior, had a certain fragility about her that had me puzzled. On arrival, she would scoop up Isobel and I in turn for crushing embraces. Next she would hug and kiss Julia with an exaggerated fervour. At the house the conversation in the kitchen would be like a bush fire, jumping from one topic to another. The women's faces would be vivid with stimulation. Yet nearly always, within a few hours of her arrival, or perhaps well into the next day, both of them would succumb to a mystery force. This phenomenon would halt the early momentum, taking them both down together. For me, as a young child, the abrupt change was confusing. Margo might abruptly retire to bed, and Julia, left in her wake, would slump deep into her chair, her eyebrows knitted, her head hanging.

"Margo is not feeling well," Graham would say, replying to one of Isobel's frequent enquiries. The next day at breakfast, I'd see the two women at the kitchen table, encircled by a swirl of smoke, their heads thrown back laughing. Only the red rimmed eyes of Margo, or often as not, Julia as well, would betray the drama of the night gone by. Sometimes I would crawl under the table, unnoticed by the rabid conversants, to watch their legs flex and extend with the rise and fall of their banter. I would stare at Margo's inevitable stilettos, blood red or jet black, arched like a pair of angry cats. Julia's legs were catwalk thin – too pale for the end of summer – reflective of her time spent reading in the shadows. Above the table, the tone of the conversation would be contrite, deferential, apologetic – then raucous, hilarious, or mocking. Sometimes they talked about their 'moggies.' It took a while to surmise that this referred to some kind of pacifier.

"I was fine once I'd taken a moggy," Margo would say.

"I had to take two," Julia would reply. And under the table Margo's hand would cross to squeeze Julia above the knee.

Isobel ferreted out the answer – Mogadon. It was a sleeping tablet, a mild tranquilliser. She would have searched handbags, toilet bags, cupboards . . . everything was vulnerable to the pretty inquisitor. She would have unearthed the packet, absorbed the drug name, then gotten into Graham's office to search a pharmacopoeia for the answer. Isobel . . . she had everyone's life worked out – except perhaps her own.

Margo was fond of Isobel and I. She didn't have any children of her own. She wasn't going to have any either. I overheard Graham and Julia discussing it one day. Graham said, "She's got it in for men now." She was especially taken by me. I became aware of this from an early age. Out of the corner of an eye, I could sense her watching me. Sometimes I'd round on her quickly and catch the quizzical expression dying on her turning face. Taking me up in her arms she would say, "How is my little boy." It made me wonder . . . what was the misfortune that attracted such sympathy? I liked to climb up onto her lap, to stand precariously on her thighs, flinging my arms around her neck where I would find the most fragrant of perfumes. I loved to kiss the side of her neck, to breath in the evocative vapour, suggestive of a far off sophistication. And if I turned to take in the room, there would be Julia, her smile beatific, small lines crinkling at the outsides of her eyes.

Isobel would goad me. "You're Margo's pet," she would say. "Margo's got something for you, and you just lap it up don't you."

Graham was quite tolerant of Margo. He was polite to her – as if harbouring a reluctant respect. But mostly he kept out of the way, a hermit in his beloved silent office

One year, 1964 it would have been, Margot wrote saying she would like to bring a 'man-friend' with her to Nelson. For days, in the wake of this note, argument raged about the house. Would they allow this person to appear? Graham didn't want anything to do with the 'impostor.' He hated meeting new people anyway. To have someone new in the house – presumably sleeping with Margo out of wedlock – it was a preposterous suggestion. And he, Graham Davenport, a surgeon of some standing, would be required to break his routine to entertain this alien. Julia took the opposite tack. Margo was sacrosanct. They had to bend over backwards for her. "We owe it to her," she said, leaning back against the kitchen sink. From the doorway leading into the morning room, Graham's tone was sharp. "You owe it to her," he said. "I don't."

It was a Friday night when they came. Isobel's hands flapped in anticipation as we waited on the traditional corner for the controversial visitors. A fair crowd was in for late night shopping and we had to crane our heads to see over and beyond the teeming masses. The bus made slow progress through the bumper to bumper traffic. At last, with a throaty roar, it came over the last intersection and we could see Margo's face pressed up against the window. In the shadows of the interior, I could just discern the silhouette of the much feared impostor. Around at the bus station, we stared in wonder at the figure that stood beside Margo, a big hand wrapped around her wafer thin waist. A foreigner! "This is Zachary," Margo announced to her dumbstruck provincial friends.

Julia recovered her poise first and extended a welcome to the portly figure with the black curls and deep olive skin.

"Zachary is a Greek envoy," Margo said. "He's over here for six months." As we packed their things into the Vanguard's boot, I looked at Isobel and her at me. We were both thinking the same thing. How would Graham cope?

"I've never been to Athens," Graham said later, as we all stood statuesque in the kitchen. Zachary smiled but said nothing. Graham was standing in the middle of the floor, his figure rigid as a lamppost. His neck and face were engorged with discomfort. When Julia took the two visitors upstairs to show them the sleeping arrangements, Graham disappeared into his office and wasn't seen again until the next day. The rest of us moved into the lounge, where Julia and Margo filled the air with smoke and laughter, divulging to each other the recent events of their lives. Isobel and I soaked up every word, fascinated by the vibrant discourse. It was always exciting to us.

Zachary took little part in the conversation and eventually he turned to me. "You like to play?" he asked. We played scissors, rock and paper for an hour until Julia announced it was time for bed. I had been made to volunteer my room for the foreign visitor's comfort. I was to sleep on a camp bed in Isobel's room. However when Julia swept in to switch out the light, sleep was far from our minds. We were too excited about the presence of the Greek.

"He's not as nice as Francis was," Isobel said. I shrugged my shoulders. I hadn't seen the photographs. Margo's former husband was a mythical figure to me. Isobel slipped out of bed and moved to a position by the door. A small crack between the door and its frame gave her a view of the passageway. One by one, the adults came to utilise the bathroom: Julia, Margo, followed by the Greek. The latter didn't disappoint our intrigue. After a few minutes of incessant gargling, there came the sound of crashing water, as though someone was hurling bucket-loads of water into the air and letting them fall onto the tiles. After that, there was five minutes of slow and heavy nose breathing. I crawled over to where Isobel lay, to catch a glimpse of the Greek when he emerged. Isobel was lying on her front, her nose not far from the crack in the door. I climbed up and lay on her back, my face enjoying the fragrance of her scented hair. "Graham's coming," she hissed, and we rolled away in unison, seeking the cover of the shadows. However, it was unlikely he would enter the room. He left the majority of the parenting to Julia.

Graham had finally emerged from his office to prepare for bed. The rebuff of the bathroom's locked door irritated. "Good God, what next?" we heard him say as he stalked back down towards his bedroom. "Next time she'll bring a Turk," I heard him say. Presently we heard the lock sliding back. Isobel raced back to the crack and I wasn't far behind. The Greek emerged wearing only a towel about his lower half. His ample chest was covered in thick black hair, glistening with moisture. A solid wave of cologne rolled in through the crack. Isobel inhaled deeply, and half closed her eyes, as if in rapture. After a minute or two, Graham came silently back down the corridor and entered the bathroom. "Good heavens," we heard him exclaim. It was enough for Julia to come scurrying along carrying a bundle of old towels. When she re-emerged, the same towels were now heavy with water. With the fun seemingly over, I crawled over to my stretcher and burrowed under the covers. Isobel however maintained her vigil at the crack, seemingly confident of more action. I watched her from the comfort of my burrow, pleasantly succumbing to a rising tide of slumber. Her hair looked golden in the wash of hall light, while her nightie was spare and I could see the smooth skin of her neck and shoulders. Her chest moved gently with her respiration. She looked succulent and I admired her more than anyone in the universe . . . apart from Julia maybe.

And in a flash, she was in a crouch position, her features alert. "Come," she mouthed. I groaned briefly but managed to shake off the grabbing tentacles of sleep to slip back across to the door. It was Margo. She was inching down the hallway, looking across at Graham and Julia's room, like a wary rabbit sensing a predator. She moved a step closer to their closed door, tilting her head to the side, as if listening acutely. Seemingly satisfied, she tiptoed along the passage to the Greek's room, directly opposite our door. She knocked lightly on the door, which immediately opened and closed in a second, swallowing her inside.

"What are they doing," I asked,- my voice far too loud. Isobel slapped a cupped hand over my mouth before lying down on her back and pulling me down on top of her. I lay my face against her chest, enjoying the hypnotic rise and fall. She smelt the top of my head desultorily, pushing about my hair with outstretched fingers. I assumed we were killing time before the next slice of action. I waited patiently, lifting my knees off the coarse carpet and placing my legs right on top of hers. I raised myself up onto elbows causing her to grimace, as pain shot through her shoulder muscles. I studied her face, fingering the freckles across the bridge of her nose, trying to determine if they had a palpable surface. She turned her face away to look towards the crack, as if she had sensed something. Beckoning me to follow, she got up onto hands and knees and we crawled out through the door. The light in the hall seemed intense after the darkness of the bedroom, but my pupils soon adjusted. She led me over to the opposite door and showed me how to listen through the wood. With the opening of my ear canal jammed against the surface, I could hear a muffled soundtrack from within the room. There was a rhythmic compression sound accompanied by heavy breathing. An intermittent deep rumbling was the Greek talking. Margo was vocalising more stridently, saying things like, 'oh yes' \- 'oh that's nice' and 'faster'. I was puzzled by this, wondering what it all meant. But Isobel was shaking silently, a big wide smile adorning her face. At once the rhythm hardened up and Margo's calls became more and more urgent. Isobel began to look worried and she kept glancing back down the passage towards our parent's room. Then there came some guttural sounds and the breathing slowed to a few terminal shuddering gasps. I was fearful that someone was seriously ill. "Are they alright?" I asked, but Isobel had no such fears and she indicated we had to return to her bedroom. I was thoroughly tired out and flopped into bed, barely hearing the returning steps of Margo as she crept passed our door.

By day, Zachary and Margo toured about, often taking Julia with them as they lounged at the beach, or drank coffee at the Chez Eelco (the only main street cafe in town). Graham was making minimal effort for the visitors, appearing briefly at meal times. However he was capable of turning on the charm and blowing his own trumpet once he got in the mood, The Greek seemed unaffected by Graham's ambivalent welcome. The glint in his eye, suggested that he'd come to view my father as an amusing anachronism.

It was at night that all the real drama was taking place. Margo's visits to the Greek's bedroom carried on, right through the week. Their confidence of anonymity seemed to grow, since their encounters became more and more noisy and of longer duration. By the end of the week, I had grown bored with the aural entertainment. I didn't even bother to cross the hall anymore to tune in to the show. Isobel though, was refining her techniques. She had acquired a long thin glass from the kitchen. She sat on the carpet beside the Greek's closed door, the base of the glass up against the wood, her ear pressed into the rim.

One night, as the week drew to a close, I rekindled my curiosity, leaving my bed to join Isobel outside their door. Her face was animated, her eyes blazing. She motioned for me to use the glass. The new device was a revelation, bringing forth the chorus of love-making with new clarity. Soon I left her to it, returning to the comfort zone between my sheets. But after a few minutes I realised that the listening glass had become irrelevant. I could clearly hear the groans, and feel the rhythm of our guest's pleasure, right there in my bed. Soon I alerted to a new commotion. First Isobel came scurrying back to bed, diving headfirst beneath the covers. Next I heard heavy footfalls in the corridor, undoubtedly those of Graham. He pounded the lovebird's door. "Excuse me – do you mind? It's not a zoo you know" we heard him say.

To this day, I don't know whether he proceeded to enter the room uninvited, or if the Greek or Margo came and opened the door. Either way, there came the shock of raised and angry voices.

"We're going to a hotel." Margo's voice was crystal clear and sharp in the passage. "I've tolerated you for long enough, Graham Davenport. You're an intolerant buffoon. Why don't you give up on all that old school rubbish?"

Isobel and I crept up to the crack in our doorway. Graham was standing right in front of us, hands on hips. We couldn't see his face, but his neck was glowing. Margo had gone back into the room. The Greek stood beneath their door frame, his lower half again wrapped in a towel. He saw our faces appear behind Graham and he grinned amiably at us. Julia came out of the master bedroom, her face drained of all colour. She looked thin and disconsolate, with sagging shoulders.

Margo marched out past the Greek into the harsh light of the passage. "I'm sorry Julia," she said. "I like you . . . You certainly don't deserve this idiot." She flapped a hand loosely at Graham's face. "This intolerant . . . Jerk!" Instructing Zachary to get dressed, she turned and strode up the passage to her bedroom. Julia stood in the middle of the passage, started to say something but seemed to change her mind. Graham, his jaw rigid, walked right on up past her, disappearing into the master bedroom, the door swishing behind him.

That was the last we saw of Margo in Nelson for some time. From our street side window, Isobel and I watched her embrace Julia before she and the Greek entered a taxi. Julia, covered by a flimsy dressing gown, was left alone on the pavement waving and shaking her head as the taxi pulled away. Julia stood there for quite some time, one foot in the gutter, the other on the pavement, staring after the receding tail-lights. Isobel and I looked on silently, a disquieting silence between us and the figure below. "Come on Mum," Isobel called softly. Julia looked up to acknowledge this soft voice from above. "It's OK darling," she said. "These things happen." She shrugged her shoulders and came inside. I looked at Isobel and she looked at me and she shrugged her shoulders too and made a face. In this manner we withdrew from the window and retired to our beds.

It wasn't the end for Margo and Julia. Instead of Margo visiting us, our mother took a ferry across the Cook Strait to Wellington, and visited Margo in Wellington. Graham had been enthusiastic about these weekends away, embarrassed perhaps by his rather pithy performance the previous year. The trips proved quite useful as Julia was able bring back cases full of new and rare books.

But for Isobel and I – lives were all the poorer for the loss. Margo had brought us life, laughter and more importantly, the water tossing Greek!

Chapter 3

"Why don't you two go off and climb Mt Cotterel?" The question came from behind me. I had not heard Julia returning from the washhouse and I was feeling rather exposed, holding as I was the photograph with the ragged edge. I half turned to face her, keeping the photograph down low and behind me. "What are you hiding there?" She asked. Her eyes had lowered to where my hideaway hand clutched the photograph and there was an edge to her voice.

"I was wondering who this is?" I asked. "Who is the owner of the white shoe?" I brought the picture into full view. Julia crossed the room and took the photograph out of my hand.

"You know perfectly well who it is," she said. "You're not that young – or innocent."

She was standing up close to me, near enough for me to see the miniature lines of age around her lips. The whites of her eyes were marked by yellow ochre pterygiums and her pupils seemed dilated and alert. My boldness started to evaporate. What was the use in opening an old wound, merely to appease my own curiosity? Therefore I nodded in assent to her assertion, manufactured a wan smile and walked through to the adjoining sunroom. Behind me, I could hear her replacing the photograph onto the liquor cabinet. She followed me through to the sunroom, coming to stand beside me. We both looked out at the tennis court, avoiding direct eye contact. "Why don't you take Graham back to Mt Cotterel?" she asked again. "You never did make it up there, did you?"

I was bemused by the repeated question. I had come halfway round the world to see both my parents. Spending a few days away alone with Graham and his nineteenth century views wasn't overly appealing.

She stepped into my line of vision, looked up into my face and smiled. "Since he retired from the hospital, he's gone down hill a bit. He's got not enough to do – there's the golf and a few meetings but . . . he's quite difficult to manage."

I laughed out loud. "Well if that isn't an understatement!" I ran outstretched fingers into my hair. "He kind of painted himself into a corner with all that devotion to surgery. But now that that is nearly over . . . ."

Julia nodded, as if pleased to have the raw truth confirmed. "Well . . . that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Unfortunately he's really losing his zest for life. His motivation isn't good. You've seen the state of the garden?"

I frowned and nodded my head. I looked out again at the fraying tennis net, the desiccated lawn, and the ragged summerhouse . . . Graham was losing his grip.

"He's still as outspoken as ever though." she said laughing. Her voice went quiet. "But maybe less often."

I thought about all her years in the company of Graham. How had she managed it? Now that I was an adult myself and had had relationships I could look at my parent's marriage with some insight. They really were something of a mismatch – her with the sensitivity and the artistic side. And him . . . Well he was the complete opposite.

I considered what she had asked of me – that she wanted me to take him into the mountains. Perhaps, most of all, she needed a break from him. I could well understand that.

I dwelled on the returning memory of the mountain. And in doing so I induced a small thrill. It travelled through me like a poorly suppressed burst of laughter. In my vision I saw a lofty spire, reflected on a shimmering mirror – a broad expanse of lake. Its surface rippled beneath quietly twisting zephyrs of wind. In my mind, I moved closer to the mountain, leaving the lake behind to enter the mouth of a valley. Always the mountain's peak was centre stage, placed exactly in the middle, between the steep wooded ranges that framed each side. As one travelled up the valley, it curved around to the right, the peak remained centre stage, the axis of the turning point in the leftward range. I saw a figure (myself) up above the bush line, standing amongst knee high snow grass, my gaze fixed on to the hanging rock wall and serrated skyline of the ridge. This lump of inanimate rock – it was still a potent stimulus of feeling. Even after years away in Europe and America . . . after the vertiginous love of women, and after the giddying heights of success. Graham, for all his faults, was capable of assimilating the mountain culture. It was he who had first taken Richard, Isobel and I into the mountains, exposing us to the lure of the remote back country.

Our capitulation to the mountain's spell happened the first time he took us there (despite our wary reluctance to go). There was the heady roar of the river, the cries of the paradise ducks, and the twilight sun fading silently off austere mountain peaks. Yes, above all, the remote mountain peaks took me by the throat, as if they were not inanimate at all, but something altogether more life-giving – spiritual perhaps. They hung above the valleys in which we walked, forever demanding attention. I absorbed symmetry, asymmetry – repetition. My eye would run up the flanks from the valley floor, up spurs and gullies to scree and snow slopes, to cols and gendarmes, and to the final up-thrust itself, beyond which there was only sky. In minutes, a new angle of light might reveal unseen ridges, a couloir, a chimney, a buttress or bluff. In our valley, the names of peaks rebounded inside my skull – Travers, Cupola, Hopeless, Kehu, Cotterel, Angelus . . . The names seemed exotic, with a potent suggestion of history. I began to read alpine literature veraciously. I saw my future as a mountaineer laid out before me. I visualised the successive ascent of New Zealand peaks \- Rolleston, Aspiring, Tutoko, Malte Brun, Tasman and Cook. Beyond that – the world! The Alps, the Andes, the Himalaya! My heart beat with the romance of exploration. Mallory, Shipton, Hillary, and Bonnington. They were my heroes.

Away in the bush, removed from the irritation of ordinary people and their small talk, Graham could take on a more tolerable persona. His jaw would relax and he might hum softly to himself as he led us along a rambling trail. Like an old steam train, his progress was marked by a drifting cloud of pipe-smoke, a soft woody aroma in the fresh mountain air. However, this curious benevolence had its limits. For example, we would never stay in the alpine huts. Huts contained people – ordinary people, people who talked, farted and burped. People who ate with their mouths open, voted labour or hadn't heard of J.S.Bach. People who might come over and say, 'How are you?' With this in mind, he pitched our tents well off the trail, behind a stand of beech, or far out upon a river flat, our voices muffled by the roar of the adjacent river.

This episodic benevolence was a minor boon for Isobel and I. Like a ceasefire at Christmas, a happy go lucky air pervaded our campsites. We were long in experience and we knew that the intolerance would be back in a few days. There was typically a key moment, usually when the back of the journey was broken, when ones thoughts were devolving from the mountain scene that had been, to the urban life to come. His chronic wounds would begin to prickle – to flare and throb. By journey's end, Graham's jaw would be set in concrete.

With this background I heard myself agree to Julia's request. My reverie had softened me for long enough to take on the task. Above all it was the memory of an adrenaline rush, the one that comes with the breach of the bush line. For at that moment, the depth of the valley is revealed below, and above is the unconquered summit, mysterious and majestic against the sky. Graham might be a nuisance, a drawback to be sure – an ideological anachronism. But in my post-success flush, I decided that I might challenge him. I could explain the new ways of thinking, the sixties' revolution, the release of youth from its Victorian chains. And if he were reborn . . . Julia might have her final years in a new realm of tolerance.

Equipped with this creative optimism, I awaited the paternal response to my mother's shuttle diplomacy. In his depleted state, perhaps Graham would seek the respite offered by the journey – a temporary escape from his blighted existence in retirement. At the dinner table, I could see he was agitated, his face was bloated, top lip pouted. Under the table, he rubbed a knee periodically, and his shoulders jerked with a singular paroxysm.

Eventually he spoke. "So you'd like to get away to the hills," he said. There was no mention of his personal desires. Rather, his manner suggested it was he who was granting me a favour. I was to be the benefactor, the son with whom he had little in common. Here was this one thing he might share with me, if only to acknowledge, I was his own flesh and blood. Inwardly, I was busy containing a laugh. Surely it was I, who had offered him the lifeline. After all, his world had collapsed with retirement and he was now struggling for direction. His ego was no longer propped up by that old backbone of medical life.

It was decided to leave for the mountain straight away. All three of us sensed the fragility of delaying the trip too long. Should there be a short wait of a few days, Graham and I might blow up in acrimony.

Therefore on the following day, I drove Julia to a supermarket in the middle of town, in order to buy provisions. Thrust into the streets of my youth, I had queasiness in my gut, an embryonic terror. I was afraid of the past. I was shrinking before the rising memory of my adolescence. We pulled into a spacious car park, onto which backed a plethora of retailers. I stepped out into the sunshine, bizarrely afraid of recognition. I tried to bolster my flagging self esteem by dwelling on my latent success . . . Joanna, the contract, the bulging wallet. In this way, stride for stride with Julia; I made it to the supermarket entry.

"This will do Graham the world of good," Julia said, as we filled a trolley with produce.

I looked enquiringly at her receding back, as she raced ahead of me up an aisle. "It will do you the world of good," I said, "having him away." I hurried to catch up with her. She was brandishing several silver refill packets. She thrust them under my nose for inspection. "Dried potato," I laughed. "We always had that on our trips when we were kids."

"Is it horrible?" Julia asked. She had never once ventured out into the back country.

"You'd think so. But no, Isobel and I both loved it." I saw her face blanch momentarily, followed by a pink flush that rushed to colour her skin. Maybe she had visualised Isobel and I together by the camp fire, sharing out the potato mixture. Her face tightened, her lips assuming a flat line. She abruptly dropped the packets into the wire basket and coursed ahead between stacks of breakfast cereals. I caught up with her as she tried to decide between two types of porridge.

"I can't remember whether Graham prefers Creamota or Rob-Roy." she said. She looked at me fleetingly, as if she immediately appreciated the futility of the question.

I shook my head. "It's got to be Rob Roy don't you think? He'll think Creamota is for softies . . ."

She smiled. "You've got him taped! You're from a different generation Gerry. Maybe these days, you don't stay with a partner who is so over-bearing. But in our day, you were expected to stay and make the best of things. History binds us together – even difficult history."

I knew this to be true. Isobel had been my informer - there had indeed been 'difficult history.' This wasn't just the fact of being married to a pompous ass. I searched Julia's face, but her eyes had glazed over. She was turning away to walk towards the cashier. I hurried along behind her. Catching up, I put a hand on her shoulder. "What do you mean, 'difficult history'?"

"Let's not talk about it," she said, keeping her back to me. "It's best to let sleeping dogs lie." Her tone was resigned and it left me in no doubt that the continued pursuance of answers would be fruitless. I heaped the groceries onto the counter as the cashier moved to score up the prices on the till. Julia and I stood by silently, hearing the clatter of the keys and the pleasantries of the grocer. With a final flourish, the till rang and the drawer flew open. Remembering my new wealth, I dug into my wallet, emerging with a fist full of dollars. Julia looked at my effort, her mouth ajar. "No, no," she said. "You don't need to pay, you're my son."

I shrugged my shoulders, re-housed the money and moved off with the trolley

We were up at five-thirty. Julia had a pot of porridge ready, Rob-Roy as it happened. Graham was bustling about, hunting inside cupboard doors for keys, and emerging from the garden shed with a torch, pocket knives and firelighters. When he sat down with us for breakfast, Julia asked us how many times we had attempted Mt Cotterel. Graham smiled at the memory.

"This will be our fourth," he said.

"The first time we sort of tried to go straight up this steep rock face," I said. "But it became too difficult."

"It became a technical climb," Graham said. "But we were just foot sloggers. We were technically inept."

"The second time it rained," I said, buttering some toast. "We woke up to a red sky." I looked at Graham. "And you said, 'red sky in the morning, it's the shepherds warning.' And sure enough . . ."

"The third time. . . I don't recall?"

"It was a repeat of the first. We found a route up through the rock face, right to the ridge. But the ridge is razorback, gendarmes everywhere. It's damned dangerous. That's when we figured out the route had to be right round the backside of the mountain. Richard and I went across the low point of the range and saw an approach to the summit from behind. We'd misunderstood the guide book."

"There is a guidebook?" Julia asked.

"There are about four lines written in an old 1950's National Park book. Cotterel is not a popular tramper's mountain. There's no track up it. Only one or two parties would go there each summer. That's what makes it kind of special."

Apart from the gentle cracking sound of toast cooking, silence fell at the table. The rush of enthusiastic dialogue was suddenly almost an embarrassment. The marks of animation in Graham's face changed to those of returning composure. He rose from the table, excusing himself and left the room. Julia looked at me slightly cross-eyed. "Just for a few minutes . . . the mask slipped" she said. She screwed up her face and shrugged her shoulders.

I knew what she was alluding to. For a minute or two we were a 'normal' family. It was as though the exposure to such ordinariness had given Graham an unpleasant shock. He must have felt like he'd jumped out of a plane without a parachute. In the following moments, he had quit the scene abruptly, to seek the shelter of his office.

I thanked Julia for breakfast and went upstairs to fill the top of my backpack. Once I had secured the straps, I took my walkman tape player off the bedside table and clipped it to the belt around my jeans. I presumed that there would be intermittent banter between father and son, but also long periods of communing with nature. I would be able to drift away with my headphones.

I vacillated for thirty seconds or so, but I really only wanted one cassette tape for the trip. The one I chose, I had thrashed to death for twenty years. My hesitation in choice related to a realisation that I had only recently begun to escape from the grip of the Byrdsian sound – since my success in fact. However, I was in a mood to indulge in some nostalgia – to touch base with where it had all began. After all, I had just banked several hundred thousand dollars. U.S dollars! And Notorious Byrd Brothers had been my definitive musical injection. It had been a stimulant – and a tranquilliser! Rendering euphoria and delusions of grandeur – but also hallucination, inertia, catatonia . . .

I clattered downstairs to the front door. Graham frowned when he saw me. From the purple headband containing my flowing hair, to the walkman clipped on my belt, I was the image of everything he didn't want me to be. "Cotterel, here we come," I said, hoping to divert attention away from my flower power appearance.

"You'll be too hot in jeans," Graham said looking at Julia, as if for support.

"I have to wear jeans," I lied. "It's part of my culture."

Graham expelled some air and lugged his backpack through the open door. The street was still dark, although to the east the sky was lightening fast. He quickly had the Vanguard backed out from the garage and parked right outside the front door. We dumped our packs into the boot. Graham went round to the driver's door while I ventured to the passenger side. I gave Julia a kiss on a cheek before turning to open the door. I hesitated, reconsidering my farewell. I went back round to envelop her in my arms. It was then that I whispered in her ear, something about Francis Urquhart. I told her that I knew all about him . . . and her.

Even in the semi-darkness I saw the blood pulsing through her face. Her eyes were blazing and her features sharpened. "What do you know?" she asked.

"Isobel told me," I murmured. I kissed a cheek and broke away for the car, wondering if I had overplayed my hand. Was it necessary to disturb her?

As for Graham, he must have said his goodbyes earlier, since he had already fired up the ignition without saying another word.

We did a U-turn on Nile Street and waved out to Julia in farewell. I watched her out the back window until she was indistinguishable from the grey backdrop. I imagined the racing thoughts going on behind her fine boned face. She would be wary of me, knowing that I harboured knowledge of her secret past.

Well at any rate, she could look forward to three days without Graham's boom and bluster. That was more than I could claim. I had him sitting only a couple of feet away. We were now on Waimea Road, the main route south out of town. The gun-metal dawn was slowly lifting and a soft mist enclosed the hilltops. To the west, an indistinct moon dipped towards the horizon.

Inside the car, the numbers glowed green on the wooden dash. I stole a look at Graham's face. The illumination made his cheeks a sickly colour. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, his jaw clenched. What an unlikely pair, I thought. The redneck and the jingle jangle music man. We came up alongside my old primary school. Standing there, out of season, upon the parched school field, was an old rickety goal post. I was amazed that it was still there. I recalled the days of twenty years before – the endeavour of trying to place kicks between its uprights. And I shrank abruptly before a shot of lucidity – the pale fleshy cheeks of a young boy and the onset of a virulent infection.

Chapter 4

I had this friend for a while. He lived farther along Nile Street, the son of a prominent lawyer. Oliver his name was, and we used to walk to school together. Although there was a school in our street, our respective parents had elected to send us to a 'better' school, quite a few blocks away. At first it was by accident that Oliver and I walked in company. We might find ourselves in close proximity, somewhere along the way. As time went by our friendship began to firm, such that at 8.20 each school day, I came to expect his quiet tap on the front door. When school was released we would dawdle home, often stopping by at the sports-field, to kick a rugby ball about, or to shoot for goal over the rickety posts.

Yes, that same rickety goal post that had provoked my recollection. The time that I remembered would have been in the winter. Even so, on the day in question, it was rather warm and sunny. At three o'clock, as all the children streamed out of the school, Oliver and I diverted down to the sports-field, carrying with us his leather rugby ball. We ran over to the goal posts, three lengths of gnarly manuka, nailed together and dug into the ground. The crossbar was not quite level. In fact the whole arrangement appeared rather skewed. As we dropped our bags at the base of a post, I noticed that the short sprint across the field had left Oliver out of breath. He lay on his back for a while, until the heaving of his chest subsided. When he had recovered, we went to opposite sides of the goalpost and began our game – drop kicks and place kicks at goal. After ten minutes had passed he walked towards me with the ball. "I'm not feeling well," he said. "I think I'll go home. But you can stay and use the ball if you like." I shook my head as I came up to him. He was always a pale looking kid, but that day his face was even more washed out.

We walked home in silence. Halfway home he stopped, his eyes blinking, as if to shut out the afternoon light. "Can you carry my bag?" he said. I was bemused by this request – a kid so sick that that he couldn't carry his own bag. I began to formulate a response, to make fun of his forlorn plea. But I noted the glazed appearance of his eyes, the quiet dyspnoea. These observations silenced the partly formed jest. I took his bag from him, and we carried on, he with his head bowed, as if to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. We got to my house first. I volunteered to keep going – to carry the bag right along to his house. He contrived a weak smile and said no, he would manage. I watched as he set off along the pavement, his bag almost touching the ground, his flannelette school shirt half falling out at the back.

Naturally I didn't think about him again that day. I became quickly distracted by the prospect of Julia's afternoon tea. The scent of recently poured tea, the sound of the Archers on the radio, and the sight of fresh baking – that was my expectation. And Julia's facial expression, lightening with pleasure at my return home.

The next day I awoke bathed in sweat, hot and nauseated. I called out to Julia and she was instantly attentive to my needs. She brought me a cold flannel to soothe my brow and a bowl of warm soapy water to bathe my sweating torso. A tall glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice appeared on my bedside table. A transistor radio, tuned to the local radio station was set down beside the juice. She buffed up my pillows and I lay back like a prince. Graham breezed in but seemed unconcerned about my fever. He made some quip about it being an easy way out of a bit of hard work. Soon there was the closing sound of the front door, as the surgeon departed brusquely for work.

Some times when I was unwell I would panic at the thought of losing Julia. "You're going to live forever, aren't you Mum?" I'd ask.

"Of course darling," she would reply. But I knew it was a lie.

I lay listening to the radio. In the morning it was hard going. The shopping program with Eileen – wonderful cosmetics here – a bargain pullover there. The voice grated. I asked for the toy box and got it. I wasn't feeling too bad. A sore mashed up head and a foul taste in my mouth. It didn't stop Julia planting kisses all over my face. I took all the miniature aeroplanes (collected from cereal packets) and flew them about my head, making the appropriate sounds out the side of my mouth. They were all turboprops then – no jets to speak of. There were Viscounts, Fokker Friendships, Lockheed Electras . . . Close to midday I was getting tired of being ill. I stood up rather shakily and went to the doorway. There was no sound in the house and I wondered if Julia was out in the washhouse. Assuming that to be the case, I went gingerly down the stairs to the lower hallway, in search of more exciting toys. I was about to enter the living room when the phone rang. Frozen to the spot, I waited for something to happen. I heard Julia's footsteps coming through a back doorway that led into the kitchen. She picked up the phone, showing herself to be immediately familiar with the person to whom she spoke. A respectable acquaintance I guessed. I could tell by the accentuations of her voice. She was quite adept at shoving half a plum into her voice box if required.

Abruptly though I experienced a chill. It was Julia's sudden exclamation. "What!" she cried.

There was an eerie silence as the other person elaborated on the news. I knew that 'what!' It was the hallmark of astonishing news. Almost certainly bad – at worst a death.

"He was such a sweet boy," Julia said, her voice tremulous.

I fled then. It was a death and I knew damn well who it was. I raced up the stairs and slid between the sheets, curling into a fetal position. Not being absolutely sure about the content of the news, I went into a defensive mind state. Surely it wasn't Oliver who had died.

Shortly afterwards Julia appeared in my room. She said nothing about the phone call, but her demeanour had changed; there was no doubt about that. I could see the fear in her eyes as she ran a hand across my forehead and asked me if I was feeling alright. Then she ran off down the stairs and I heard the kitchen door closing. I had no doubt she was using the telephone again. I lay in a trance, staring at the shapes of light on the ceiling. I was waiting for something to happen. An hour must have past before the front door flew open. The event I was waiting for was close at hand. Graham's footfalls resounded in the hall before he also disappeared behind the closed kitchen door. I could vaguely discern muted conversation emanating from their kitchen retreat. Shortly they appeared in my room, Graham in front with Julia half hidden behind him.

"Gerry . . . I'm sorry to have to say this to you. . . . Your friend . . . Oliver . . . He died today. . . . He got very sick and died in hospital."

I nodded. I remained composed, because I already knew. In a way it was a relief to have it confirmed. Oliver White was dead. I would never see him again.

It was meningitis that got him. That night I had carried home his bag, he had gone into the hospital. By morning he was dead. I could imagine how he would have looked, lying there dead, as the cool light of dawn seeped through his hospital window. His face fixed and waxy, the mouth half open – his flaxen hair falling back onto the pillow. His mother would have kissed his forehead shortly after death, taking away with her forever that soapy Oliver smell.

When Graham came to tell me the bad news, he also announced that I was to receive a prophylactic dose of penicillin. The injections were in my backside, and I yelled out, screwing my face into the pillow. All afternoon, Julia kept coming in to see me, enquiring of my symptoms. Did I have a headache? Was it painful to look at bright light? Was my neck stiff and sore?

By nightfall my fever had subsided. Out of danger, I was left to dwell on the day's events. There would no longer be that quiet tap on the front door before school anymore. My stomach hollowed as I contemplated the fragility of life. The presence of my friend was with me one day, and gone forever the next. I stared at the angles of my room, my mind stalking a meaning for death. Over and over I considered the bald facts. Oliver White is dead. Oliver White is dead. Anyone can die anytime. A child can die. I can die.

Eventually I fell asleep. In my dream his death was a falsity. I dreamed that school was out – we were goal kicking again. He hadn't died at all. I was excited about that. It seemed only fair that he had been granted life again. It was shocking to wake up and reabsorb the truth. He really was dead.

I lay all day in silence, numbed by the turn of events. By the end of the day I was ready to seek diversion. I turned on the radio, happening onto 'the top ten at five.' I felt a stirring of spirit at the prospect. I was beginning to get affected by music at the time. Up until then, music had been something Graham inflicted on us, usually on a wet Sunday. Mostly he listened to classical or opera music. He could play a few popular jazz tunes on the piano but I'm sure he thought they were a bit of inoffensive fun and that the classics were the music for a man of his intellect.

Graham might have forbidden 'the top ten at five.' However, he seldom got home from work until six o'clock. I found myself becoming addicted to the style of 1965. My heart would jam in my throat if the sound was right. The right sounds were Ticket to Ride, Five O'clock World, Groovy kind of Love, California Girls, Mothers little Helper, Walk away Renee, Mr Tambourine Man . . .

The latter song became a potent trigger. It is impossible to know precisely why that particular group of voices, why that type of production (with the electric twelve string) got inside me and took possession. Like any embryonic obsession, its onset would have been insidious, growing and reinforced by repetitive exposure.

Like any child of my generation, the new musical experience started with the Beatles. Isobel had rushed into my room one day after school. "Come through to my room," she said. "I've got a copy of Help!"

"Eh? You've got what?"

"I've got a Beatle's record, dummy!"

I followed her across the passage. On her bed was a flat square object wrapped in brown paper. "I haven't unwrapped it yet," she said. She put an arm around my slight shoulders and adopted a benevolent expression. "I saved it so you can watch."

We jumped up onto her bed, to sit cross legged either side of the parcel. She looked at me, head to one side, closed mouth smile, as she picked up the record. I was clearly about to witness something really important. She ran a fingernail under the sellotape at one end of the parcel. With the flap released, she began to slip the white record sleeve out onto the palm of a hand. When it was fully out, she passed it straight over to me. "Are your hands clean?" she asked.

I didn't answer. I stared at the figures conducting semaphore poses on the front cover.

"That's George, that's John, that's Paul and that's Ringo," she said, indicating each individual with an outstretched finger. "Look there's photos of them on the back. She forced the sleeve over against my resisting grasp.

"That one looks like Margo," I said, pointing at a photo. Isobel frowned. It was a close up of Ringo apparently. She grabbed the sleeve away from me and let the circular disc slide out of its plastic bag. At the sight of the black vinyl, I reached out to touch the etched groove in its facing surface.

She whipped the disc away, up behind her head. "Fingers!" she admonished. She showed me how to hold the disc by its edge. I held it between two sets of outstretched fingers, rocking it back and forth to see how the light reflected off the grooves. The blue label had a symbol on it, like the one for the English pound. Salivation began to take hold - I was forced to swallow. "Right, now we've got to ask mum if we can play it." Isobel said.

"Well . . . better to play it now, while your father is at work," Julia said, when we accosted her in the kitchen. "Where did you get it?" she asked, her brow furrowed.

"I saved up for it," Isobel said. "Everyone at school's got it."

Isobel was not very familiar with the gramophone. Julia showed her how to play the record. I pulled over a chair to stand on, in order to peer into the cabinet interior. I waited impatiently for the turntable to rotate. At last the stylus arm clicked and whirred, veering across to the edge of the disc. There was a crackling sound as the stylus lodged onto the smooth surface of the edge, before skidding into the groove. The opening chorus thrust into the room like a punch. Julia's eyes danced in their sockets, her mouth half ajar with mock horror.

Help, I need somebody,

Help, not just anybody,

Help, you know I need someone,

Help!

Isobel and I looked at each other. It was an affecting moment, the power of the new sound and the exchanged glance. Isobel's face appeared oedematous, her skin flushed with an orange-pink hue. She smiled and sucked in one corner of her mouth, as if she had been rendered childlike by being a captive of the music. Her upper torso began to gently rock back and forth and her eyes glazed over. Julia started to mouth something then stopped. She looked at both of us as if for an answer. I constructed what I believed to be a calming smile – a nine year old in touch with the new vibe.

The first track ended. I watched the stylus move through the low density area that led into the second song – The Night Before. Isobel came out of her trance as the electric piano introduction hit our ears. It seemed like the most sophisticated phenomenon one could conceive of. I felt important and worldly. Julia remained bemused, shaking her head as left the room. "What an earth will Graham think," she said as she departed.

"Let's dance," Isobel said. She pulled me off the chair onto the carpet. Holding my hands, she swung me about at arms length. During the slower You've got to hide your love away, she held me in close, right up against her warm body. I felt her nuzzling into the top of my head. I put my hands right around her waist and buried my face into her adolescent cleavage. The skin was soft, moist and salty. I breathed in deeply, savouring her to the full.

The last track on the first side was Ticket to ride. It was instantly familiar, a testament to our developing radio listening habits. Isobel threw back her head, mouth open – as if she was trying to swallow the sky. Hands on hips, legs ajar, she swayed on the spot. I stopped where I was and watched; fascinated by the way she seemed to be possessed by the music.

"Good Heavens" A tall figure came striding into the room. I watched him with consternation. He whipped open the front of the cabinet and halved the output of the machine with a twist of the volume knob. "Where did this come from?" Graham asked, scooping up the record sleeve. "Look at that," he said, shaking his head at the picture of the Beatles on the sleeve. "What a terrible cacophony," he said gesturing to the sound speaker.

Isobel's face was red. But her lips were pale, almost transparent. She looked over at Graham with almost a contemptuous expression. "I suppose you want us to listen to Fiddler on the roof," she said.

Graham roared with laughter in response. "You're a cheeky devil," he said. "But you're absolutely right. Let's put it on." He crossed to the gramophone and pressed the button which resulted in retraction of the needle arm from the record.

Isobel raced across to do battle at the gramophone but Graham fended her off in rugby style with the palm of a hand. Isobel entered into the spirit of things and stepped backward enacting a dramatic collapse. She crashed to the floor, coming to lie face down, pulling at the carpet with mock angry frustrated fingers.

"This isn't music," Graham said. He picked up the sleeve and slipped the Help disc inside. He looked at the pictures on the back cover. "They look like girls," he said. He put Fiddler on the roof on to the turn-table mat..

When he had left the room, I got down on the floor and crawled over to Isobel, the annoyance in her face slowly seeping away. I lay beside her, my body pressed up against hers. She half turned her face away from mine, sighing deeply. I buried my nose into the body of her hair, drawing comfort from the familiarity of its fragrance. I put an arm up over her back, my fingers kneading into the far away axilla. After a time she rolled to face me, her uppermost arm lying up the centre of my back, her lips pressed against my forehead, singing softly. We lay there together, as the room darkened. Cold seeped into the room, an invisible tide that brought me to push in closer; seeking more of this feminine envelop, to escape the chill and the sense of frustration. Why were parents so afraid of the new music?

From a distant recess came the sound of raised voices – Julia and Graham. Both Isobel and I stopped breathing, inclining our heads to try and hear all the better. Graham's tirade against a new youth culture was easily discernible. Of Julia's response, I could only pick up occasional words. The majority of her discourse was muffled by the intervening walls. Graham's speech must have become more personally directed. He must have said something significant – a barb of much potency. For the response was swift and disturbing. There was a retort, and a sound of smashing china. There was a muffled oath, and a door slammed, followed by quiet throughout the house. All I could hear was the gentle movement of air, in and out of Isobel's mouth and nose. I had never before been witness to Julia showing such emotion, and I was disturbed by the violence of her antagonism. What did it all mean? Clearly she had been defending our right to the new music, but even a child could deduce that there was more behind the vehemence of her response than the issue of generational differences in taste

Later, there was contrition. Julia appeared in Isobel's room. I was lying on her floor, staring at marks on the ceiling. "Your father says you can have the record back," Julia said. Isobel, who lay with her back to Julia, said nothing. Julia cleared her throat. "And you're going to have your own record player. You will be able to listen to music in your room – without disturbing your father."

"Our own record player," I said, jumping into the air. "Wow."

Isobel took longer to warm up. She rolled towards us, onto her back. She put her arms up behind her head. "He was mean," she said.

Julia looked at Isobel without speaking for a few moments. She yawned and then spoke. "Your father is a bit old fashioned," she said. "But he means well. He has much to carry in his head."

I had no idea what this last sentence meant. I'm sure Isobel didn't either. I knew my father had an important and busy job. But I had seen other important fathers as well. Some of them seemed quite accommodating of the new youth culture.

When Julia had gone, Isobel jumped off the bed. She grabbed me by the shoulders. Stridently she whispered. "Yes!"

In the spring, there was a family reunion in Wellington. Graham's parents had been married for fifty years. His brothers and sisters gathered from all parts of the country to celebrate the occasion. The function was to take place in a small hotel on The Terrace. Most of the extended family had accommodation in the hotel. Graham however, had elected for the family to stay in a separate motel elsewhere in the city.

An evening wind rattled the windows as the family dressed for the big occasion. Richard appeared from his room, seemingly a carbon copy of Graham. It was the slicked back hair, jet black, neatly parted to the side – the dark sports coat and grey trousers. Graham had his Australasian College of Surgeon's tie knotted at his neck, while Richard wore the navy and sky blue stripes of Nelson College. Julia had an emerald coloured below knee dress, her neck bedecked with a cluster of pearls. As for myself, I felt a real turkey in my Sunday school clothes – grey shirt, grey shorts and grey socks. How could I avoid a grey personality? I knew enough of my vivacious cousins to be certain that the Nelson Davenports were going to look very staid. For Isobel the anguish was even more acute. As an adolescent caught up in the sweep of Beatlemania, she was desperate not to appear out of touch. Isobel was far from happy in her navy skirt and white blouse. Her initial choice of clothes, inclusive of a miniskirt, had been immediately rejected. Returned to our bedroom to change, her face pulsed with anger. "Why have we been given such an uncool father?" she lamented. She ripped off the skirt and smacked it down on a bed.

We negotiated our way through the big city traffic to The Terrace. At the wheel of the Vanguard, Graham missed a couple of turns and at one point we found ourselves driving down a narrow one way street the wrong way. I was wedged in between Isobel and Richard on the back seat. Isobel was sighing and raising her eyes to the ceiling – mortified by the inept provincial father who didn't know his way around the capital city. In contrast, Richard's face betrayed no emotion. He looked out his side window at the passing cityscape, his facial expression unchanging, his hands clasp together upon his lap.

We found a park close to the hotel. I gazed up at its four stories in wonder. In my home town, a four story block was revolutionary. In the foyer, the beer soaked carpet pricked my imagination. Entering a lair of socialites and boozers, I felt worldly and important. And who should we run into first but Cousin Annabel. Long blonde hair, Beatle's fringe, dress boots and jeans – she was right in our faces. Annabel Davenport – wow! Isobel's mouth was half open as she followed Annabel's every word.

"Hey, it's grous to see you all again," Annabel said with a lop sided smile. She embraced Julia in a big hug. "Wow hasn't Isobel grown up," she continued, committing Isobel to a deep crimson flush. Richard stood erect, like a new private on parade. He was older than Annabel, but light-years behind in street sophistication. He was as cold as a slab of granite – almost inanimate. Annabel seemed unaffected by our inertia. She crushed me with her embrace. "You're still a blondie," she said. Turning to the others she said, "Isn't it amazing, all the hair colours. Richard is so dark; Isobel is brunette, and Gerry almost white!" A fragrance similar to incense surrounded me as she sped off. Other relatives to fete had begun appearing off the street and we left the foyer and climbed the stairs to the first floor. French doors led into a function room. Graham's father appeared. His name was Baring Davenport. Tall, upright and hairless, he pumped Graham's hand in a white knuckle clasp. "The lad's in the fifteen," he grunted – half query, half statement.

"Yes," Graham said. "They gave Collegiate a pasting."

Baring looked beyond Graham to find Julia. "How's my delightful lady?" he asked. He rubbed the back of an offered hand against her fine cheekbones. Julia grinned and I could tell she liked the old man. Baring had slipped an arm around Julia's narrow waist. He half turned away from her – facing into the centre of the room. "Now where's Winnie? She's dying to see you." he said.

A gaggle of teenaged girls arrived to titillate Isobel. Surrounded, she seemed to forget about her unfashionable attire. Soon she was shouting and carousing with the best of them. It seemed that Isobel could escape her provincial cloak with little effort.

I hung around Julia's skirt for much of the early part of the evening. The throng of excited and voluble strangers had me red faced and vocally paralysed. My mouth was pulled shut by jaw muscles under high tension. I responded to questions with a meek yes or no, heat flashing through my face each time. Eventually Julia realised that she would have to be brutal, to save me from myself. She paired me off with cousin Peter, a year older in age, but several rungs up the ladder of self assurance. He had naturally curly hair, a posh accent and apparently no self-doubt. "I was first in class last term," he said. He wore his prep-school blazer and a pair of highly polished black shoes. "And I'm in the A rugby team," he continued.

"I'm in the B's," I said. He nodded his head, as though that was entirely to be expected. We went to inspect the dinner table which straddled the centre of the room beneath two large chandeliers. There was seating for fifty. I wondered who I would have to sit next to. My stomach shrank at the prospect – all that time and nothing to say.

We inspected the big gramophone player. It was housed in a lightly varnished cabinet with one large speaker covered in a cream Hessian cloth. Light jazz music emanated, barely penetrating the front rank of guests. "There's going to be pop music later," Peter said with an air of conspiracy. "My big sister's got lots of records."

"Isobel's got Help," I said with a rush.

"Really," he said. He looked a little annoyed. "We've got A Hard Days Night as well as Help."

Eventually he took me up to his family's apartment on the third floor. We closed the door and hurled a black rubber ball at each other for an hour until big sister Annabel came up and ushered us down to dinner. On the way down the stairs Peter had a thought. "My Mum says Uncle P.J got the job your dad always wanted."

"Ssh, don't be rude Peter," Annabel said.

In the dining room, all the younger children were being seated down one end of the long table, well away from Baring and Winifred, the aged celebrities. Now that we were back amongst the crowd, Peter lost interest in me. He and the other big city kids bantered freely while I sat silently chewing on a slice of tough meat. Isobel was two or three seats away across the table. Occasionally she glanced at me, but without a flicker of recognition. She was probably ashamed to have such a mute younger brother – and a mute older brother as well, for that matter.

Squirming inside, I was relieved when Uncle P.J stood up and called for silence. It was time to pay tribute to the half century of marital bliss. How they loved to talk, those big city doctors and lawyers. They all said what a great guy Baring was. And behind the great man, was the great woman – Winifred. The wives didn't make any speeches. But the more outspoken ones chipped in with comments like, 'get on with it then,' and 'he loves the sound of his own voice.'

The right of reply fell on Baring's shoulders. He claimed to be a simple man with not much ability. It seemed his success was indeed attributable to the great woman. However, none of us believed him and we never got to hear the other side of the coin from old 'Winnie.' She sat there smiling benignly through the whole proceedings. We all got to stand and drink a toast to 'Winnie and Baring,' after which the Uncles burst into a rendition of 'They're such jolly good fellows,' followed by 'Auld Lang Syne.' As the voices faded away, the youngest and most energetic of Barings' sons, Uncle James, strode over to the gramophone. The jaunty 'In the mood' filled the room, and all the Uncles scurried around the table edge to offer hands to their respective wives. Together they joined Winnie and Baring for a jolly romp on the dance floor.

After a while the 'oldies' ran out of steam and retired to a drawing room. Annabel didn't waste any time. The opening chord of A Hard Day's Night tore through the air like a rifle-shot. All the teenagers began twisting and shaking across the carpet. Myself, I was halted by the power of the music. I clung to the vibrant noise in a state of suspended animation – only my eardrums were active. During the quieter numbers, the teens talked and drank like real adults. I was impressed by their style. I hoped that one day; I too would be similarly cultured. Even Richard was beginning to say things like, 'yes' and 'no,' and to nod and shake his head. With Annabel around, one had little choice. She could open up the most resistant of beings – a well oiled opener battling a rusty can of baked beans.

Drunk with sophistication, I circled the dancers to get closer to the gramophone. I had never before heard music so loud. I watched the speaker cloth flapping in and out. I watched the stylus running along the record groove. It was running through the last track of A Hard Day's Night. As the last cymbal crashed, and the final ringing of guitar strings faded away, Annabel came over to change the disc. She smiled broadly, her teeth glistening. "Do you like the Beatles?" she asked. Apparently not expecting an answer, she replaced A Hard Day's Night with another disc and activated the play lever. The chiming guitar of the introduction was instantly familiar to me, the blueprint of Mr Tambourine man now well laid down from repeated exposure to radio airplay. Being a recent number one hit song, Mr Tambourine Man galvanised the teens back onto the dance floor. I noticed that this time, the dancers had attained a dream-like quality. They floated about the room independently, like gulls in a midday thermal. Their eyes were glazed and their arms were spread out like wings. It was a preview of the hippie years that were soon to follow. As the song faded out and was replaced by its successor, the dancers depleted in numbers. I however, remained fully alert to the music. The fact that it was emerging from a gramophone of some depth and thrust, added to the wonderment – I was transformed. Song after song came forth, with the same jingle-jangle guitar and distinctive vocal harmonies. The layers of musical notes seemed to enter my gut, to bind with my soul – each new song a reinforcement of the moment produced by its predecessor.

I picked up the record sleeve. The cover was black with a centrally placed shiny sphere. Distorted within the sphere were the five band members, tall, long legged, wearing high heeled boots and left of centre attire. On the back cover was a long typed exposition beneath a black and white photograph of the band at play. On the top left corner were the words, 'Annabel Davenport.' She went right to the top of the charts as far as I was concerned. Annabel! She was the sophistocat of them all. She was the conduit for this intoxicating sound, The Byrds!

Ensuing events took a turn, in an unexpected way. The term 'Generation gap' came into common parlance in the ensuing years, and that night I witnessed the phenomenon at close range. The Byrds had been replaced on the turntable by something quite different. The new long-player was called The Rolling Stones Now! The sound was much harder than the previous two records and the singer affected quite an air of derision. The dancers had returned to the floor in force. Their faces were set in an almost arrogant way and they danced together in a confrontational manner. Distracted I didn't notice a tall figure standing beside me, staring at the cavorting figures. "This is astonishing, "he said, to no one in particular. "This isn't music. It's a soundtrack for the asinine. . . "

Presently we were joined by Uncle Bob, a short tubby fellow with a lively sense of humour. He had a keen eye for the ridiculous and Graham's reaction in the banquet hall was right up his street. "The youth of today eh Graham!" he said. He made a sweep of the room with an outstretched arm. "Still, you can't expect them to dance to some Viennese waltz. It's not like in our day. They won't follow along like sheep anymore I'm afraid."

Graham picked up the sleeve of the offending record. He waved it in front of Bob's face. "You can't tell me that this stuff is good for them. It's licensed anarchy, What on earth is a reputable company like Decca doing?

Back in Nelson, I badgered Julia constantly. I wanted Mr Tambourine Man. The problem was I had no money – not enough anyway. I hadn't managed to scrape together a single pound yet. I saw an opportunity one day, as I hung close to her skirt in the supermarket. "Issy's got two records," I said. "I haven't got a single one. "I was way too young for a long player she reasoned. Isobel was a few years older. I held a trump card however. Julia had already sensed that I had an unusual affinity with music. At home there was a piano in the living room. Both Richard and Isobel had received lessons over the years. I often sat down at any time of day, and improvised with the keys. With some trial and error, I was able to pick out a tune by ear. Sometimes I would sense someone beyond the doorway listening. Maybe it was the drifting aroma from a hand held cup of coffee. Or through the crack in the door, I might see the pale blue of Julia's dressing gown. She knew she had produced something special, a child with an innate ear for harmony. It was this curiosity of hers that enabled me to lead her to the frontage of a local record store. Stopped at the doorway, Julia looked at the window display, her eyebrows knitted. I'm sure she had never encroached upon such an establishment before. I looked up at her, feeling a little apprehensive myself. Her eyes shifted down upon me and her face softened. She took my hand and pulled me into the shop. Inside there was a bewildering array of shelves, crammed with record sleeves. Above on the walls, posters of the latest stars competed with a row of pinned up record covers. Julia approached the man behind the counter. Her son, she said, had his heart set on a record.

"What's it called then boyo?" the man said, leaning forward over the counter.

I shrank behind the edge of Julia's skirt. "Mr Tambourine Man," I whispered.

The man's eyebrows shot skyward. He left his sanctuary behind the till, and led us to the appropriate section of record bins. He flicked through some covers. I watched, my heart speeding. I saw the black cover appear. I tugged at Julia's skirt. "That's it," I said. Julia was already clicking open her purse.

Back home Isobel wasn't happy. "How come he just gets it bought for him," Isobel protested. "Mr Tambourine Man – just like that. I was going to get that record."

Julia said something about me not having money of my own and that I was going to do some jobs for her. This hadn't actually been discussed with me, but I was astute enough to see that she was trying to placate the annoyed sister.

Once she had calmed, Isobel forgot about the ownership issue and led me up the staircase. It was time to employ her tiny record player – the one Julia had bought to keep the irritating pop music out of Graham's hearing. I held my first record proudly. "No I want to put it on," I said when Isobel reached out for the disc. She looked at me and frowned, but moved reluctantly to one side. I slid the disc out of its cover. The black vinyl was shiny and clean. I absorbed the distinctive orange CBS label as I threaded the centre hole over the turntable spike.

"Pull the arm to the side," Isobel said in a waspish tone. I did so and the disc began to rotate around slowly, speeding up gradually until it settled at 33 revolutions per minute. "Set it down on the record," Isobel said. There was a crackling sound as the primitive stylus ran in the groove. The twelve string introduction came forth and my heart filled. What a moment – an impressionable boy with his first record.

Chapter 5

After half an hour I switched the walkman off. For a start, the rumble of the car engine was encroaching on the sound quality. Secondly, the cold grey of dawn was over and in its place was a soft kaleidoscope of early morning colours. It was surely worthy of comment.

After I let loose with the appropriate superlatives, Graham didn't look at me but spoke to the windscreen. "Emerged from your cocoon," he said.

I looked away at my side window and made a face at the reflection there. Gradually the farmlands with their sagging barns and burnt tree stumps gave way to clumps of native bush, rocky stream beds and encroaching hillsides. The hills were growing taller. At first, the bush made its way right to the skyline ridges, decorating an undulating mass of green spurs and shady gullies. But as the hills grew in height, the highest slopes no longer carried the deep green beech trees. Instead steep grasslands, the colour of hazelnut shells dominated the upper reaches. I absorbed each of these familiar unfolding mountain ranges with delight. Within my belly, a seed of well-being was planted and beginning to grow. I couldn't wait to don my boots and climb up to the lofty heights again. In my peripheral vision I could see Graham's countenance also losing tension. He began to drum fingers on the steering wheel and to quietly hum an obscure tune.

After a steady climb the road achieved a plateau. Here the land had been cleared to produce large paddocks that encroached into the original mountain beech forest. The road terminated where it met the Marlborough-West Coast highway. Turning right, we accelerated down an incline of new seal as the road began to dip towards our target, Lake Rotoiti. For a moment, the road ahead was running straight towards the heart of the highest mountains. Mt Cotterel was visible, right at the apex of converging East and West ranges.

"There it is," Graham said. We swept into the St Arnaud township, a scatter of houses nestled on an ice-age terminal moraine. We turned into our drive, a stony cause-way that led to the lake-house. I left the confines of the car and stood amongst knee high grasses, inhaling the sweet smell of the woodland. It was the fragrance of former family holidays. I recalled a child in the 1960's, lifted by his surroundings and filled with a lust for action, running through a field of rippling grass, sprinting and sliding amongst the evening sand flies. I contrived the child to have just consumed some of Julia's chocolate cake pudding, his favourite dessert . . . a satisfied stomach in a garden of plenty.

I lifted my gaze, and the memory faded. Before me, the corrugated iron lake-house stood resolute – a testimony to a builder's victory over the ravages of time. Graham unlocked the only door with a huge key – the type you might imagine used in a psychiatric institution. Pushing through the big heavy door into darkness (the drapes were all pulled); I was assailed by the stale musty atmosphere of the large living area. Graham flicked on the lights in order to retrieve a key for the garage, where the boat was stored.

Looking around the living area, my thoughts encompassed my far away siblings. It was here, in this enclosure of corrugated iron, that we had our happiest of times. On holiday, it hadn't mattered so much that as a family we were rather solitary. One could feel comfortable in the quiet of a long summer's day – the gusting summer winds flaring and dying amongst the manuka. Looking down on the threadbare carpet, I recalled Isobel in dressing gown and nightie, stretched out before a humming one-bar heater, dealing cards, or setting up for a game of Monopoly. Julia would be watching us from an upright armchair, knitting or darning a sock. And Graham would occupy another armchair, his reactionary mind arrested – an open book upon his knees.

My daydream ended and I followed Graham out to the garage, helping to slide back the heavy rusted bar that locked the two doors together. The rod of flaking oxidised metal had held the two swing doors in place for upwards of fifty years. As the doors drifted open, a shaft of light lit the foredeck of the family dinghy, a plump plywood design that had come with the house. Typical of Davenport behaviour, it had never been given a name. But then, the naming process is a form of self-disclosure.

We grappled with the trailer, swinging and jerking it to achieve a coupling with the car. Methodically and without asking for assistance, Graham went about the remaining preparations. He located the Seagull motor, standing it up against a tree-stump to fill it with oil and petrol. He removed the spark plug, checking the gap before sanding the ends and spraying it with CRC. He located two rowlocks, hanging off a nail hammered into an internal garage wall. He inserted these through slots in the boat's thin gunwale, securing them to a handrail with wire.

From the car boot, I lifted a pack, intending to load it into the boat.

"Not yet," Graham said. "The weight will damage the bottom. We'll do that when the boat's in the water."

"Oh . . . Of course," I said.

The lake appeared calm as we rattled to a halt by a launching ramp. The atmosphere was almost balmy with a cicadas' roar in the trees – loud enough to force us to raise our voices. Sand flies flirted with our faces, some of them settling on skin, doomed to an early death under a crushing hand. There was no one else about – only ourselves and an encircling gaggle of ducks hoping for bread. After four pulls on the starter rope, the Seagull motor burst into life, filling the cockpit with acrid blue smoke. In our wake there lay a psychedelic oil-slick, a shameful marker of our passage.

The racket of the motor isolated Graham and I into separate worlds. As we slid up the lake, I took an apparent interest in the western shoreline, while his gaze was affixed upon the east. The passing bays and stony beaches, framed by beech and tough Manuka, were the habitat of my childhood summer days. Rather than risk the social milieu on the main beach, Graham would secret us away in the dinghy, his target a distant place of seclusion. Isobel and I would perch upon the front thwart, our legs hidden beneath the varnished triangle of deck at the bow. Silently, we would watch the target bay appear beyond the wavelets. At first it would be merely a slash of white between the water and trees, soon to reveal itself as an inviting slope of pebbles, partially shaded beneath an umbrella of leaves. Upon arrival, with a single bottle of beer placed to cool in the lake, Graham would search the shore for dry wood. He would build up a stack beside a circle of large gray stones. As the sun peaked in the sky, we would gather around with buttered bread, to receive a smoking sausage from his spitting frying pan.

At first, in the naivety of youth, our days seemed idyllic. But as our bodies felt the surge of adolescent hormones, so did our tolerance for seclusion diminish. I had watched as the teenage Isobel became restless, her top lip curling in derision. I too, succumbed to the rebellion disease myself, three or four years later. By then, as our dinghy put out from the main beach bound for some isolated cove, the excited laughter of gregarious children cut me to the quick. Diminished by this new realisation, I would hang my head and stare at the sodden floorboards, my anonymity now a prison.

I stole a look at Graham, his right hand vibrating on the steering arm, his face half turned away, watery eyes focused on a distant shore. Briefly resentment welled into my throat, an acidic regurgitation that threatened to become an acrimonious outburst. I tried to calm myself, revisiting the elation of my success. I closed my eyes and let the memory wash through me. 'We want your song,' the voice had said. The thrill had rocketed up and down my spine – a physiologic shockwave. I had felt weightless, barely able to speak, my throat engorging in a new ecstasy. Today, my melody was known far and wide across North America. How many kids of my era could claim such a triumph? I could never reclaim any lost youth, it was gone forever. But now, in these heady days, I was a winner. The song, created a year before its publication, was written for Joanna . . . 'We want your song,' the voice had said. I recalled coming off the immediate rush, a fist raised in triumph, dropping to my knees before Isobel, my eyes welling with tears. "Oh yes, yes, yes!" I croaked. She had come to me, clutching at my raised arms, her hair spilling down into my face. I had gently tugged her downward to the wooden floor, to roll about in exalted embrace.

As I travelled the length of the lake in my far flung country, a familiar ache came into my upper chest, like a chunk of apple descending the gullet. I was as far from Joanna as I could imagine. In visualising her face, I was brought to hear the strum of a guitar, and an overlay of mandolin. I was hearing my song. It fantasised about an unlikely scenario . . . a girl and her transistor radio in the cold climes of North America, hearing the new song for the first time – the song bearing a plea to her from a long lost lover . . .

Twenty years before, the early seeds of musicianship implanted and grew, and I hungered for my first guitar, the iconic symbol of the new music culture. Graham had come out with the expected resistance, his face portentous, forehead ridged and eyes blazing. "What about something cerebral like the Cello," he said. Julia acted the mediator. She wasn't often successful in changing Graham's mind, but when it came to my musical development she seemed to put in an extra effort. She sought and obtained the compromise solution. I could have a guitar in a year's time, provided I agreed to classical piano tuition first. Since there was no other route to my objective available, I went along with this plan. I doggedly followed the prescribed course, wringing a featureless but competent performance out of each weekly manuscript.

"Are you sure you want to be here Gerry," the music teacher said one day, after listening to another annihilation of Bach or Chopin. I assured him that, yes indeed, I did desire to be there with him, hunched over his dusty keyboard and cloistered in his grey music room. Until I achieved my goal, I was for all appearances, at his service. I would do just enough to keep him from boiling over. Come the day of the guitar though, I would drop Mr Barcarolle like a hot coal.

Christmas 1966: the big triangular box under the Christmas tree had me in a lather of anticipation. I lifted the lid and there it was. Six strings. The shiny varnished wood of the hard top – the lovely feminine curves in the body – the copper wound steel strings and a mellow, undamped ring with the first strum. I nursed it up to my room, away from the doubtful father. I turned it upside down. The wood of the flat back had a deep vivid stain, as if under painted with purple. The back of the long and curvaceous neck was longitudinally lined, like the plans of a newly drawn yacht. I opened the accompanying guidebook, my heartbeat quickening with anticipation. All morning I worked away, pushing my fingers into the positions required for the chords C, G and D. By midday Graham had had enough. He thrust his face around the leading edge of my door. "Any possibility of giving it a rest," he said.

After a half hour, the end of the lake was visible. The southern arm down which we were travelling, was narrowing. The two apposing mountainsides were closing in. A slash of yellow marked the termination of the still waters and the start of the sun-bleached tussocks of the valley floor. Our target, the rocky spire of Mt Cotterel, stood beyond the valley centre, a high point in the eastern range of a valley that curved westward. As we drew closer, I found its countenance an irresistible force. My dreams and regrets were squeezed by a rising excitement. The mountain was becoming, for the moment, the focus of my mind.

In the final moments, the lake edge seemed to race to meet us. As we pulled up to the landing stage, I recalled the excited babble of Isobel, when she too had started a similar journey, in quite the same manner, from the very same landfall twenty years before . . .

Chapter 6

It was the summer of 1965/66, when the family made its first sojourn to the back country. Julia declined to be part of the exercise. The process of living seemed to consume all her spare energy. To deliberately burn off more calories, by walking for miles and miles up some valley, was clearly absurd in her case. None of us attempted to persuade her otherwise – her urbanisation was an accepted fact. It didn't need further discussion.

Our arrival at the end of the lake, was somewhat later in the day compared with the trip Graham and I were to make twenty years later. The later arrival time was due to the fact that Graham and Richard had rowed the length of the lake to get us there. We had yet to purchase the smoky Seagull motor. Fortunately a moderate northerly wind had sprung up behind us, so that the dinghy was thrust forward by the chasing waves, a welcome addition to the combined thrust of the oars.

Isobel and I, occupying a cramped position in the bow, were both painfully stiff when it came time to climb out of the boat at journey's end. Graham was in a grouchy mood, tired from the hours of rowing, and worried by the pounding effects of the incoming waves. He yelled at Isobel and me to hurry out of the pitching craft. As he controlled the bow with the front rope, we scrambled awkwardly onto the rickety jetty, and then bolted for the gravel beach from which it protruded.

From shore we watched as Richard struck out into the throbbing lake, pulling mightily on the oars. He rowed around the end of the jetty and then pointed back into the shore, speeding inward amongst the whitecaps. "Come and help you two," Graham shouted, as he and Richard sought to beach the hull. Waves were smacking into the stern, sending gallons of water over the stern gunwale, soaking the white interior. We heaved with all our might, which wasn't much as far as Isobel and I were concerned. Graham's temporal veins were bulging, his face darkened from valsalva and irritability as he struggled with most of the weight. When the stern came clear of the pounding waves, he scooped out the unwanted water from the floorboards with a sawn off plastic bleach bottle, which enabled us to lift the boat higher up the beach. He pulled out the rowlocks and put them into a pile, along with the two oars and the bailer. We tipped the boat upside down, thereby concealing the gear underneath.

With the boat secure, we slung on our backpacks. My pack was light, only containing my sleeping bag; It wasn't long though before even that seemed like a dead weight.

There was a tramper's hut quite close to the jetty. Isobel and I were both keen to look inside. Our father gazed across at the edifice considering the request. As we looked, there was movement at a window. "No . . . There's someone in there," Graham said. He turned away and set off along the track. The sibling Davenports followed the father en-mass. The hut people were left uninterrupted, their habits and speech not sampled, their views on life unknown.

After five hours of toil, I was craving the end of the day – to be rid of the chaffing shoulder straps and the warm wet area where the backpack contacted the skin of my back. Isobel and I had long since ceased our ribald banter. I had fallen back a respectful distance behind her, allowing both of us enough solitude in which to wrestle with the discomfort of the foot slog. Despite the heat in the day, we walked in a pleasant shadow. The valley had closed in and the afternoon sun was filtered by a steep canopy of foliage layered up the western mountainside. In this semidarkness, ground ferns were predominant, a profusion of greens and browns, studded across the raw umber of the earth.

In a moment the ferns were gone, it was brighter and the beech trunks were less dense. Looking ahead, I saw relief at last – sunlight on a grassy meadow. This slash of light, though divided by a lattice of foreground branches and trunks, almost hurt my eyes, accustomed as I was to the flat light of the forest floor. Bedazzled, I emerged triumphant into the warm rays of revealed light, scratching at the transient itch of tussock grasses against my legs.

Graham and Richard had chosen a tent site on an elevated plateau close to the river's edge. They prepared to erect the tent while Isobel and I scurried off to find driftwood for a fire. Free of our backpacks, we raced across the tall grass like newborn lambs, dancing over the folds and corrugations of the field. Isobel dived down into a shallow gully and lay supine on the grass, chest heaving from the exertion. I fell down beside her, coming to rest my head across her outstretched arm. The grass at my elbows and backs of my legs, sharing its niche with a hydrophilic moss, was soft and slightly damp. Close to the ground, the air was heavy with a peaty, vegetable smell. We could hear the other two hammering in tent pegs. In my immediate view, her young breasts heaved beneath a crimson top. The angle of her neck was salty with sweat. Absently I sampled her skin with my tongue, at the same time draping an arm across her upper chest. Glancing up at her, I saw that her eyes were shut, the muscles in her face relaxed, the mouth closed but softly smiling. She opened an eye and laughed, rolling right on top of me, letting her hair fall about my face as she planted deft little kisses all over my young cheekbones. "Cheeky boy," she said. Her breath was hot on my forehead as she brushed back my hair with her fingers. We lay in this embrace for ten seconds or so before there appeared a shadow above us.

"Come on you two?" Graham said. He was laughing. "Get off your brother," he continued, "There's work to do. You're supposed to be collecting wood."

We took off in different directions, I to the riverbank, Isobel into the forest. I chose to entertain myself first, by racing twigs along the water's edge. I was fascinated by the whirlpools, eddies and backwash of the tumbling water. Fearing Graham's wrath, I began to hunt for firewood amongst the jumbled boulders and gravel of the river bank. It only took a few minutes to gather up enough for one load. I stumbled up the unstable bank to the edge of the meadow. The sun was dipping behind the western range and the air was suddenly full of marauding sand flies and flying beetles. I breathed through my nose for fear of inhaling one of the airborne beasts. I helped Richard build a roaring fire. The heat of the fire hurt my face, but it kept the bugs at a distance.

Graham, perched on a gnarly rotting log, was separating a line of sausages. He wondered where Isobel had got to. Darkness was seeping into the depth of the valley. He began to shout for her from where he sat. After five minutes with no result, he stood up, his knee joints cracking. "Hope she's not gotten herself lost," he said. He ordered a search party. Richard and I headed up river, while he strode off in the other direction.

After we'd gone a short distance, Richard stopped and pointed along the track. "You continue along here for a distance and I'll scour the riverbank." I carried along the dry narrow track. It was quite gloomy since the track had re-entered the bush and I felt a pulse of fear as I proceeded onward. Then there was a loud snap, like a gunshot in a dead still night. My body shocked to the jolt of adrenaline, my blood was firing along my veins. The figure of Isobel materialised from the darkness.

"It's only me," she laughed, stepping out onto the track. "Have you been sent to look for me?"

I scolded her for her intemperate actions. Graham would be wild with her. I pictured him slugging through the dank forest somewhere down-river.

"Well I needed some time alone," she said, hands on hips. "One day I'll be able to do what I like. He won't be able to stop me." She took my hand and we dawdled down the track back to the meadow. We sat down by the fire, poking at the embers with long sticks. Eventually Richard appeared beside us, having heard our voices through the trees. He volunteered to run down the track to inform Graham that Isobel had safely returned.

"That was bloody stupid," Graham said to Isobel, as he strode up to the campsite with Richard in tow.

"I felt like getting away from people," Isobel said. "Isn't that why we came into the forest?"

Graham looked at her as if in a new light. "That's very perceptive," he said returning back to his gnarly log, to resume the meal preparation.

In the morning the ground was laden with dew. The tall grasses were bent over in their morning pose, like the final bow at the ballet. Two paradise ducks swooped up the valley, their haunting cries quickly receding behind an intervening spur. The fire place was a dry black crater, a natural place to gravitate to, given the dampness elsewhere. I sat down on a smooth rock rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Above me a golden sheen was painting the eastern skyline. Mt Cotterel was up there somewhere, hidden behind a false ridge. I felt a yearning to run away up the valley, to live as a hermit, just myself and all the beauty around me. Maybe I could take Isobel with me. I thought of her warm salty sweat on the tip of my tongue, and the picture her breasts made, rising and falling after a sprint across the meadow. Behind me, I heard murmurings from the rest of the family as they awoke in the tent. My peaceful dream was over and it was time to prepare for our return down valley.

Back at the lake house, Julia was waiting. She seemed half drugged with sleep as Isobel and I clattered in through the heavy front door. We rushed to her, burying our faces into her jersey.

The summer proceeded in an amiable enough fashion. We stayed on at the lake-house for the rest of January. Graham helped me knock up a replica Star-boat on the big dinner table. We used pins and balsa-glue to bend the skin of the hull to its frame. As he worked with me, his breathing was heavy and sonorous through the flared nose. He had enormous hands and thickset fingers. Even so, he had a deft touch when working with the wood. His facility as a surgeon was revealed. We painted the yacht a bright red.

When we came to launch it, the Star boat sailed in a lovely straight line. I was consumed by its aesthetic appeal. It looked like the most beautiful thing on earth as it cut across the shimmering lake surface. At night I dreamed of having a fleet of replica Star-boats. I imagined a mass start from the side of the dinghy, white sails catching the wind – all heeling simultaneously in the gusts and accelerating away. And I, the master of ceremony, would race ahead in the dinghy to set a finish line half a lake width away. Heart in mouth, I would watch the frontrunners arrive, water sweeping over their decks as they powered into my waiting hands. I imagined all the beautiful hulls, lined up on stands on the floorboards of the dinghy - vermillion red, royal blue, racing green, brilliant orange, black . . . And all the white sails cracking in the summer wind.

In the last week of the school holiday, our mood began to alter. Apprehension began to seep insidiously into the family. For a start, Richard would soon have to leave, to attend the medical school in Otago. Julia was fretting about the imminent departure of her first boy, Already; she had broken down at the kitchen sink, becoming inconsolable as she worked her fears of loss into a fever. And Graham, the perennial novice at dealing with emotion, stood helplessly at the kitchen door, his voice high and incredulous as he absorbed her mind-state. Only Isobel seemed able to calm her down, standing behind her and rubbing the small of her back with delicate fingers.

For me, the end of the holiday meant the end of isolation. I would have to reacquaint myself with the vagaries of friendships – the imposition of peer-group. Used to solitude, or the comfortable presence of Isobel, the looming school days began to eat away inside.

Towards the end of our final week, we made our customary journey to a lonely lunch-spot, far along the eastern shore. The sky was a vivid blue, the brilliant light blinding in its intensity. The forest was limp in the fierce heat – the stony beach so hot that it couldn't be traversed without footwear. To the south, the mountains were virtually bereft of snow, the slate grey peaks shimmering behind a heat haze. After lunch, a light breeze sprung out of the north corner, bringing some relief from the cruel sun, and providing power for the gorgeous Star-boat. I tracked behind it, sprawled across a green lilo. The wind gusts began to firm, heeling the Star boat dramatically, so that its mast almost dipped in the water. The small amount of lead tacked to the keel was proving ineffective in the stronger breeze. Thus I loaded the windward side with stones, providing additional counterbalance to the heeling moment of the sails. Released from the shore with its crew of stones, the Star-boat took off at tremendous speed and I had to paddle furiously to keep up. I was unable to make much headway, the gap increasing, and before my eyes a catastrophe unfolded. A wake, the trail of a passing motorboat, swept to the shore, destabilising my Star boat. The counterbalancing stones were swept across the deck, down into the leeward side of the cockpit. The little yacht staggered as the force of the wind on the sails and the errant stones upset its balance. I watched it capsize, the submerged mast skewing up to windward, revealing the bright red of its bottom. At first I was unconcerned and I paddled at moderate pace towards the beleaguered vessel. However, I became aware of a disturbing development. The red topside was slowly disappearing beneath the waves. Choking with consternation, I flailed at the water with both my arms, in a bid to rescue my craft. I looked up again and it was gone. Arriving at the scene, I peered into the depths. For a moment I could see it – a flash of red and white beneath the irregular surface. In that split second, if I had dived, I surely would have saved it. But I hesitated, and even to this day, I think about that hesitation. My lovely Star-boat was lost forever. I hovered over the spot for a while, trying to catch a glimpse of where the vessel might have come to rest on the lake floor. But it was clearly too deep, and the water surface too rough, to allow any view. I could see only the deep green of a bottomless shaft of light. Despondent, I began to paddle the hundred or so yards back to the shore. I began to anticipate an unburdening of my grief on the family. I needed words of sympathy – from Julia – from Isobel. I stepped out of the rippling lake, indignant, dripping water over the stones. I found that my story didn't have the required listener. Julia turned her head towards me, but nothing seemed to register with her. She appeared to look right through me. And Graham was rolled away from her, his face buried in a book.

"There's been an argument, "Isobel whispered in an ear.

"What about," I hissed

"I don't know – something that happened years ago." She shrugged her shoulders and we wandered off along the stony beach, seeking better air.

A few days went by without incident. But on the second from last day of our holiday, it all happened again. It was shortly after lunch. The family members were sluggish, being as they were stricken with the task of digesting Julia's sumptuous pasta meal. Graham and Isobel were recumbent on their beds, while Julia finished off the kitchen clean-up with deft movements of a cloth. Richard was sitting in an old armchair. Julia went through to the master bedroom and there was indistinct conversation. However within minutes there was an eruption

"Graham!" The strident tone of Julia's call shook me. I was halfway up from the recumbent position when he burst out of the room. And she followed. A slanging match ensued. The names of Francis and Margot cropped up.

Isobel came across the room and grasped an elbow, propelling me outside with pressure from the other hand on the small of my back. We trekked down a narrow bush track to join the road to the lake-front. "Why do Mum and Dad argue like that?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. We left the road and began crossing a field to the water's edge.

"Is it to do with Margot?" I said.

"Maybe," she said. "They always argue on holidays."

I figured out that Isobel knew more than she was letting on. The sun emerged from behind a puffy afternoon cumulus. We lay back on the stony beach, the sun's rays beating down on our faces. I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the warmth. I felt fingers entwining with mine. Gently we exchanged hand pressure, silent as the final hours of our vacation slid away.

Richard duly departed for Dunedin, to commence his tenure at medical school. On the day of his leaving, we all piled into the Vanguard six, and Graham drove us to the Newman's Bus station. All the way there, Julia cried quietly, hanging her head in the front seat. Richard looked pale and uncomfortable. The time had come for farewell. Richard shook hands with Graham, Isobel and I. Julia dissolved into guttural sobs, as he held her awkwardly in embrace. He made his escape onto the bus. Isobel crossed to hold Julia as the air breaks gasped and the door closed with a smooth hydraulic sigh. The bus lurched out of its shelter, the left indicator blinking. We were left to savour a plume of diesel, and the sudden quiet of an empty shed full of echoes.

A few weeks went by and we soon adapted to the new set up without Richard. I didn't take much further interest in the lot of my parents, being absorbed by my re-acquaintance with school. When Richard did return, at the end of the first semester, it was all rather anticlimactic. I had been walking home from school, my shoes covered in the browns, reds and golds of decaying leaves. I walked into the kitchen to see Richard sitting on a chair. Home from University so soon? I was puzzled – and disappointed. I had hoped he would return as a clone of the fashion gurus of the day. That meant shoulder length hair and a Beatle fringe, tight jeans and winkle-pickers. Instead he was unchanged. I said hello awkwardly, grabbed a biscuit and trooped off to another room.

I remember well my first visit to the hospital. Graham's Aunt Daisy was on her last legs and we all trooped in to see her. Our footfalls echoed along the silent interminable corridor. It was night-time. In the waxed floor, the reflections of fluorescent tubes drifted underfoot one by one, until we ascended a long ramp to some swing doors. Graham held them open so that Julia, Isobel and I could pass through. A coarse brown carpet stretched out along the ward corridor to a nurse's station at the far end. A woman wearing a white uniform and veil arose and came to meet us.

"She's just woken up doctor," she said, "just this very minute."

She led us to a room, about halfway along the corridor. She stood aside to let us enter. She smiled down at me, her large round face a picture of benevolence. I braced myself for the jolt of the room's interior. A porcelain hand basin with a long swinging tap dominated one corner. A white set of draws, with quartz knobs and steel wheels, stood alongside the bed. On its formica top, there was a glass vase holding some yellow carnations. The iron bedstead itself was cantilevered in the middle, so that the top half of Daisy was elevated. Her blankets were thrown back so only her legs were covered. Her pyjama jacket was half open, revealing a large bra and rib anatomy like a zebra crossing down an emaciated torso. Julia went forward to kiss a cheek. The rest of us stood around the bed end, like freshman interns on a ward round.

"We've brought your niece and nephew to see you." Graham said.

Daisy looked across at us, but said nothing. There was a loaded silence, broken only by the muffled sound of voices from further down the ward.

"Come up and see Daisy," Julia said. "She wants to see you."

Isobel shot forward, kissed a cheek, and then bolted back to the bed-end. Julia looked at me expectantly. I dragged myself forward to the head of the bed. Close to Daisy, there was a rancid musty smell. I could see the outlines of mandible, maxilla and zygoma beneath the waxy pale skin. I stood staring, leaning against the mattress of his bed. Her eyes flicked over me transiently, before looking away into the distance, beyond the end of the bed. "Can you bring me in some lemonade Julia?" she asked.

We stayed for ten more minutes of stilted conversation. On the pretext that Daisy needed more rest, Graham ushered us out. Glancing back, I got my final view of her, her semi propped up figure immobile on the bed, the eyes transfixed onto the opposite wall, the face solemn and expressionless. If I try, I can all too easily recall that final vision - a snapshot of an eighty year old, alone inside the western wall of her nephew's hospital, her body ravaged by leukaemia, her yearning merely for the familiar comfort of lemonade – an old woman, no longer capable of elevation – not able to wander out into the balm of a hot summer evening.

Graham said I didn't have to go to the funeral. Julia looked doubtful but I was relieved. It wasn't going to be a pleasant experience, so if I could get out of it, well and good. But when Aunt Victoria arrived, my directive was changed. "Of course he has to go," I heard her say, her voice displaying incredulity at her brother's logic.

Uncle Bob added his two penny's worth. "You can't hide the kid away in a glass jar forever you know," he said.

But Graham won the day. I wasn't to go. He hated confronting emotional scenes himself so I guess his actions represented some sort of love.

Sometimes Isobel could be really immature. At times I felt she was younger than me, that it was I who carried the mantle of responsibility. Hadn't she had to use my shoulder to cry on when Aunt Daisy died? In this vein, I was quite irked one day, when she rolled up with Turn! Turn! Turn! the Byrds second LP release. Surely the Byrds were mine. It was indisputably obvious to anyone with half a neurone, that I, Gerry Davenport, was the greater Byrd's fan. Isobel was dabbling in all sorts of bands; the Beatles, the Stones, the Small Faces, The Who, the Yardbirds . . . But I, while appreciative of other things going on, (especially the dulcet tones of Rubber Soul), had played Mr Tambourine Man relentlessly. I was more familiar with the sound-scape of that record, than with any other phenomenon in my life. Hence it was a shock to be summoned to Isobel's room, to partake in the unveiling of the follow-up.

She had it lying out on her bed. "Look what I've got," she said. I stared at the cover in disbelief. The front was an enchanting sky blue colour. The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn! the title read. I scooped up the cover, to absorb the new images of my heroes. The fringes were longer, the clothes more bizarre. McGuinn wore rectangular sunglasses. With consternation, I understood the magnitude of Isobel's crime against me. I bared my teeth and went for her, scratching at her eyeballs with clawed fingers. Her face was flushed with righteousness, her lips full and pouting. With her height, she was easily able to fend me off. It was like Don Clarke against the college under-twelves.

"You don't own the Byrds," she sneered.

For a while, I pretended to be disinterested in Turn! Turn! Turn! If she knew I was in the vicinity, she would have the volume right up. I imagined her sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the black disc spinning on the turntable, her smug face watching the door expectantly, waiting for it to creak open. However, whenever she was out, I was into her room like a hungry dog, sliding Turn! Turn! Turn! on to the turntable, inhaling the glue-like smell of the cover, and staring enviously at the creators of the magical sound. I was in raptures with this new Byrdsian experience. It was a beautiful moment when the title track chimed into my head. Oh the magic of that formula – the twelve string guitar and the gorgeous harmonies. And then . . . It won't be wrong. Although a very short song, it was drowned in electric twelve string, and thick with layers of voice – the voices laden with belief. Belief in love! And I already had an idea of what lay ahead from my encounters with Isobel. It was of great import. I played and played and played Turn! Turn! Turn! For me each exposure was ethereal, cosmic – a lovely delirium.

Eventually Isobel lost interest in Turn! Turn! Turn! She had being captured by the pounding beat of the Rolling Stones. Accordingly, I was able to sequester the disc away across the corridor. It came to rest against its forebear, Mr Tambourine Man, like a brand new and revered sibling. I would lie down prone, to gaze at the two covers, set down side by side on the carpet, my chest swollen with yearning. What was it all about? They were icons, but of what? Future love, or the promise of afterlife? I had no idea, but I knew it was real. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be a Byrd when I grew up.

It's hard to believe, but a year later we had all but forgotten about the Byrds. Marcy had arrived on the scene. She was the daughter of a young widow on Collingwood Street. She had a flat face with a long thin nose, hazelnut Asian eyes and the straightest hair you could imagine. At first I resented her, taking as she did my Isobel's attention. After a while though, I put aside the bad thoughts. Marcy had ingratiated her way into my heart as well. It helped that she was an only child. I became the brother she had never had. She was affectionate and adventurous. Also, she had a street credibility that Isobel and I could only aspire to.

By the summer of 1968, Isobel and Marcy were inseparable. The girls were now sixteen and very impressionable. And, they were out to make an impression themselves. Even Graham had come to accept Marcy's almost daily presence in our house. That was until the night of the BMA dinner.

There was no inkling of the trouble to come as Graham in his tuxedo, and Julia wrapped in furs, disappeared behind the closing front door. Of course the expectation was for Isobel and Marcy to get me to bed by eight-thirty, and then to amuse themselves quietly, until the British Medical Association members had smoked their last cigars and drained the last bottle of port.

Things went to plan until a phone call at eight o'clock. At the time I was lying stomach first on the living room floor, trying to read, and half listening to Revolver on the big gramophone. From the kitchen I could hear Marcy's voice, laughing and shrieking into the telephone receiver. The phone call was followed by furious whispering. Tentative footsteps had me on full alert as the two girls approached me. It was like a deputation. Isobel was coquettish, Marcy ingratiating. "There are two boys coming around to play some records," Marcy said, exchanging glances with her friend.

"You don't mind, do you Gerry?" Isobel said.

I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I hated having to meet new people.

They came with a stack of long-players and a crate of beer. Paul and Roger. Paul was the dominant one, short with prominent rubbery lips and greasy side burns. Rodger was tall and willowy and didn't say much. He had long curly hair, thinning on top and a smile like George Harrison.

Paul opened four of the bottles by using another bottle to lever the caps off. I could tell he was well practiced at the art, since the four tops came off in rapid succession, each with an ominous popping sound. I didn't need to be a genius to work out that trouble was afoot. Revolver was replaced with something called Disraeli Gears. The music was harsh and grungy. I didn't like it much. It scared me. The behaviour of the teens became more and more loose. They began to dance, closing their eyes and flailing their way about the room. Except Roger. He stood as if in a trance. His feet stayed planted on the carpet. His hips swayed a little while his arms seemed to have minds of their own. His fingers were splayed wide as his hands glided in front of him like aerobatic magic carpets. Paul was more like a jumping-jack firecracker, an enclosed fist punching the air in front of half lidded eyes, as he bounced up and down, his movement about the floor quite unpredictable. I cowered into one corner of a couch, watching as the dishevelled lads dismembered the crate of beer. Bottles had their tops wrenched off, a quick swig taken and then put down on the carpet, sometimes to be forgotten about. One bottle was kicked over accidentally and its contents sprayed the carpet with an arc of froth.

Marcy drifted my way as if a cork bobbing on the swirl and surge of a tide. Her hair was matted into straight clumps, whiles her blouse, beer-soaked at the neck, was hanging out of her jeans. As she swept away from my immediate vicinity, she was replaced by a dreamy Isobel. My sister's facial muscles were totally relaxed. Her expression said it all. She had arrived! However her demeanour changed when she noticed my worried face. "You'd better come with me," she shouted above the din.

I took her hand and ran the gauntlet across a carpet strewn with debris – scattered bottles and artefacts brought down off tables and shelves. "Don't worry." Isobel said, as she pulled back my bed covers. I fell onto the bed, mentally and physically spent. She hugged and kissed me in the dark, as though it was our last day on earth. Or perhaps she was transmitting her elation to me. In any case she was soon gone, her hair flicking across my eyes as she left. Tired as I was, sleep didn't even gain a toe hold as I lay and fretted about the uproar below. How did they know the time that Graham and Julia would arrive back home? Did Isobel have some kind of death-wish?

Half an hour must have past and then someone came. Marcy. Her top was off. I could see a streak of illumination running along the curve of a clavicle and the intersecting bra strap. She unbuttoned her jeans and let them slip to the floor. She climbed in beside me. "You don't mind do you?" she laughed. Her breath reeked of beer. It wasn't unpleasant though. It was earthy, organic, like a sunny vegetable patch. She put her arms around me. "You're my little brother aren't you?" she said. She propped herself up on one elbow and peered at me. "Do you think I'm beautiful?" she asked.

I nodded in the darkness. I really did.

She lay flat, right up against me. "I bet you'd love to see my breasts." she said. She was right. I looked down. Her bra was loosened by her posture. I could see the two small mounds of white flesh with their pert nipples quite easily. I nodded again. "Hey! You're only allowed a quick look" she said.

It wasn't clear in my mind what 'sexy' meant, but I knew it was a word of the utmost cool. I felt sure it had something to do with breasts such as these. I lay with my face jammed into her neck, assailed by salty sweat and heat, my eyes peering down at the rise and fall of her chest. I felt her relaxing into the shape of the mattress and I did likewise, rearranging my limbs comfortably about her. It was all very pleasant and natural - and soporific.

When it all ended, I reacted slowly to the flood of light, clumsily adjusting to the rush of cold air as the blankets were whipped back. As consciousness returned, I noticed Marcy had been ejected and was scrambling into her clothes. Graham was lost for words, coughing and spluttering in his incredulity. When he'd given Marcy a lecture, I half rolled to watch him leave. Through watery eyes I saw another figure in the doorway. It was Julia, her face a mask, her lips a straight line. For a second our eyes met and a corner of her mouth betrayed a developing trace of amusement.

The likes of Paul and Roger never graced our doorstep again. And Marcy too was gone. I'd see her occasionally, waving to me from the pillion seat of a motorbike. Cloaked in a leather jacket, with ringlets in her wild hair, and dozens of shiny bangles jangling up her arms, she was lost to the realm of 'the heavies.' Within a few months she had left school. Education was distinctly uncool.

Isobel copped a curfew for a while. From that day on, she made sure her night time frolics were conducted elsewhere in the town, well out of Graham's orbit. She accepted the loss of Marcy resolutely, as if it all went with the territory – part of the baggage that went with having a father who had failed to adjust to the times. As if to alleviate the boredom, she took to eating. Anything with cream was her speciality. Her skin took on a pasty hue, as her figure was slowly transformed. Saddled with unfashionable weight, she took refuge in her room, reading novels and playing records, emerging dreamily for meals. In the summer, she took a towel to a far corner of the garden, to bake under a punishing sun.

Entering adolescence, I was too wrapped up in my own disequilibrium to react much to Isobel's decline. Occasionally though, I would regress to former times, and lie along her roasting back, silently luxuriating in a few stolen moments of human contact. She would ignore me, her denial of the contact perhaps recognition of its apparent impropriety.

When she departed for Otago University in 1971 I could sense that she thought her jail sentence was over and real life was about to begin. And maybe it did, for when she returned the following May, her figure was trim again, there was pink on her cheeks and a lustre in her hair. She walked with poise and spoke with authority.

She had news for me. It was about us, the Davenports. While walking down to a lecture one afternoon, there before her eyes was the immaculate coiffure, the neatly ironed pleats of Margo. Delighted to see Isobel after so many years, Margo had taken her out to dinner that very night. It was as though the old friends of yesteryear were back together again – Margo and Julia. Isobel made a good substitute for Julia since as had been the case before, cigarettes were alight and the air was resonant with confidences. And the confidence to beat them all – the one that had Isobel's jaw in her lap, was this. In the early fifties, before I was born, Julia had had an affair with Francis Urquhart. There had been drastic consequences – Graham and Julia's marriage had only just survived, while Francis and Margo's had dissolved permanently. Intriguingly, Francis had disappeared, never to be heard of again.

I was similarly dumbstruck as Isobel had been. My parents – suddenly they had a history – a huge and unexpected history. Some behaviour, some actions – there might now be an explanation for them . . .

Chapter 7

Isobel had fallen against the back of her chair. She had stared at Margo's face, the older woman's lips pressed together in a teacher's smirk, the smouldering cigarette held aloft like a smoking statue. The glee of revelation had flushed Margo's cheeks and brought a pulsatile throb to her temples. It was all the more remarkable, because here was the victim telling the tale of her own betrayal, wearing a face of satisfaction.

"They did me a favour, you see," Margo said, by way of explanation. "Francis was never going to settle. It was better I found out earlier, rather than later."

But you never re-married, Isobel thought. You never had children of your own.

"I've have had a good life, "Margo said, as if reading a transcript of Isobel's thoughts. "I was able to have this marvellous career. And there were so many people to meet in Wellington – the public service . . . Men to burn!" She winked then and Isobel recalled the Greek who had so incensed the reactionary Graham, many years before.

Isobel smiled weakly. "So they were caught?" she said. "Is that when Mum and Graham moved to Nelson?"

Margo nodded. "It was best for Julia that she was removed from the scene."

"Mum must have been distraught," Isobel said. "Was she really in love? . . . God I'm sorry, he was your husband after all."

Margo had exhaled a long plume of blue smoke. A rushing noise through pursed lips and flared nose. "It's alright, a lot of time has gone by – I'm O.K about it now. But yes, Julia was absolutely besotted with Francis, and perhaps he was with her. But after she and Graham moved to Nelson, they conceived Gerry almost straight away. That must have eased the pain." The words were clipped, like a telling point in the court-room.

The restaurant was on the second floor of the building. Through a dormer window, an orange street light glowed, lighting up a half of Margo's face as she continued with her story. The two young couples had been neighbours in Wellington. They resided in the hill suburb of Kelburn which occupies the immediate vicinity at the top end of the cable car. The ambitious husbands were both newly unleashed onto their career paths of law and medicine. Margo herself was a trainee law clerk, while Julia, a former laboratory technician, was at home with her two children. "We began to spend alot of time together," Margo said. "Julia and I became close friends. Francis and Graham, while being quite different in many ways, got on O.K. There were countless shared meals, weekends away and eventually holidays together. You see Julia was able to leave you and Richard with her mother." She tapped her cigarette against the rolled edge of a glass ash tray. "Of course when you spend all that time together, everyone gets to know each other quite well. There's always the danger that an attraction will occur. And that's exactly what happened."

It had started during a summer holiday. Francis had admitted that much to Margo. And bathed in the orange glare of the proximal street lamp, Margo's mouth had become pinched, her thin nose pallid, her eyeballs black. "The bastard must have given her the look," she had said, fixing my sister with a knowing stare.

For a moment Isobel had felt as though she was to blame for Julia's misdemeanour. As a descendent of the wayward mum, Margo was apparently angry with her.

However, as quick as it had come, Margo's frown was gone. "I don't really blame Julia," she said. She relaxed back in her chair, exhaling towards the ceiling. "It was him. He'd always been a flirt. I'd seen him at the Lawyer's Ball, brushing up against the gorgeous ones. I guess I denied it then. I didn't want to know. I just wanted to be Mrs Urquhart."

Isobel had drained her wine glass, seeking anaesthesia – a numbing effect to cope with this woman and her revelation. Margo, who had once been idolised by Isobel, was now hard to take, her hair stiff with lacquer, her face gaunt and righteous, her story profound and disturbing. Margo was creating an embryo in Isobel's mind, giving life to a previously unknown reality – the genesis of a uneasy marriage, to which Isobel was inextricably linked.

"It was I who became suspicious," Margo said, "and Graham who set the trap."

Isobel had felt her insides go hollow. Her sympathies were with Julia. She had almost felt at that moment that she herself was Julia. She could put herself in Julia's mind – this man called Francis calling up a fragile notion of happiness – the promise of loving arms and vibrant conversation. But a trap was going to end all that.

Sick with love after the first holiday together, it became routine for Francis to phone Julia at the Davenport home, once the two children were away at school and kindergarten. Daily, then several times a day, the phone calls continued to come in. Soon they were meeting in the lunch hour, drinking coffee in some anonymous cafe, hidden away in a shadowy corner, clutching hands under a protective table-top. Quickly their passions had ignited. It became unbearable to merely sit and look at each other. Of the whereabouts of the inevitable love-making, Margo had been unsure. All Francis had admitted to was the sheer power of it. As if the emotive force and desire excused the terrible betrayal. Away from the controlling Graham, Julia had been lascivious, her heat and desire palpable across the cafe tables, her urgent lovemaking a revelation to the inquisitive Francis.

Desperate for each others company, the lovebirds had had to surreptitiously arrange for more and more interaction between the foursome. At first Margo had welcomed this increased contact, as she usually took up any opportunity to socialise. She wasn't to know that a burning passion was behind the illicit couple's drive to bring the foursome together. However it wasn't long before she began to notice the exchange of glances, the touching of hands, the coincidental need to use the bathroom. She observed how the two of them always ended up adjacent at the dinner table, their chairs positioned close, their hands often invisible, presumably at play below the table cloth. For weeks Margo seethed with jealousy and anger. She became consumed by the issue of who to confront with the problem.

"I couldn't be sure how significant the problem was," Margo said to Isobel. "Was it perhaps a brief flirtation, a mere ripple on the surface of my otherwise satisfactory marriage? Or was it much deeper than that? Were they planning something more serious? I was confused. You see at home, the behaviour of Francis was largely unchanged. He still apparently needed me . . . Oh he might have been a little distant. When I found out later, that he had also been all over her, that's when I surmised that he was either an excellent actor or quite at ease with duplicity. Anyway, I should have confronted him . . . or Julia. But instead I divulged the story to Graham and I guess in retrospect that was a mistake . . . Yes it would have been better for Julia if Graham had been kept in the dark. For one, she wouldn't have had to play second fiddle to him all her life. And secondly, she might have had an easier person to live with. Of course, at the time I wasn't thinking about making life easy for Julia!"

Isobel had been mesmerised by the story. The lives of her parents! She sat forward, her elbows on the table edge, her chin cupped in her hands, eyes fixed on Margo's face.

"As soon as I had told Graham of my concerns, I wished I hadn't." Margo had continued. She had frowned then, turning to look out the window at the street lamp.

Imagining Graham in possession of the information, and knowing his penchant for sarcasm, Isobel had felt a sudden chill. "Poor Mum," she said.

Margo had glanced at Isobel with a look of annoyance, as if to say, Poor Mum indeed! What about poor Margo! But her face softened a little. "You see I didn't really know Graham because he projected quite a front. Certainly, he seemed a bit reactionary, but not malignant or nasty. So I had no reason to suspect that he wouldn't approach the problem in a constructive way. I wanted the relationship to be terminated, but in a quiet way. I wanted my Francis back. But Graham went absolutely mental. I had gone into his hospital office to tell him. He charged around his office like a wounded bull, tearing down books off a shelf on to the floor. And then he flung the dregs of his coffee cup over a wall. There was this dripping brown stain . . . But then he calmed a little. I can still remember him looking down on me, his chin lifted defiantly. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I'll set them up. We'll give them a little humiliation.' I was dubious about that. We didn't even know whether they were in a physical relationship. In fact I felt it was just a crush." Margo had tilted her head to one side, her eyes still, like a canary alert to a new presence near its cage. Isobel had a feeling of helplessness. She wasn't enjoying this portrayal of her parents.

Within a week the foursome were ensconced in a holiday house in the Marlborough Sounds. Although the first few days had gone by without incident, Francis and Julia's fervour for each other was readily palpable to the enlightened Graham and Margo. Margo could surmise when the hands entwined under the tablecloth, could sense the momentary meeting of eyes, and noticed the non accidental touch of legs when the pair were doing the washing up.

Down at the bay there was more to endure. There was an idle-along yacht belonging to the house sequestered in a dilapidated boatshed. Francis was quite a passable sailor and had run the craft down the set of rusty rails to the water's edge where he had stepped the mast and hauled up the gaff rigged main. None of the other three could tell a mainsheet from a halyard, so he spent a few hours each day teaching them one by one the joys of sail. When it was Julia's turn to take the tiller, Graham and Margo were overtaken by a feeling of unease; such was their paranoia at the prospect of Francis and Julia being alone. It was during one of these sailing trips that Graham hatched a plan. The yacht, with Francis and Julia aboard, had disappeared behind a headland. It was out of view for an hour or more. Perceiving that the disappearance was unlikely to be innocent, Graham set off in his car to ascertain the lie of the land. Driving east over the spine of the headland, he peered fruitlessly through gaps in the foliage for the yacht. He only found it by driving around to the outermost point of the next headland. There, standing on a grassy knoll above the road, the shore of a concealed bay was exposed. It lay at the termination of a heavily bushed descending gully. And on the beach, its sails furled, was the idle-along.

Sure that Francis and Julia would return again to the small beach, Graham talked Margo into conducting an ambush. The next day, they watched the departing yacht sail towards the point, propelled along by a freshening wind. When the figures on the yacht became indistinguishable, Graham and Margot hastened up the path to the house, climbed into Graham's car and drove at speed over to the next bay. They parked the car on the roadside where a narrow wooden bridge traversed a dank gully. Graham led Margo away down the slippery creek bed, avoiding the steeper pitches by deviating out onto the wooded sides of the gully. By the time they reached the shoreline, the yacht was already around the point and making for the beach. Hidden by the overhanging foliage, Margo felt a flush of horror as she anticipated the truth of Graham's prophecy. They separated for the landing, she to a high bush-clad rocky promontory overlooking the length of the beach, he into a dense thicket, not far back from the arc of fine stones and shells that sloped into the sea. Crouching on an uneven rocky surface, Margo watched the yacht plough towards her, a bow wave surging, the flying spray looking like shattered glass fragments of an exploding windscreen. Occasionally the yacht would surf down a wave and the water would engulf the bowsprit that carried the clue of the straining jib-sail. For a moment she entertained the notion that the pair were simply enjoying a favourable direction of sail – that soon the yacht would round up into the wind and tack back out into the sparkling lumpy sea. Instead the blood ran cold in her veins as the yacht surged onward to the beach. Francis leapt from the bow to prevent the wooden hull from bashing onto the stones. With the help of Julia, he heaved mightily, lifting the bow up the stony beach before easing it down gently to rest. He lowered the sails and tied the painter to a manuka trunk at the edge of the woods. And then they were in embrace, right there beneath her gaze, feet planted on the beach. Julia's face was raised, her eyes closed, her lips ready to meet those of her illicit lover. Margo's chest was held in a vice like contracture. She watched as the ill fated pair removed their life jackets and dumped them onto the pebbles. Francis offered a hand and they walked up the beach towards the rustling bush shelter. Margo's pulse resonated in her eardrums as she waited for the moment. And out of the tress appeared Graham and immediately there was gesticulating and shouting – male voices fully charged. Margo jumped up and began her descent. She was clenching and unclenching her fists. She knew she was likely to hit someone.

Chapter 8

The summer of 71 is one I remember well. Isobel had completed her first year at university and was coming home for the vacation. I stood beside Julia at the bus terminal, a gangly, loose limbed sixteen year old. I'd had quite a growth spurt through adolescence. Now I could look right down on top of Julia's head. And Isobel's as well. Of course, strait-jacketed by self consciousness, I didn't show the exuberance of former times. There was no 100 metre dash to the main-street corner to gain an early sighting. Yet, within my prickly skin, I yearned for such an action. I had high hopes for Isobel's return.

As soon as I saw her, I knew that she had changed. In appearance she was now well left of centre. Her hair was waist length, with peroxide streaking amongst the original hazelnut. Fine braided plaits dangled in amongst the tumbled tresses. She was wearing an ankle length wrap-around sari and Roman sandals. I was delighted with the transition. To me, such a metamorphosis was highly desirable, given the messages of our sixties musical heroes, and the intransigence of Graham's generation.

I moved into line behind Julia for the welcome home kiss. I was excited by the prospect of receiving her again, to feel her warm breath on my face, and to re-experience the former comfort of her enclosing arms. But her manner of greeting Julia, foreshadowed the looming truth – that it wasn't only her appearance that had changed. Her tone was faintly dismissive. It was as if she had returned home only because she felt she ought to – an adherence to some old fashioned obligation. Julia stepped aside as I received my greeting. My sister smelt of musk and beeswax.

"God you're tall," she said, standing back to look at me.

Later in the evening, after Graham and Julia had retired to bed, I knocked diffidently on her door and went in. Although the room was dark, I could see her over by the open window. The glowing embers of her cigarette gave her away. "You smoke now!" I said.

"I only smoke dope," she said. She tapped the cigarette against the edge of the windowsill. "Here, have a puff."

I took the thing between index and middle fingers, adhering to the observed custom of my college peers. It was narrower and firmer than a normal cigarette. Unused to any type of inhalation, I was quickly overwhelmed by a raucous coughing fit.

"What are you doing?" Isobel reprimanded. "You'll have Graham here next."

Doubled over, my eyes smarting and unable to speak, I held the cigarette out for her to take back. We hung out the window, absorbing the scene of the empty street. There was a line of streetlamps, each surrounded by a flight of ducking and diving moths. From a few streets away came the sound of a car changing gear as it began to ascend a hill.

"I don't know how I'm going to stand these summer holidays," she said, without turning to look at me. "I mean, Graham is so square, and Mum . . . she's too tolerant."

I felt a bit miffed by this statement. Didn't she want to see me? But I didn't want to appear too soft. "Yeah, I know what you mean," I said. "I can't wait to leave."

"You've still got two years to go," she said in a derisory tone. "Two years of that," She gestured towards Graham and Julia's room with her cigarette hand.

"You haven't run into Margo again?" I asked

She shook her head. "Mum should have left Graham years ago – when they were caught. Why she stayed with him – it's beyond comprehension.

"I wouldn't have been born if that had happened," I said.

She smiled and threw the expiring butt out onto the pavement below. "So how's your year been?"

The truth was that my year hadn't been great. Amongst my peers I was confined to the fringes. My guitar was my companion. My latest one, a German Framus purchased from an emigrating guitar teacher had a lovely curvature in the back and a fine wood grain running through the narrow varnished neck. I hauled it along with me into the depth of my Byrd's obsession. Of course by 1971, the Byrds heyday was well over. There had been a brief moment of glory in 1966 with the charting of Eight miles high, but after that radio airplay was minimal. I hadn't even been aware of subsequent seminal works such as Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the rodeo. Out of the blue there had been a tantalising exposure to the song Wasn't born to follow. It was on Isobel's copy of the Easyrider soundtrack, and I was intrigued by its marriage of the earlier sound with a country feel, but as far as I knew, it was a one off. I was too young to buy Rolling Stone – I didn't know what was going on. Thus I had almost been cut loose from the Byrds. I could have easily followed a different musical pathway . . .

With the Beatles demise in 1971, the hunt was on for a new source of inspiration. The crowd was moving ahead to indulge Led Zeppelin and other burgeoning heavyweights. Not I however. Instead, I did a U-turn back to the past, back again to the forgotten sound of the electric twelve string, back to the layers of haunting vocal harmony. The catalyst for this retrograde manoeuvre was the discovery of a battered copy of The Byrds Greatest Hits in the second-hand bin of Lord Mutch. For the subsequent months I remained cloistered in my room, accompanied only by the unfashionable spinning disc. Exposure to songs such as Fifth Dimension and My Back Pages had me thirsting for more. What other gems were hidden on the unheard and unattainable albums Fifth Dimension and Younger than yesterday? My head was firmly lodged in the past. I bemoaned the demise of the Beatle fringe and winkle pickers. I detested the advent of keyboards, fuzz-boxes and power chords. I longed to be a seventeen year old of 1966, a drop-out in Los Angeles, a swinger in London, a heavy in New York. A musician of course, and a revered one at that – someone to take up the jingle-jangle batten and carry on the dream. In my mind, I was already an icon.

I began composing music myself. The path ahead of me seemed absolutely clear – I was to be a successful songwriter. My early songs were basic. I recorded them onto cassettes. To get that Byrdsian sound, I used two tape recorders. I recorded guitar and vocal onto one, then played along with that first recording to provide a second guitar and vocal – all recorded on to the second tape recorder. The process could be continued to produce third and fourth layers. In this way I was able to overdub in a primitive kind of way. My recordings excited me greatly and I played them back to myself endlessly. I loved myself!

One day I played Isobel one of the songs, Brave New World. My skin prickled with unease. A sweat broke out beneath my collar. "Not bad," she said. "Hey did I tell you? I ran into Marcy today. She's working on the strawberry farm, the same one as me."

I was both relieved and disappointed. I was happy the agony of self promotion was over. But I was gutted that all my efforts, my raison d'etre, was reduced to the two words, 'not bad.' Where was my Isobel of yesterday, her hair falling about my face as she gave me her full attention? She had left me behind I guessed. The person I craved was back in 1966.

Isobel got up early each day to catch a bus out into the country where she picked berries all day. She needed the money to help fund another year at university. By coincidence Marcy was working there as well. It was Marcy's proper job, her actual future. She lived in a run down squat by the Appleby river with some bikers. Isobel thought this terrific. According to Isobel's musical heroes (Jim Morrison and company), these things were something to aspire to.

Friday and Saturday nights Isobel was gone. I was surprised how Graham took no stand on this, or on any of Isobel's dubious actions. It seemed once you left school, the heavy hand of authority was lifted. Or perhaps he was sharp enough to sense that we were privileged to share even a small part of her company. One offensive word and she might pack her things.

One weekend just prior to Christmas, Graham and Julia went away to a conference in Napier. Left in the care of Isobel, I found myself bouncing about like a sack of wheat in the back of a Mark III Zephyr. The car was driven by a swarthy dude called Andrei. He wasn't French, although he wore a black beret in an angular fashion. He had finely manicured sideburns and one tooth that flashed at certain angles of light. As he drove he periodically drank from a 750 ml beer bottle he kept wedged between his knees.

I was high as a kite. Before we had taken leave of the house, Isobel had seconded a half-empty sherry bottle and brought it to the car. Isobel and I imbibed this fiery liquid, passing it back and forth between the front and back seats.

We arrived at a party along the waterfront. I was already beginning to suffer from a debilitating vertigo as I staggered from the car. My introversion was no longer a feature. My usual intensive self monitoring was temporarily neutralised. I was a floating vacuum, devoid of care – proud to be merely an idle curiosity as I drifted and rebounded my way around the rooms of the party-house. After an hour of this low voltage animation, I gathered enough thought to go and look for my sister. After scouring the house and coming up with nothing, I went outside onto the front veranda. Glancing down at the road, I was just in time to see Isobel disappearing through the front door of the Zephyr. A girl with a colossus of jet black ringlets was climbing into the back. I dimly recognised her as Marcy. I called out, but my voice was a muffled croak, buried beneath the roar of the sea and the thunder of Led Zeppelin. I watched the car speed away as disappointment choked my throat. Isobel, she had left me behind without a thought.

I looked through a sash window into the house. There were dark silhouettes of unknown people, glowing ends of cigarettes, and a flash of electric light from an elevating beer bottle. I became acutely self-aware. I had no desire for the party and its people anymore. I descended the garden steps to the gate. Two girls were coming in as I was going out. "Hi," I said, plunging my lips onto the nearest mouth. The assaulted girl entered into the spirit of this unannounced manoeuvre, smudging her entire mouth over my rigid lips. There was a sour wetness and some buck teeth. It was quickly over and I carried on my retreat, slipping away at a fast clip along the seaside road that led back into the town.

Isobel didn't show up until the middle of the next day. "How did you get into the house?" she asked, placing the house-key onto its hook.

I was seething with resentment. She hadn't given a damn about my situation, sprung upon me in the heart of the night. She'd taken off for some unknown destination with that oil-slick Andrei and the lamentable Marcy. I said nothing. The bitter taste of the buck-tooth kiss still lingered as I removed myself from the kitchen, giving a false appearance of nonchalance. I walked out through the sunroom door onto the tennis court and held my face up to the sun. I felt a certain measure of defeat. A cornerstone in my life had been removed. Or if it was still there, it was now merely a pinpoint of light, barely discernible within a fragile cosmos.

In the new year of 1972, Junot turned up. Isobel had said 'a friend' might drop by for a couple of nights. Julia had said 'that's fine dear,' perhaps uncertain whether Junot was male or female. The threat of the visit was kept secret from Graham – Julia probably hoping it wouldn't happen at all. If so, her hopes were dashed.

The night of his arrival, we sat around the dinner table, the air pregnant with discomfort. Junot, with parental origins in the Dominican Republic, was a bleak, pale, emaciated individual, his long hair hanging in uncombed tufts above the steaming dinner plate. His face was skull like, fragments of the meal collecting in a patchy beard and moustache. At the head of the table, Graham's face was a hot ember, an appearance that had existed ever since he'd come home from work to the unwelcome surprise.

Julia tried to make up for the dumbstruck horde, enquiring about Junot's university course, which turned out to be mineral technology. Junot said it sucked. It sucked. The words lay between us on the table like a fresh dog turd. In the oppressive silence, my gut revolved about its axis with unease. And my brain seemed to be sitting in its own pressurising chamber. Julia broke the silence.

"So if you don't like it, what do you hope to do instead?" Her voice was tinged with burgeoning laughter.

Junot reared back in his seat, his head to one side. He wasn't going to work at all. Work sucked as well.

Julia's response was incredulous laughter. Not going to work! How was he going to eat, she enquired.

"I live off the land," Junot replied, his torso beginning to gently sway.

Graham's chair scraped backwards. He picked up his dinner plate. "Well you're living off us at the moment son," he said. He strode from the kitchen, the dinner plate held out in front of him like a collection salver at church. He turned out the door, the short hairs on the back of his neck erect with indignation. Junot's face had a smug grin as he slumped back into his chair, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

There grew an unspoken link between myself and Junot. Perhaps he recognised a fellow no-hoper. His face would soften with benevolence whenever I strayed into his company. Possibly he felt he could rescue me from the influence of my red-necked father.

A few days later it was New Year's Eve. I spent much of the day lying on carpet, head supported by a cupped hand and braced elbow, my eardrums hurting from a constant diet of electric guitars and strident vocals. If I wasn't spinning discs, I was composing my own Byrdsian melodies.

I've been in a desperate situation,

With the devil's own

Down to earth was our association

'Til she let me down

This mythical lover! I was beginning to feel that she wasn't too long away. At three in the afternoon, I quit my room for the outdoors. I was wobbly on my feet, the blood exiting my head like a retreating tsunami. Outside, the glare penetrated my eyelids. There was a distinct threat of headache. I staggered into the shadows of the summer-house, gingerly easing down onto one corner of the platform seat. At that moment I heard the muffled sound of voices – Isobel and Junot had finally emerged for the day. They came across the tennis court carrying bowls of muesli and yogurt. Isobel still wore her night attire, an ankle length garment of dull violet. Junot had faded jeans with the knees out, a black tee-shirt and jean jacket. He very seldom wore anything else. A wave of days-old body odour pricked my nostrils as he came past, his bare feet scuffing the dirt floor. "How goes it?" he said. Sitting down on the platform, he set aside the muesli bowl and commenced to roll up a cigarette on the triangle of platform between his splayed legs. I could see that its contents were marijuana leaves. The smoking joint was passed along to Isobel. She inhaled before handing it on to me. I acted nonchalant as I sucked in the pungent smoke. This surely was the way to live – breakfast at three-thirty, accompanied by a most relaxing inhalation. I rested back against the leafy inner wall of the summer-house, listening to Isobel and Junot decry the fortresses of capitalism and the despicable agents of environmental destruction. In the new world of Junot, the only work done would be the tilling of fields. The cornerstones of the new culture would be liberalised – drug taking, rock music and free love.

It sounded good to me. I loved music and I had an inkling that giving and receiving love was going to come very easily to me. Junot was clearly pleased with my progress towards becoming a 'drop-out.' He favoured me with his munificent smile. "Why don't you come out with us to the party tonight?" he suggested. Isobel nodded in affirmation, as if she too had given me a pass-mark.

At six o'clock we floated into the kitchen for dinner. Graham was busy at the hospital operating on some car crash victims. That left Julia as the sole barrier to me accompanying the older pair. She looked doubtful, her mouth pinching at one corner. Nevertheless, she was easily talked around by Junot and Isobel, both of whom were voluble and manipulative in the afterglow of the joint. Julia was quite interested in the new youth culture. While Graham was opposed to the whole thing – the music, the fashions, the precociousness – Julia was probably secretly pleased that the old order of things was being challenged. However, having not grown up with the new ideals, she was insecure in her response to their onslaught.

"Oh well . . . You must look after him . . . And bring him back as soon as the New Year is in."

Part of me was too frightened to party again. What would I say? Nonetheless, I knew what had released me from introversion on the night of the buck tooth kiss –alcohol. With my heart beat skipping along like a trapped butterfly in a cage, I took an empty cordial bottle from a low lying dusty draw and with stealth took myself to the living room. Graham's mahogany liquor cabinet was my target. I turned the miniature indwelling key that opened the door of the spirit compartment. In my great haste to fill the bottle, I had little idea of what was going into the mixture – brandy, sherry, whiskey – all of these and more. Up in my room, I scrutinised the liquid in the light of the window. I could see in the swirl of the fluid, the densities and colours of the competing parts. They seemed to be reluctant bed-fellows, these intoxicant liquors. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed at the rising vapours. Astringent on my nasal mucosa, the inhalation induced a sudden sneeze. Undeterred, I tilted the mouth of the bottle to allow a few drops to roll onto my tongue. Volatile, like a relative of ether, the vapour mixture rose into my nose and stung my eyes. I pressed on, squeezing the volume down in small gulps, my eyes firmly shut. Breathless, I again held the bottle up to the light. The level of liquid was reduced by a third. I took one last pull before replacing the plastic screw top. I took my duffle coat from the wardrobe, slipping the bottle into one of its cavernous pockets. I left my room feeling quite unaffected, wondering whether I had taken in enough fluid. However by the time I had reached the bottom of the staircase, a mild feeling of displacement had occurred. I went and sat with Junot at the kitchen table. We were waiting for Andrei and Marcy to turn up with the car. Junot had his hair loosely tied back in a ponytail. He sat, hands on lap, his head bowed forward slightly. He scarcely seemed aware of my presence. And I was being drawn into a similar trance. My mind had the dimensions of a vortex – all my thoughts being sucked down towards a single agreeable contemplative point.

I was dimly aware of voices, perhaps from the hall. There was Julia's voice fussing, and a dismissive tone from Isobel. These days Isobel appeared far worldlier than Julia. The sound of a car's horn was our cue to stumble past a dubious Julia, out into the evening. On the street, a back door of the waiting Zephyr slowly swung open. The three of us piled in.

"He's not coming is he?" Andrei was looking at me over the back-rest of the front platform seat. He was frowning and appeared irritated.

"Oh just get going. He's harmless," Isobel said.

"But what about . . .?" Andrei had turned back to face the windscreen. He was looking at Isobel via the rear vision mirror.

"It's cool dude," Junot said. "It's cool man, you can relax."

Andrei shrugged his shoulders and shifted the gear stick into first. We rocketed off up the street, travelling a short distance before squealing through a tight U turn. I felt a pulse of fear slither through my gut. Accelerating back the way we had come, the house went by in a blur of lights – a shrinking refuge from the nervy night. We travelled around past the docks to Tahunanui Beach. A side road took us into an area of rolling sand dunes behind the beach-front – a place where the moonlight reflected off the chrome bumpers of partially hidden cars. Here, naive young lovers sought anonymity. We were flung off the narrow tar-seal onto wheel tracks across firm sand. Shortly Andrei executed a handbrake turn and we corkscrewed to a halt. The engine was off and all I could hear was a ticking sound from the motor and the heavy breathing of my associates. Junot produced a brown paper bag, dipping a hand inside to find the green weed that it contained. He rolled a few joints. My alcoholic mixture was now paying a handsome dividend. The interior of the car was slowly rotating around me. I had become the axis of a confined visual world. Whether Andrei still felt resentful of my presence, I had no idea. I didn't care. I was afloat and unfettered by the feelings of others. They passed around the joints and I sucked away in a desultory manner, my youth and inexperience seemingly irrelevant. I was separated from Isobel across the back seat by the sleepy figure of Junot. I felt totally disengaged from her, as though our close relationship of yesteryear had never happened. In my ethereal state it mattered not. I reasoned that our separation was an integral part of growing older – freedom from ties was gospel in this new age of hippie ideals.

We quit our shadowy haunt, our driver at a new level of toxicity, his accelerator foot pumping and withdrawing while the steering wheel spun effortlessly in his hands. Flying clods of sand sprayed the windows, exploding with a soft popping sound, as the Zephyr took on the dunes at various angles of torque. My memory is vague in regard to our subsequent transit to the party. I don't recall our arrival either. The resurrected blueprint of the night has its beginning some time later. I am standing in the middle of a small patch of lawn between grey squares of boxed garden. The plants are threadbare, leaveless silhouettes, unmoving in the brittle darkness. There is an unnerving stillness in the night air. Around me I am conscious of the other humans. It is they who seem to be the real plant life. An outside bulb attached to a lean-to porch, highlights a shoulder, a facial profile, a head of flowing hair . . . These people sway, a slow lilt, as if massaged by a gentle breeze. This impression of a listless and eerie landscape exists, despite the violent thrust of music that emanates from an invisible source . . .

Who was it? Black Sabbath? Deep Purple? In my returning consciousness, I became frightened. None of my compatriots were with me. I picked my way over towards a yellow square of light that was perhaps a kitchen window. Here, a group of youths stood on a concrete pad, arguing, laughing. At their feet lay many crates of beer, the infusion of their culture – the substance upon which their evening was based. Immediately I recognised Andrei and he turned to see me. I felt myself conjuring up a smile, a facial movement that died on my lips. He looked at me without showing recognition, turning his back to exclude me – a sixteen year old embarrassment on the loose at his party. I sensed my pupils dilating. I made for the photophobic glare of the kitchen, where I skirted around an inert bikie asleep on the lino. On a bedroom floor, I saw the coloured tresses of Marcy splayed across a threadbare carpet. She was laid on her back, staring without focus at the ceiling, while two figures grappled with her exposed arm at their knees. I watch as one formed a tourniquet with his hands. The other one leaned forward, to palpate the pale skin of the elbow crease, his long knotty hair gently stroking the forearm. I saw the lunge of the needle. It bit into its vein, quivering slightly. The tourniquet man looked up at me. His eyes said nothing – perhaps they saw nothing. I turned quickly, back into the hall where a weak nightlight flickered in the ceiling. And in the next room of my choosing, a free-standing mirror, angled on top of a chest of drawers, redirected my gaze upon the final scene. A pair of white buttocks rose and fell, the black leather trousers lowered to the thigh crease. Isobel's face was turned towards me, her eyes screwed shut. I recognise the shape of a lower leg, where it emerged from beneath the crumpled eiderdown . . .

I stood on the doorstep hyperventilating. However I had little time to contemplate what I had seen. For there was a curious thumping sound in the night, followed by shouts and screams. Someone yelled 'V8 boys.' I could see the confrontation in the driveway, the swinging arms of opposing V8s and bikers. Like Peter Rabbit, I escaped through a vegetable patch, crossing a wire fence into the adjoining property. And as I scrambled away, up some dank Tahunanui road, flashing blue lights came swiftly towards me, a methodical column of lawmen intent on breaking up the party.

Silently I made my way across the suburbs, moving swiftly and fearfully beneath the streetlights. It took an hour to get home – to reach the sanctuary of my childhood bed. My brain, bathed by circulating alcohol, infiltrated by gaseous cannabis, was recycling the new imagery. There was Andrei's irritation with my presence, the miasmic interior of the car in the sand-dunes, the steel needle entering a woman's vein, the biker with my sister, the thumping of bodies in angry confrontation, and then, the methodical column of police cars, emerging from the haze of the night, intent on their business.

In the morning there was anger in the house. Junot was in hospital. The shrill telephone ring in the early hours had been the portent of the humiliating news for Graham. His daughter's boyfriend, revealed to all as a drugged hippie, was horizontal upon the pristine sheets of Nelson's hospital. Finding him unconscious on the Tahunanui house floorboards, the police had arranged for his removal to the hospital emergency department. There his stomach was lavaged and an antidote to opiate toxicity administered.

Graham's anger was undirected. Although Junot was young, he was beyond the scope of Graham's human experience. Graham's set of rules didn't bother Junot, they were merely an item of amusement. There was a serenity about Junot which placed him beyond Graham's intervention. Of course Isobel should have been in the gun – certainly I could have told Graham a story or two about her escapades. But Graham was soft on Isobel. His way of showing this affectation was his inaction to her crimes. Thus it was I who wore his frustration. There was a holler from behind the bathroom door as I cleaned my mossy teeth. "Who the hell said you could go out last night?" he boomed. I grunted, but didn't change my brush stroke, methodically completing the task in a protective cloak of denial. Graham was like that. I had factored it in.

Junot didn't wait around long, once consciousness returned. It wasn't as though he appeared uncomfortable with his position (a freak in a red-neck's house). He was above all that. Having his stomach pumped in my father's hospital was a small part of the journey. Likewise, for now, Isobel was to be a small part of the journey. Pretty soon he was gone and I couldn't help feeling unsettled at the loss.

In the evening after his departure, I crossed the landing and entered Isobel's room. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a poor imitation of the lotus position. Her voice was broken and loosely pitched. She was resolute, but transparently in a state of agitation. I strolled casually across to her open window and peered out at the dimming light on the city hills. I figured that in light of Junot's departure, she wouldn't be around for long, and I wanted to pump her for information. She had never quite finished that story of Margo's. She seemed pleased when I broached the subject, a distraction I'm sure from the near memory of a gypsy, insouciant and smiling, who had held her like a baby before moving on. It seemed I had been so young when she had told me the first part of the story. Now I felt much older, even though it was actually only a few months later. I had kissed a girl! I had been drunk and smoked cannabis. I was a new man of the world. I was beginning to grasp the origins of adult behaviours. Now I wanted answers for the conduct of the adults in my life.

It was the same line of questioning that Isobel had posed to Margot, on that night in the Dunedin restaurant. According to Isobel, Margo had momentarily seemed miles away, her eyes appearing to be on a different plane from her face, the black pupils indistinguishable from the adjacent shadowed irises. Of course from Margo's perspective, it was the returning memory of the worst moments of her life. The final confirmation – her best friend locked in embrace with her husband, on the narrow arc of a Marlborough Sounds beach. But for myself, and for Isobel before me, Margo was merely a storyteller. The real victims were our parents.

When Margo arrived pale and breathless beneath the boughs of trees overhanging the beach, she marched straight up to Francis. She was aware of Julia in her peripheral vision – a ghostly inert presence. She would deal with her soon enough. At that moment, Francis was physically compromised. For although he was a little taller than Graham, the latter had the bigger grievance and Graham had both his hands wrapped around Francis's neck. Struggling for breath, Francis had a fistful of Graham's shirt-front, the arm extended in a bid to keep the smaller man away. Margo paused just short of the pinioned men, bending to the ground to pick up some object that had caught her eye. Julia would describe it later – a flash of light – as Margo flayed Francis's face. There was only the single stroke, but the rent that appeared in Francis's face brought everybody up short. It was several inches long, with an ugly ragged edge. Margo stepped back and stared spellbound at the pulsing wound, the hand holding the stone hanging limp by her side.

"I don't know what made me do it," Margo told Isobel. "It wasn't a deliberate decision. By chance I noticed this rock – it was laden with quartz and had a sharp jagged edge . . ."

The flayed face changed all their actions. Graham removed his choking grip and he too stepped backward – his gaze also transfixed by the wound. The expression on his ruddy face had changed to shock.

Behind her, Margo heard a gasp and the sound of feet running into the forest. Julia had gone and Francis (who had palpated the gaping wound and seen the blood on his fingertips) turned to watch her go. It appeared as though he was about to go after her.

"You stay here – I will go with Julia" The words were sharp and authoritative. Without turning to acknowledge Margo, Graham tramped off into the trees, following Julia up to the road.

"I felt gutted, nauseated – as if I might pass out," Margo said. "I felt terrible about what I'd done to Francis face. But at the same time I was mad with him, and deeply hurt. She walked away from him, along to one end of the beach, beyond the idle-along and the wind gusts screeching through its rigging. The ferocity of the wind was almost therapeutic. She felt herself calming a little. On the edge of her vision, she could see Francis hadn't moved. He was still watching her from the shadows. He stayed for about five minutes, perhaps waiting to see if she was going to return and speak with him. Then he limped across to the yacht, raised the urgent sails, and clumsily heaved the lurching boat into the waves.

Margo stayed on the beach, watching the yacht healing and slamming into the white caps. For half an hour, she crouched on the beach sobbing. It had been a terrible day. When she stood up to begin the long climb back up to the road, she really had no idea what she was going back to. The other three would likely arrive before her. What were they all thinking? Who would go with whom? Could she forgive Francis? Forgive Julia? Forgive herself? She took a deep breath and plunged into the beech forest.

Captured by the story, I hadn't noticed a figure appear in the doorway behind me. Isobel had though. She had been facing the door, had seen it slowly opening. Aware that her voice had faltered, I twisted my head around to locate the source of her disquiet. It was Graham. He was peering down his bulbous nose at us, his eyes looking as though they were about to separate from his face. I could see a thrust of pressure hammering up a temporal artery.

"We don't talk about this subject," he said. He was looking at Isobel. Then he looked at me. "We don't ask questions," he said. "What's past is past." With those inadequate statements he turned and left the room.

In the night I lay on my bed, listening to the creaking walls of the house and the groaning of the pepper tree against Isobel's window. I was down a bit, nothing overt, merely a trickle of tears descending my face. My thoughts were scanning across the three of them – Isobel, Graham and Julia – the indignation of Graham, the resigned smile of Julia, and the fading away of Isobel. I could feel the last few threads holding Isobel and myself together snapping one by one. There she lay, at least I sensed she was lying, only a few metres away, in the dark of her room. I sensed the light was out, I didn't know. How I longed for the enclosing arms of the girl of '66, the girl in the mountain meadow. But that was years and years ago. Now I knew she was slipping away.

In the morning, I didn't bother getting up. I lay in a mental torpor, a kind of heavy dark cloak wrapped around me. The future looked bleak. It was a future without Isobel. The raised voices downstairs did not impact on me at all. I had expected the consternation, expected the handwritten note . . . expected Isobel gone.

She had tried to soften the blow. It wasn't Graham or Julia's fault she had decided to go. Rather, she had been suffocating in the banality of provincial life. She needed to get back to Dunedin – back to her new friends and the promise of being understood. And she knew that if she hadn't slipped away in the night, they would have talked her out of it. Julia would have filled her up with guilt, and she wouldn't have been able to leave.

I hadn't seen the note straight away. I'd found it a day or so later, stuffed in a kitchen draw amongst an assortment of cookery books. There was no reference to me in the note, just 'Dear Mum and Dad.' I stared at the child like scrawl (she wrote in large neat letters), as though it was still warm on the page.

1972, it was the year of To Our Children's, Children's, Children. For a while it was my template, a temporary deviation from the Byrds. It was dark, melancholy, mysterious, and cosmic. My copy was scratched and dusty, producing a great deal of background noise as it rotated on the Phillips turntable. I spent my nights and weekends alone, sitting quietly in the shadows or darkness, my eyes drawn to the window where the distant stars sparkled on the inky black sky. The last track was the killer, Watching and Waiting.

Watching and waiting,

For a friend to play with,

Why have I been here - so alone?

That was it in a nutshell. I simply wallowed in the mire. There was no sign of relief on the horizon – not at least until I left school. I began to dwell on that day, the day I would catch the Newman's Bus for Dunedin. There was never any doubt about where I would be going. Like Richard before me, I was destined for Selwyn College, the Anglican hostel on Castle Street. Despite the sixties' youth rebellion, I didn't wish to run away from this predetermined course. I knew the rebellion would occur there regardless – in Dunedin. I'd be going to the hallowed institution, and there I'd rebel. This meek adherence to one of Graham's plans was partly due to a recent attack of rampant nostalgia. Richard, the brother who had barely touched me when he was around, out of the blue arose to torment me.

In the silence of the home, in the listless shadows of his dusty room, I trawled through his past, scouring the piles of books and papers for a life about which I knew little. It was his life in Selwyn College I sought. I wanted to relive his days, to meet his acquaintances and friends. In my life Richard was something of a mystery. After completing the three preclinical years in Dunedin, he'd gotten an exchange with a student from the London medical school St Marys. When the exchange year was up though, he didn't return. He'd performed so well they'd asked him to stay on. Graham's voice box had been pregnant with pride.

The Selwyn College yearbook had everything I required to fuel my interest. It was a soft covered booklet crammed with events and photographs. I stared in a daze at the men who would have populated my brother's life – a lump as big as a lemon lodged in my throat. Names came up time and time again. Not Richard Davenport so much. The recurring names were of the shakers and movers - the leaders - the colourful personalities. Their names - I can rattle them off even today. Dave Asher, Peter Hallwright, Tim Treadgold, Tom McEwen . . .

The photographs were all in black and white, which added to the mystique. There was a picture of Asher and Treadgold dressed up as female ballet dancers, one of Hallwright during capping week (his expression suggesting inebriation) lying across the front of the Selwyn College float, and one of Tom McEwen singing lustily at the Winter Ball, his free arm draped around a pretty girl from St Margarets. I imagined one of Richard Davenport, his tie partly unravelled, his hair long and dishevelled, a tankard of beer held aloft in triumph – a brand new free spirit. But there wasn't such an item. There was a short paragraph in the student catalogue intimating a taciturn character who excelled at rugby. So I relied on the likes of Asher, Hallwright, Treadgold and McEwen to construct a picture of what the possibilities were for a vivid life in Selwyn College.

Like Richard, Hallwright and Treadgold had been top secondary school rugby players. I lapped up their efforts in the big match of the year, the Cameron Shield game against arch rivals Knox College. Hallwright was captain and number 8, Treadgold was at second five eighth and Richard was a lock forward. Treadgold was the game-breaker against Knox, busting the midfield to send Wilson away on the wing. There were two photographs. The first portrayed a melee on a touchline. Hallwright was sprawled on his back, rugby boots held aloft like a dead ant, while nearby stood Asher, wrapped in an Otago University scarf, casually sucking on a large beer bottle. I felt my dermis being needled from inside to out. These guys really lived, those few years ago. Those sublime moments – the pranks, the girls, the camaraderie, the attainment of medical school – all now consigned to history. I wallowed in this past, my throat constricted in its vice, my stomach aching with envy. In the second photograph, two girls from St Margarets hammed it up, cloaked in Selwyn College regalia, puffing cigarettes insolently before the cameraman. Beside them was McEwen, dressed in plus fours and top-hat, ostensibly watching the game in a nonchalant fashion. However, he had one arm extended away, the fingers splayed to cup a breast of one of the girls.

A soundtrack played in my head as I wallowed back in 1966. It was the Byrds of course. I was above all a nostalgian. My absorption in the Byrds had always been retrospective rather than contemporary. I indulged in a sound and era of yesteryear, an era that was well over before I had even begun my fixation. Thus I had Asher and company, cavorting about Dunedin to Chimes of freedom, and Eight miles high.

In that contemplative summer of 72, I emerged one day from Richard's room, my shoulders limp from hours of morbid self indulgence, I drifted into Lord Mutch's record parlour to once again scour his second hand bin. My searches in the past had been fruitless. This time though, I had an abrupt awakening, my mid afternoon stupor was evaporated – like a needle exploding a pustule. Like Mr Tambourine Man, the cover was largely black. The 'Byrds' logo was in a zany psychedelic print. It was Fifth Dimension, the Byrd's third long-player. Shaking, I gripped it between two sets of fingers. As always, I brought it up to my face, sniffing the glue impregnated cover. I tipped up the sleeve allowing the disc to slide out. The surfaces were worn and dusty and there was a straight line scratch across the middle third of side two. I didn't bother to investigate the disc's performance. I would have paid up for the cover alone.

Lord Mutch was unaffected by the transaction. Behind the counter he pocketed the two dollars-fifty and stifled a yawn. What a contrast! His indifference and the mood of the boy standing before him, a youth in a ferment, a skin showered with a thousand pinpricks, lower limbs taut and restless, poised to stride back at pace to the room where his turntable lay.

I already knew some of the songs, since three of them were on my copy of The Byrds Greatest Hits. And Eight Miles High had been a radio standard in 1966. With these songs already absorbed, it was I See You that gripped me first. It had all the ingredients of Byrdsian power – enough to bring me to my knees – minor key melancholy, one-three and one-five harmonies, twelve string production and counterpoint bass. I played it relentlessly. I swooned before its stellar circumstance. I saw my future only in its terms. It again reinforced my vision – that I too was to be a creator of affecting melody and harmony. I saw them – the rest of humanity – the audience – moved to a state of serenity by my own future creations. It was only a matter of time.

Chapter 9

There was both ecstasy and sadness when the time came for me to board the Newman's Bus. To leave behind Graham (the retro-path), to quit the confinement of my school days – these things filled my mind with hope. However standing there before me, her slight frame saddled with grief, was the enigma of Julia. I clutched her like one would hold a desolate child. Her head was nestled into the shelter of my neck, her breath warm on my prickling skin. I felt shot full of guilt, as much for leaving her (to deal with him alone), but also for not getting to the crux of her problem, when there had been a chance. I had never managed to pick up the threads of Margo's story. Once Isobel had disappeared from view, I could barely deal with my own evolving life, let alone try to understand the root cause of someone else's dilemma.

Yet as I held Julia in the final clasp, the engine of the bus idling in that 'just about to leave' fashion, I was acutely aware of her as a person, someone shaped by history – her own history – not merely a mother, or someone unable to throw off the shackles of an overbearing husband.

The time had come. I turned away from them and mounted the steps. I stopped to wave at the entrance before quickly going inside. I lumbered along the centre aisle, the heady scent of the laundered interior sharp enough to make my eyes water. I found my seat, and looked out at them again, through the thick tinted window. She was back beside him, her white handkerchief held up to her bloodshot eyes. There were no comforting arms from the surgeon. I didn't try to look directly at Julia's face, fearing a grief of my own would arise to consume me. Instead, I gazed down at her legs. She had beautiful legs, thin and perfectly shaped. I contemplated those lower limbs, a familiar tumescence in my throat, wondering if it might have been a tragedy that a beautiful person had been wasted on an insensitive fool. Someone decent would have really loved Julia, - really loved – to the point of obsession. Like I myself would love someone.

The bus was pulling away, the door closing with a hiss of compressed air. I was jerked back to the present, to the frantically waving handkerchief of the mother, and to the almost military salute of the father. Julia's face went sliding past the window, back behind the bus and out of my view. In seconds we were on the street and the interior was flooded with streaming sunshine. Hardy St, Trafalgar St, Bridge St – they were all going by, flying out of my life.

Although I was suppressing grief, I was soon able to dull my connections with the immediate past. There was a sense of relief that the stress of departure was behind me. I was able to dwell on the prospect of a future – music, love, friendship – a career? And all those parental restrictions . . . gone!

The hostel was austere from the outside – three stories of weathered brick – two separate blocks forming an L-shape that enclosed a grass courtyard circumscribed by concrete paths. Off one corner of this rectangle, a short pathway led to a dull grey Church of England. Struggling under a heavy backpack, I left the street and lurched through the tunnel entrance. As I did so, a clutch of water-bombs came arching downward towards me from above. I was ambushed from two sides, there being several strategically placed windows aloft. I was hit on both flanks and twice on the left shoulder. I laughed and dashed for cover.

The foyer of the building was of grey rough cast, rent by a stained glass window. The floor had cracked yellow tiles, while above hung a central chandelier. I knocked on a plain yellow door. Painted on it, in faded black letters, were the words 'The Warden.'

Minutes later, I stalked down a long back corridor in the west wing to find my room. The Warden had been very affable and apologetic about my wet welcome. However his friendliness couldn't disguise the Spartan nature of his buildings. I had to remind myself that I was entering the very establishment I had revered during my nostalgia binges over the preceding years. I took a deep breath and paused in my tread. These were the corridors of Asher, Hallwright, Treadgold, McEwen . . . and of course Richard.

My room had an iron bedstead and a scored wooden desk, set upon faded green linoleum. It was old linoleum, lifting in the corners and along the seams, leaving some ragged scars. The external windows looked westward, over the gables of the church roof to the tree lined hill suburbs above George Street. It was a view I would get to know well in the coming months. I'd always been a watcher of horizons – as if there was some magical place just out of sight beyond the curvature.

Dunedin weather was so often on the brink of turning bad. There would be a grey wash above – pregnant with rain – or maybe transiently unloading, raking the suburbs with a smattering of wind blown droplets. The scene was akin to a movie retrieved from some pre-war archive – everything in black and white and shades of grey.

Unpacking my bag I felt a heavy air of expectation. I hadn't met anyone yet, but I could sense that out beyond my door, there were people waiting. People like Asher, Hallwright, Treadgold and McEwen . . . their 1974 equivalents.

Of course Isobel was somewhere in the city, yet I suppressed the very thought of her. I felt estranged from her. I wasn't inclined to use her as a prop. I would take the opportunity to break free from her hold on my past.

I had scarcely begun to hang up my clothes when there was a pounding at the door. With heart tapping, I went and opened up. There on the threshold, stood a round faced youth wearing a sports jacket and tie. It was Earle Williams, a contemporary of mine from Nelson College. Although it was a comfort to see a familiar face, I wasn't sure about taking on a figure from the past. Straight away I sensed he might destroy my prospects of something new – that the Asher equivalent of today might see a Nelson duo as impenetrable. It had been easy to get on with Earle at school. Everybody did. He was everybody's friend. He had been different from the bulk of his peer-group. Whereas most of us had been cynical and negative – firmly anti-establishment, Earle had been quite the opposite. He had made the most of things. Thus he had been a little out of step with the rebellious late sixties. However it was now 1974 and conventional behaviour was more acceptable. From a wealthy family, he was never short of money – that probably helped buttress his congenial manner. There he was, his handshake firm, his round face bloated with a smile of anticipation, announcing it was time for high tea. There was just the two of us from Nelson. "We'd better team up and take them on," he said.

On Sunday, it was customary to wear a jacket and tie to the dining room. I scurried around; unearthing the corduroy jacket and striped tie Julia had bought me. We sauntered down the corridor, discussing our prospective careers. I was supposedly aiming for medical school – he was doing a commerce degree. Like fathers, like sons. The inevitability of the father and son thing depressed me.

Over the ensuing weeks, I remained unsure about my association with Earle. We hadn't been close mates at school, so why were we now? It all seemed highly circumstantial. But Earle talked to me as though I was the greatest guy in the world – as though he knew that deep within me, there was an effusive, non judgemental, tolerant person ready to bust out – some happy go lucky individual with plenty to say. However, I was still mired in 60s philosophy. Capitalism was dying. The future was free love, environmentalism, music and getting high. However, in the immediate future, there was this Selwyn College phenomenon to get to grips with.

All the guys in the hostel were of similar ilk – derived from the 'good' New Zealand schools. Spirits ran high. You really had to be on your guard as the pranksters went about their business. Water-bombs and firecrackers abounded. There was an established punishment ritual for those who stepped out of line (the 'crimes' were usually contrived), consisting of emersion in an outside bath filled with freezing water.

Things were particularly feisty during 'initiation' week. One particular evening, all the first years were herded into a common room, while the seniors muscled around outside, drinking beer and shouting insults through the windows. Eventually they came and got one of us, a slight fellow named Joe. He put up fierce resistance as they stripped him down. However they soon got control and dunked him in the bath. For the occasion, the bath water was tainted by a mixture of sloppy mud and green slime. After he had been held under for a few seconds, they scooped him out and carried him across towards the windows of our common room. Soon his pale backside was jammed against the window. Inside, we were transfixed by the view of his flattened anus. There was much nervous laughter. Who or what was going to be next?

But most of this pre-initiation stuff was bluster, merely meant to scare. In the end, the initiation ceremony proper was merely a dowsing with a slop of chicken heads and fish tails, whilst gnawing on a stale bun, blind-folded and immobilised by a hand tie. Despite the stench, I felt good. Here we were, burgeoning Ashers and Treadgolds, poised and ready for glory.

Earle was a real hit with the girls. He looked ok, but really it was all down to communication skill. In contrast, I communicated with my facial capillaries – I became a vermillion sunset whenever a female came anywhere near. One evening we had a combined dinner out with St. Margaret's College, a hostel for students derived from 'good' girl's schools. We travelled for many miles up the North-East Valley in a caravan of buses, trapped in low gear ratio by the incline. This pedestrian journey enabled the majority aboard our bus to indulge in a campaign of self inebriation. I wondered what was happening on the St. Margaret's buses. Perhaps they were getting soused as well. The thought of them all about to be released was quite a worry.

I was spinning out of control on arrival, having drunk everything I could get my hands on over the final part of the trip. Thus I don't recall anything about the meal. My memory is only of the later part of the evening, when I came to be leaning against a balustrade, trading limited discourse with a girl named Eleanor. We were like two autumn leaves caught in a side eddy of a flooding river. While all the action was in the mainstream, there were these two individuals sequestered to the one side, unable to cope with the general melee, forced into faltering conversation.

Although there were more silences than words, I wasn't too uncomfortable with the situation (being awash with alcohol). I was able to observe Eleanor in an almost clinical fashion. The electric lights exaggerated her pallor while her stick like arms and delicate fingers stuck indelibly in my mind.

She was a long way from home. Her family were sheep farmers from near Eketahuna in the North Island. As was the case for me, it was a family tradition for her to be educated in Dunedin. She was starting a science degree, but with no clear objective at the end of it. She was not coping with being in Dunedin – she was disabled by constant homesickness. I was in love straight away, reeled in by her apparent delicacy. Everything about her was frail – from her stunted skeletal frame to her fly-away brown hair, bobbed around a waif's face with its slim upturned nose and cute dimpled retracted chin.

Eventually I lost sight of her in the drunken melee – she must have gotten the first bus back to town. Despite her not having shown the slightest interest in me, during the subsequent days, I lay on my bed constantly craving her. And she came to further fuel my desire with her continued array of lukewarm responses.

My initial foray to get her was a bleak affair. Saturated by anxiety, I jerked my way around to St. Margarets (not long after the night we had met) to see her. She appeared at the entrance way, looking irked, but nevertheless sounding resigned to the intrusion. She was clearly half expecting it. She took me to a corner of an adjacent common room. The light was muted, perhaps to hide us from the prying eyes of her contemporaries. There, I tried to pay her a compliment, revealing readily my growing obsession with her and the emaciated look. The words came out in a stuttering flow, the phrases mangled, the words poorly sounded. She recoiled from this advance of mine; looking right and left as though she wanted to run for the door. My further attempts to find an area of commonality came to nothing and I lurched away, back to my hostel, my mood in tune with the desolate evening sky.

Earle came to the rescue. Effortlessly he was infiltrating the various sub-strata of university life – whatever he had an inclination to go for. To extract some girls from St Margarets for an evening out was a simple exercise for him. And the real coup – he managed to get Eleanor included. The group congregated at the bridge over the Leith. Without looking directly I could sense her presence, like an aura before a headache. As we sauntered into town, I hovered about the periphery of the throng, conscious of my previous rebuff. I pretended to be disinterested. Occasionally I'd get a glimpse of her, walking between taller girls. She didn't once look around – a bad sign. In the movie theatre, I was careful to note where she sat, and took myself to the opposite end of the row.

Later in a city bar, Earle was in an effusive state, as we lounged on a long sofa. We drank quickly, for we were all under-age and there was always the prospect of the police arriving and throwing everyone out. Earle had no problem getting around the barman. He was now sporting a droopy moustache which made him look a bit older. "Enjoy the movie Eleanor?" he said. She sat down beside him and my torso jumped as if touched by defibrillator paddles. He engaged her in easy conversation for a while then stood up. "I'll leave you guys to it. I'd better find Garbo."

"Who's Garbo?" Eleanor asked me, staring at Earle's receding back.

I had electricity in my spine. She was talking to me, and (at last) in a reasonably friendly tone. "Garbo? Oh that's his current girl. She's at Unicol." We talked on, myself in a lather of sweat, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the seat. She was unusually benign, lying back into a corner of the sofa, babbling on in a curiously relaxed manner.

On the ramble back to the hostel, under the soft glow of the street-lamps, she took my free hand. "Thank you for taking an interest in me," she said. "I'm sorry if I was such a sourpuss." I was puzzled. Why was she alluding to everything in the past tense?

At the street corner parting, I hovered for a few minutes, hoping for something more. And it happened – from the gaggle of departing girls, she appeared again, pacing back towards me. And her lips were soft, fluctuant – her breath kind of smoky, even though she didn't touch cigarettes. The shock of her scent, the power of the close contact, triggered a new wave of desire and need. I needed her to be mine, to kiss and to squeeze, to possess and to love. But as I was being so consumed, she broke from my grasp, running away back towards the pack.

I wasn't bothered by her departure. I was floating in the euphoria of the breakthrough. The dark sky seemed to be lifting and I was growing to fill the space. It was only a hundred metres to the hostel. They were a great hundred metres – a hundred metres of rapture.

The next day, I left it until midday to phone her – not wishing to appear desperate. The woman's voice was slightly mocking as she told me – as if I was the only one in the world who didn't know. "No, no, no," she said, her voice injected with middle age. "Eleanor left this morning. She's gone back to her family in Eketahuna."

My voice became husky and I needed her to repeat the news.

"Yes that's what I said," she continued. "Didn't you know? She's given up on her university studies. She's gone home to mum."

On a typical Sunday morning, there was quiet in the streets. The sky would be leaden – a feeling of not quite rain. I would gaze up at the distant Mount Cargill, enveloped in strengthening clouds, the billowing cumulonimbus evolving through a series of bleak colours – black, brown and grey. On those desolate days, it was a comfort to know that rain was coming. The slumbering students would wake to find their day circumscribed. They would be reduced to a somnolent vigil behind water-streaked window panes, watching the run of the weather. It brought them down to my level.

Usually on such a Sunday, I would scurry along Castle Street to the Queen's Gardens. There I would leave the path and climb onto a grassy knoll, stalking amongst the clumps of bush, like a Spitfire fighter pilot using puffs of cloud for cover. I carried her with me, her image growing in my belly like a cancer. For though she'd only graced me with a brief parting kiss, a benevolent pressing with soft and fluctuant lips, her essence had entered me and taken root.

From the top of the knoll I could see a broader canvas, taking in the city centre and the surrounding hill suburbs. Eastward lay the silver waters of Otago Harbour. Even from a kilometre away, I could sense the movement there, the rhythm of the swirl – the streaming of foam and weed into lines. I could smell it, the odour of rust, of fish scales and green slime on a pillar – all left to transiently respire or oxidise in the grey air above the ebbing tide.

In the north it is warmer. The fields are luxuriant – a deep green. The years have been good to the farmers who settled there many generations before. There is old money, and plenty of time to savour the slow change of seasons beyond the veranda rail. I imagined her, thin and tender, floating along the corridor of a large farm house, wearing a sleeveless top, white and pressed, and a wrap-around skirt ending just above her knees. I saw her as bony, the ivory of her knee caps under-painting the flesh coloured surface. And yes, she was a failure, since she hadn't manage to break from the family's gravitational field. She was sucked back to those rolling fields, like an injured aeroplane, its fuel line shot to bits – drawn inevitably to earth.

I saw her mother as stately, warm, and concerned. She understood that there was no hurry – that life is long, with plenty of time to learn the ropes. Better to be a child for one more year, to grow a little more, than to burn in a far flung city. And Daddy – he always made Eleanor a star, didn't he? He could buy her a good car, something reliable, to drive to the nearby University in Palmerston North, only forty-five minutes away. She could come home again at night, to watch through the windows, the shadows of telegraph poles lengthening across the fields, as they would have done year after year. In the kitchen a pot would be simmering, and she might turn away from the window to reduce the gas flame. She might hear her mother behind her, searching a cupboard for paprika.

I would arise then, unable to bear the images for one moment longer. She would be growing in my throat, expanding in my head, ballooning in my chest. I had to move quickly, as if to escape from myself. Convulsed in self pity, I would descend the slopes, running from copse to copse (the fighter pilot at war again) hiding my streaming face from the quizzical look of strangers.

In the final hundred metres, I would gather myself together, to be prepared for entry into the looming hostel. The quadrangle would be deserted, apart from a few limp individuals bearing hangovers, slipping anonymously away on unknown errands. And I, on the cusp of a great social institution, the University, would turn away from it all, to waste another day in a solitary fever dream.

I wrote to her, a drone of self pity, interspersed with lines of verse – songs I had written for her. I posted it on just such a Sunday morning as I have described. And within the envelope were all my hopes and dreams. For a few hesitant seconds I clasped it between thumb and forefinger, my pulse riding up a few notches. For I knew that once I let it go, the letter would drop away through the trap, to become irretrievable, its revealing contents set to become an embarrassment – cringe-worthy – something from which she would certainly retreat with that look of horror I had seen before. After I finally let it go, I looked up and down the street, feeling conspicuous and ridiculous.

For a few days, I was gathered into a streak of optimism, a hopeful comet scoring the night sky. By now she would know the extent of my feeling for her – that after she had journeyed away, there had remained in Dunedin City a fractured heart, a tormented soul, a yearning spirit. Maybe she would too become affected – once she understood – doesn't love sometimes incite a counter love? She, who couldn't bear to stay in this southern retreat, would realise who she had left behind – someone whose very existence was based on the vision of her body in full expression.

The days turned into weeks. Five weeks. When it arrived, I was getting to a point of acceptance that I had lost her. But there it was, retrieved from behind the stretched lattice of elastic that held the mail against the felt covered green backboard. Although I had never seen her writing before, I knew in an instant it must be her. The address was written in a neat italic script –the pen strokes soft and fine.

If time could stand still! If I could walk the pathway across to my wing again and again, the letter delicately held between fingers and thumb. For during that walk there was hope, anticipation, possibilities . . . There was still a chance that it wasn't only I whose chest was rent, twisted and inflamed.

I gazed at the script, my stomach hollowing with disappointment. I had felt so much pain for all those weeks – a sensory cripple. Yet why should I expect her to feel the same? I would have preferred her to come right out and say it 'I'm sorry, but for you I feel absolutely nothing'. Instead she implied that my letter had merely been a bland ramble from an acquaintance. There was no acknowledgement of the angst I had poured onto my pages. Her tone was mildly apologetic – for not sticking it out in Dunedin, 'like the rest of you'. The use of the plural annoyed me. Clearly I was lumped in with a whole group. Apparently it was insignificant that it was I who had written to her and not one of the others. There was a brief description of what she was doing, a polite thank-you for the note, and at the end an invitation to call by, 'if ever you are up this way.' I laughed without mirth. As though I might be up near Eketahuna and suddenly remember! Oh Yes. Eleanor lives around here somewhere. I must call in.

I was seriously wounded, but not quite dead. Perhaps she hadn't understood my letter. Did she not realise? This was love. I resolved to use the telephone. Yes, I'd speak to her in real time. I'd make sure she knew. And I'd hear her voice. I'd hear her voice!

There was a coin phone in the lobby, right beside the mail board. It took several days before I managed to make the connection. I had approached the phone like a timid zebra approaches a waterhole patrolled by lions. For a start the lobby had to be empty. I didn't want an eavesdropper hanging onto my words. And I had to overcome the nausea, the flushing, the beating heart and the writhing colon. When finally I did it, I connected with a deep male voice. Quickly, in a Sertorius gasp I asked for Eleanor.

"Who did you say it was?" the man asked with a plummy accent.

Gerry Davenport.

The man, her father I presume, disappeared to look for her. I could hear his footfalls receding along wooden floorboards, perhaps a hallway with a high ceiling. In my mind I could picture this cool dark passage leading to a kitchen full of strong sunlight. Outside there were rolling grassy fields, stretching away to a horizon of low slung hills beneath puffs of snow white cumulus.

I could hear her coming. Her footsteps were light and fast. Her greeting was pleasant but tainted with an edge of annoyance. There were many silences. Having made the connection, I was left exposed. I couldn't just blurt it out – 'I love you'. So how was I to convey my feeling? In the end I didn't have to.

"I'm flattered by your interest," she said suddenly. "But I think you should know. I'm engaged to be married to a young farmer. I'm getting married in June."

I stumbled over the courtyard, reaching out for my room. The pavement rolled under my staggering form, its cracks and clinging weeds always to be remembered.

Returned to reality by my failure, I found myself a solitary figure. While I had been floundering about, my head full of dreams (a waif's face and stick like limbs), amongst the others friendships had been formed and girlfriends had been taken. I found myself on the outside of these alliances, a remote figure with nothing to say, and no direction on which to hang my hat. So much then, for this modern day Asher. Earle remained in touch with me. He had watched me succumb, bemused by the apparent waste of a life, the futile giving of all to some distant and unrewarding figure. But he was busy, too occupied to lend me much of a hand.

These were perfect conditions for a fixation to flourish. I'd been trawling the Dunedin second hand shops for the records I needed to complete my Byrds collection. It was a fruitless endeavour since the later records had had moderate sales and were now out of print. Whenever I plucked up courage to ask the retailer, they'd look at me strangely. What an unusual request! The Byrds! Weren't they just one hit wonders from 65? However, one of them was in the know, a bearded musician on Stuart St. He looked at me critically. "Sweetheart of the Rodeo?" he said, his face lighting up. "Yeah, that was kind of radical for its time – but I haven't seen that come through here in a long, long time." Out of the blue, CBS brought out a compilation, a double album called History of the Byrds. I was in a main street shop, flicking through the B section. There it was, a pale green cover with a side-profile shot of some latter day Byrds. My beaten down spirit threatened to awaken as I flipped it over and read the track listing. Here at last, some of the questions raised by those mystery years would be answered.

Anxious to put a melody with each new song title, I half walked, half ran my way back to the hostel. In the still-life interior of my room, I plundered that snapshot of a musical legacy – songs that had not felt the touch of a stylus for many years. And I went on and built my whole year around the tracks, playing them over and over, like a lonely fishwife with a neurosis. I wrote down all the words on loose-leaf paper, later to sing them in a cracked strident voice, staring over the church roof to the skyline, the missing harmonies playing along in my head.

One song captured me in its embrace for months – for years! Lady Friend. It had never been released on an album before. It had been an unsuccessful single in 67. It was the ultimate three minute package of jangling guitars and vocal intervals – thirds, fifths, suspended fourths . . . How those intervals could touch me. The guitars seemed to chime like bells. And the words, were so simple, yet dealing with a feeling I knew oh so well.

Here it comes again

It's going to happen to me

Here it comes she's going to say goodbye

She's going to say

She's going away

And I will have to live without her and survive.

On the surface, hardly earth shattering. But to a lacerated heart, encapsulated within the music . . . I knew what it was. It was devastation and her name was Eleanor. The want, the need, the hurt. . . At least the writer had been with his girl. Me, I'd desired someone but had never gotten to find out how she felt. How did it feel to be wrapped around Eleanor? Lying on a bed? Would I never know?

I thrashed History of the Byrds for months. My hostel-mates glanced at me and looked away. Who could relate to this gaunt somnolent youth with his head wreathed in outdated music? Lady Friend was blasted through my open doorway time after time. It was like a propaganda show – Radio Free Davenport – but I didn't win any converts.

That open doorway . . . Was it my means to communicate? To let the others know that the gaunt somnolent youth was capable of running deep. It was as if the music conveyed all my injuries – Eleanor – and my hopes as well . . . The hope of something vital.

Isobel! I had tried to make my way without her, to establish my own life in that southern city. Occasionally I had been tempted to go and seek her out, but each time I would manage to resist it, to try once more on my own. Eventually I had to concede that my Dunedin sojourn was failing miserably. I set out to find her.

It was yet again a Sunday morning, following a particularly solitary Saturday night. I had her address from one of Julia's letters. I knocked on the loose hinged front door of a dilapidated lean-to shack. A lethargic bohemian led me to her empty room. "She's gone away to Europe," he said with a wan smile.

"What? for a holiday?"

"No," he said. "For good."

Garbo was giving me the sideways look. I'd catch her glancing across at me while whispering Earle's ear, her mouth turned down at the corners, one eyebrow elevated. And they would laugh. Garbo was sanguine, confident and loud, all backed up by a drawling southern accent. She had Earle fast tracked into the University high-life. There was no room for an emotional cripple in her plans. Less and less did his cheerful round face appear at my door. Life was meant for living, not to be merely dreamed about.

I was truly confined to my inner self. In my mind the only way out of the rut was to write music – music so good that 'they' would all have to sit up and take notice of me – an aloof but rich and famous musician. I had long given up my studies in zoology, chemistry and mathematics. I attended lectures sporadically, sitting bemused in the second from the back row. I was thinking, 'this isn't for me, I'm beyond all this.'

My life in the hostel contrasted markedly with the imaginary life I had created for Asher, Hallwright, Treadgold, McEwen . . . Was it imaginary? Perhaps one of them, two of them even, had been slumped in a cell like room, their heads filled with doom and gloom? But I had seen the photo-montages in the yearbooks. Beaming faces at the winter ball, belly-laughter at the rugby, tankards of beer held aloft, pretty women standing close by. I was nothing like them. Clearly I was meant for a different pathway through life.

Despite being locked into a creation dream, my guitar playing and song writing were not progressing. I was driven to play Byrdsian chords with the same characteristic drone. It was all part of the neurosis, feeding a myopic pleasure centre. E minor (add D and G), A minor (add D and G), G major (add D and G). There was song after song with the same affect, the subject matter always consistent – all about loss, (Eleanor). They all failed to progress beyond a morbid drone.

Then I became ill. It crept up on me slowly. At first it was merely a tiredness, unnoticeable inside a listless persona. Changes came insidiously. My chest was beginning to heave after walking up a staircase. In the mornings I was bathed in sweat, my lower limbs trembling as I dropped them off the bedside onto freezing linoleum. I stopped attending the dining room, preferring to lie across my bed, sipping metallic tap water. By the time Earle finally appeared, I was wheezing at rest, my cough a dog's bark – a productive gunshot, firing viscous yellow and green sputum into woody paper tissues.

His face was transformed in a matter of seconds, and I was humbled by this show of feeling. He was almost tearful as he ran away, his footfalls heavy in the resonant corridor. I heard the door bang shut at the far end of the long passage, leaving me to the moribund atmosphere of infected exhalations and the sound of my crackling lung bases as they expanded and contracted in the silence.

The doctor breathed heavily through his beard, his tweed coat falling across my fiery skin, as he auscultated the front of my chest. I heard him whistle, a rapid indrawing of breath that signalled the extent of the pathology. "You've contracted pneumonia son," he concluded. Under Earle's incredulous gaze, he loaded two syringes with urine coloured antibiotic, to sequentially plunge each into an exposed buttock. I bit onto a thumb, my face seeking the folds of the kapok pillow.

People came in droves. First there was the Warden and the cook. I was to be confined to my room, my meals to come up on wiped down wooden trays. After this initial foray, sheepish young men, pricked by conscience, appeared in my room. All the modern-day Ashers, Hallwrights, Treadgolds and McEwans. Suddenly I was somebody. At last I had something to hang my hat on. Pneumonia! And they talked to me, these young men whose effervescent faces would soon grace the pages of the next yearbook. They stood by my bed on the green linoleum, a multitude of firm jaws, their words conciliatory, their body language revealing the self confidence that came with their success - in the classroom, on the rugby fields, with the girls. Here I was, an unexpected part of their day – a pneumonic Byrd fanatic.

Despite of my parlous physical state, I had never felt so good. I was part of something after all. Part of the institution. They'd be talking about me across the tablecloths in the dining-room. The Byrd-man has pneumonia. The jingle-jangle man has succumbed. He never did dress properly for the cold. Those paper thin paisley shirts!

The disease couldn't last forever. It began to ebb away, and so did the guests. I stumbled to my feet, like a sun-drunk peasant after a prolonged siesta. I walked out into the insipid sunlight – it was the first day of spring. I had been laid low for weeks. I had no hope of making medical school now. I wandered aimlessly along a footpath, towards the Queen's Gardens. In the distance, Mt Cargill marked the horizon, the most faraway visible landmark to the North. Transiently I conjured up a meadow, a warming summer sun bathing desiccated grass. In the nose a peaty smell of moss. Nearby, insects hovered; ascending, descending, lateralising. Close to me a teenage girl, an engaging smile . . . Abruptly I longed to be gone, to leave Dunedin behind. The city and its University had promised so much, but yielded nothing. I had been a total failure. The culture of the Ashers, the Hallwrights, the Treadgolds, the McEwans – seemingly it wasn't for me. I hadn't even been to a rugby game. I hadn't attended the mid-Winter ball. I hadn't dated a girl from St Margarets. I hadn't dropped to the ground clutching my belly, derailed by laughter. It was too late for all that now. I had painted myself into a corner.

Perhaps sensing my plight, Earle organised an evening out, a table for four at La Scala. We were fully mobile – his father had sent him a car, a brand new Honda Civic. It was an odd feeling, driving down the streets that we had only previously known on foot. We pulled up outside University College to pick up the girls – Garbo and one of her friends. Earle went in to get them while I sat amongst the scent of new upholstery and polished panels. I thought about Garbo and her friend. My stomach turned and sweat broke out between my shoulder blades. How to deal with them?

When Garbo and Jacinta got in the car they looked at me and laughed. "Sorry Gerry," Garbo said. "You just look so wasted." It grew into that kind of infectious laughter that never quite goes away. I've even had it myself. The laughter would subside into uneasy silence before inevitably erupting again. Earl said, "They're laughing at us mate," but I knew it was only directed at me.

The restaurant was lit up like a ship in port. We were escorted to a side room, a solitary table for four. There was no surrounding milieu of people to become immersed in. There was only us – one stark foursome. The waiter wore a tuxedo with a gleaming white shirt and tie – easy meat for the double act of Garbo and Jacinta. Their paroxysms of mirth continued throughout the meal. I tried to enter the conversation but my phrases emerged in a jumble. My voice sounded overly loud and hoarse. My efforts seemed to be more fuel for the laughter fire. Thus it felt like a granting of mercy when it was finally all over.

We were invited to Garbo's room for a night cap. Looking bored, Jacinta disappeared, perhaps in search of more exciting company, leaving me to watch Earl and Garbo roll about the room, talking themselves up with sexual innuendo. I intimated to Earl that I was going to walk back to the hostel. "Don't be stupid mate," he said. "I'll come now as well. We'll drive."

I stared out the side window at the buildings flashing by – lecture theatres, the student union, student flats, laboratories . . . There were groups of students on the streets, singing and arguing – occasionally gesticulating at the car. I was tired of watching other people live. After we'd parked the car, we walked together towards the back gate. I felt a shot of anger pulse through my veins and I shouldered Earl into a gate post. He gave a faint gasp as he came to a halt, a quick expulsion of breath in the quiet of the night. I didn't look back, striding across the courtyard to seek the anonymity of the interior. I surveyed the room, a montage of shadows and street light, an angular bedstead and a high backed chair jammed against a desk – a musty, dank and cold enclosure. I went to the window and stared at the night. My chest was heavy, my jaw clenched. I turned back into the room. I went to the cupboard and opened it. I looked down at the suitcase. It was covered in dust.

BOOK 2

Chapter 1

Professor Boatwood talked to us briefly. Behind the horn-rimmed spectacles, his eyes darted about. I sensed the dialogue was going to be transient. In the learned man's visual field, a more important conversant awaited. Sure enough, the Professor conjured an escape. He called over his colleague, senior-lecturer Nigel Green and introduced him to us.

"We've been in England for a year." I said, after Green had enquired of our origins.

Green raised an eyebrow. "Really? Whereabouts?"

"Tunbridge Wells," I said.

"Tunbridge Wells? I don't know it" Green mused. "How big is the hospital there?"

"It's quite small. It's a district-general."

"Oh . . . well . . . it's all experience." Green stared at the wine in his glass. "June and I spent two years at Oxford." He emphasised the last word and looked up at me. "It was not long after we were married. I was fortunate to get the opportunity. It was a great place to learn. They were the best years of my life." He stood on tip-toes and scanned the room. "I can't see June at the moment . . . I'd like to introduce you both . . . How about you Eleanor? Did you work over there as well?"

"I did some temporary teaching work," she said, shifting stiffly from one leg to the other. Her thin face looked pinched and drained under the professor's bright ceiling lights.

"Excellent. It's a great way to get to know the people," he said. "You're starting with us soon at the Intensive Care Unit, aren't you Gerry?"

"Next week. I start on the day shift."

"That's the way to do it. There are plenty of admissions during the day," Green said, his eyes sparkling. "The bulk of our ICU patients are from the cardiac theatre. Mainly coronary bypass graft operations. They can be quite unstable for the first twenty-four hours after the surgery. That's where we intensivists get involved. The surgeons stress the patients to the limit and we rescue them back to safety."

I nodded. I downed the last of my wine and searched for something to say. "It's a bit daunting," I said. Immediately wishing I hadn't. Betraying weakness was probably not a wise thing to do.

"You'll love it," Green said. "I'm sure you'll both be happy here." He touched me on a shoulder. "We look after you in Dunedin." With a wink he was gone, circulating to another part of the room.

Eleanor and I escaped to the sanctuary of a plate glass window. The professor's house was high up in the North-East Suburbs and afforded panoramic views over the city. Below, the expanse of city lights shimmered against an inky backdrop. Rising lines of orange dots, marked the main routes of exit from the city centre. The adjacent Otago Harbour was identifiable, merely as an absence of light. I felt fingers digging into a shoulder muscle. I turned enquiringly to look at Eleanor, but the groping hand belonged to David Young, the other new Intensive Care registrar.

"I've discovered the professor's hobbyhorse," he said in his Canadian drawl. "He uses massive doses of PEEP."

"What's PEEP?" Eleanor asked.

"How much is a massive dose?" I interrupted, turning my back on the view. The Canadian, I noticed, continually wrung his hands together, as though they were wet.

"Seventy apparently," the Canadian said, laughing. "The lungs must be stretched up like Zeppelins." He looked at Eleanor. "PEEP? It's a pressure used to expand a sick patient's lungs. Because of the expansion there's more lung area exposed to oxygen. The Professor's ideas are controversial though. Because he wants to use so much PEEP, the blown up lungs are likely to crush the heart. That reduces the ability of the heart to provide a decent blood pressure."

I could see the perpetrator of the heart crushing therapy across the room. He had collared someone else, a squat grey haired individual. The Professor was waving a finger right in front of the smaller man's nose. It was a large nose, flared at the nostrils.

Who's that short guy the Professor is arguing with?" I asked.

The Canadian paused in his hand wringing. "That's Gibbs, the other senior lecturer. He's a bit obnoxious I've heard . . ."

Smoke hung listlessly in the air. Outside, rain lashed the windows. Remington leaned on his cue. "Tunbridge Wells is a long way from the heights of Oxford," he said. He advanced to the table and smacked the white ball. A red raced away into a side pocket.

"Yeah well, he probably thinks I'm an under-achiever," I said.

"He's right then," Remington said, failing to sink the green.

"Oh yeah?" I said in a dumb voice. I took the cue from my friend. The handle was sticky. "If he thought that, then he was too polite to say anything about it."

"Oh sure, he's a nice guy, Nigel Green - too nice really." Remington said. Behind him, anachronistic metal freaks operated a juke-box. In a dark corner, three Samoans sat staring silently. Black frizzy hair framed their faces. "He's one of those guys who you never hear slagging off anyone else . . . Boatwood excepted maybe."

"Ah . . . so, he's the antithesis of someone like yourself." I said.

Remington scratched the top of his head. His long top lip gave him a belligerent disposition. "Hard to talk to a dude like that for more than a few minutes – what can you say? I prefer a bit of edge – a bit of scepticism." He took a mouthful of beer. Some of it spilled out onto his pink tie. "Actually, they reckon he'll move to Aussie soon. Boatwood could hang on as the Prof here for years. So Green will have to move if he wants to climb the academic ladder. Same applies to Gibbs – Mr Odious himself."

I doubled the yellow towards a side pocket. It missed. "I see . . . So when's your radiology exam?"

"It's the same time as your intensive care one – May. Life's going to be abysmal until then. When I pass I'm going to punch a hole in the sky. No more grovelling as a radiology registrar. But for you Davenport – life will continue to be abysmal – after you fail."

I grimaced. I watched thousands of dust particles swirling in a column of light emanating from a ceiling window. "Nostradamus," I said.

The wind gusted in from the south. The sea was in a frenzy. From a distance, the sail-board would seem to skid along without effort. The segment of harbour I crossed lay between the high-rise cityscape and the peninsula suburbs. Now and then I adjusted the sail, to counter changes in wind speed or direction. They were fine movements, not detectable from afar.

Despite the velocity of the ride, my mood was sombre. My chest felt like a hollow drum. My throat was thick – eyes swollen with salt. Eleanor was out of town. I should be missing her. But deep within, a flame flickered and danced. I was free.

I was almost at the wharf. I threw the board into a gybe and it carved a gracious arc across the boiling surface. I flipped the sail over and realigned for the next tack. But I was too slow adjusting the rig. A twist in the top of the sail, drove the mast to windward and it exploded into the sea. White foam blasted into the air. Under the sail, I wrenched my body harness free from the sunken boom and swam out to the surface. Gulping down air, I clung to the board, staring at the distant shores. I had been hers for ten years. We were a defined unit. But something fundamental was missing – had always been missing. I felt the onset of panic. When I thought about my life with her, I felt as though I was suffering a great loss. It was time that was being lost. There had been too many dead years. I shook my head and braced myself, as over the turquoise stippled sea, a fresh gust accelerated towards me.

"Christ, you're early."

I looked up to see who had spoken. I saw a puffy faced man with narrow slanted eyes. He wore green 'theatre' garb similar to my own. I had entered the Intensive Care Unit through opaque swing doors emblazoned with the notice, Intensive Care Unit, No Entry. The man, who had several breathing circuits laid over one shoulder and carried a bucket full of intravenous fluid bags, stood before a backdrop of beds and nurses, cables and tubes, monitors with winking lights and strident alarms – all sandwiched between painfully bright roof lighting and reflective flooring. I stood on the threshold, mouth dry and heart pounding.

"David Young said to be here by seven-thirty," I said.

"The Handwringer lives on his nerves," the squat man said. He jumped forward and offered his hand. He was a head shorter than me. "Tony Drummond," he said. "I'm the respiratory technician. It's bad luck you've got Gibbs first up."

"Is it?" I queried.

Drummond grimaced and headed for the double doors. "The Handwringer is in the tearoom," he said.

At that moment the Canadian came bolting out of a side door, his face ashen, his lips pinched.

"How was the nightshift?" I asked.

"You're here . . . O.K we got to get some drugs ready, for when the first cardiac bypass comes back from theatre."

"But, that won't be till late morning will it?" I asked. My stomach knotted, as absorbed Handwringer's nervous state.

Handwringer laughed, although his face remained taut. "That's right, but with Gibbs the consultant for the unit this week – things have to be prepared light years in advance. He'll be here, on the dot, at eight o'clock. He goes straight onto the war path,"

We moved across to the vacant space, where the cardiac bed would go. Handwringer reached under the bed-end table and produced a protocol. The plastic cover was twisted and barely transparent. It was headed, 'Drugs for CABG resuscitation.' I pointed at the abbreviation.

"Coronary Artery Bypass Graft," Handwringer explained. "They call the operation a 'cabbage' – for obvious reasons."

Detailed below were the drugs to prepare. adrenaline 1 mg/10 mls, atropine, lignocaine, isoprenaline . . . eleven drugs in all. We drew the contents of the ampoules into syringes. Handwringer showed me where to put coloured sticky labels for identification. The label was to be applied at the level of the fluid in the syringe. Gibbs, he said, was a stickler about that.

Drummond reappeared, stopping by their table. "It's a shame you don't have Nigel Green on your first day," he said.

"Why's that?" I asked, too nervous to enjoy a conversation.

"Because he's the best, that's why. Gibbs is very clued up, but he's a total bastard to all the registrars."

"What about Prof Boatwood?" I asked, moving to check the ventilator.

Drummond laughed. "He's an ideas man – but in practice he's a bit accident prone. No, Nigel's in a class of his own. It will be a tragedy if Dunedin loses him. He'll get plucked away overseas one day – unless Boatwood goes first."

The conversation relaxed me a little. Soon though, that very much changed. The doors to the unit swung open, revealing the grey short man with a large flared nose. Gibbs – reminiscent of a camel, Remington had said.

"Morning," I said.

"Is it?" the new man barked, crossing the floor on the march.

"I'm Gerry . . ."

"I know who you are," Gibbs said. He scooped up a syringe and examined it at close range. "I always place the label at the top of the meniscus," he said. "You can label all these again."

I felt my face flush. I said nothing. I watched Gibbs stump away to the central monitoring station. I wasn't surprised by the welcome. Arrogance in the medical system was something I expected. After all, my father was Graham Davenport.

We were about to start the ward round, in which Handwringer, the night registrar, would hand over the patients to me, the day registrar. However Nancy the charge nurse, an American aged 40 or so, came bustling over to speak. Mr Watkins, a bypass graft patient from the previous day, was rapidly losing blood pressure.

We crossed to the patient, along with Gibbs who had sensed the urgent tone of the conversation.

"What's the central venous pressure?" Gibbs asked, his eyelids hooded like a bird of prey. It turned out there was no central venous line. It had been removed accidentally in the night. A technician had tripped on the connecting monitor cable, yanking the whole apparatus out. Handwringer had elected not to replace it. Gibbs did a complete circle on the linoleum before slamming his fist into the table top.

"Christ David," he said. "I'm the consultant of the unit. I make all the decisions. In future, if something like that happens, you ring me, OK?"

Handwringer was a deep shade of crimson. "OK," he said.

Gibbs indicated that reinsertion of the central line was required. "Go wash your mitts," he said, gesturing to me.

I stole a glance at him. Beneath the hooded brow I could see the older man's eyes. There was little comfort to be gained from the slate grey pupils. I made sure I scrubbed my hands for a full five minutes. The zealot would be timing me for sure. I returned to the sickening patient. Gibbs had exposed the front side of the neck. I applied antiseptic to the area above the internal jugular vein. I placed three sterile drapes around the painted area in a triangular fashion.

"I don't arrange the drapes that way," Gibbs said in a truculent monotone.

I looked at Gibbs. "Pardon," I said.

"You heard," Gibbs snorted. "I never have the drapes in a triangle. I square drape.

You should know that."

"What does it matter . . ." I began to say.

"If you're gonna argue you can get out," Gibbs yelled, pointing to the doors.

"Huh?" I said. My skin pores opened and I became soaked.

"Right, move over . . . I'll do this," Gibbs announced. He stumped away over to the scrub bay.

Handwringer appeared at my elbow. "Now you know the true meaning of the word bastard," he said.

I nodded slowly and took off my gloves.

It was the start of a bad day for Mr Watkins. Towards the end of the line insertion his prospects took a bad turn. The blood pressure went into a steep decline. As soon as Gibbs attained access to the internal jugular vein, he connected the catheter to a pressure transducer. The pressure was very high, indicating the heart was failing.

"There's a vessel bleeding inside, One of the anastamoses must have come apart," Gibbs said. "The haematoma is compressing the heart. We'll have to get King to come in and reopen the chest. David, get him on the phone now. Nancy, lets have the open chest packs ready. Gerry, put together an adrenaline infusion and start running it immediately."

King appeared after a few minutes with his entourage of junior staff trailing behind. While the surgeons scrubbed their hands, Gibbs injected Mr Watkins with an anaesthetic drug, inserted a breathing tube and began mechanical ventilation.

After donning gown and gloves, Tom King reopened the chest wound with one slash of the knife. Wire cutters divided the sternal wires. Inside, the chest cavity was awash with blood.

"Oh Christ - one of the grafts has come off," King said.

Red blood from the free end of the artery, spurted into the chest cavity. A lake formed that teetered on the edge of the wound cavity, then rolled off the wound on to the white linen. King, red faced, roared into action. Stitches raced across the failed anastamosis. At the head end, Gibbs barked out orders, as he and I drove blood and crystalloid fluids into the intravenous lines. Despite their efforts, the blood pressure plummeted.

"Fifty five," Gibbs snarled over the drapes, as though King was solely responsible.

"The ECG shows ST elevation," Drummond announced from the chart recorder.

"He's having a heart-attack now," Gibbs said.

"O.K guys, we've got control." King said. The flow from the stitched artery became a mere trickle.

However the heart, despite its restored bypass graft, didn't perform well. Gibbs ran adrenaline and isoprenaline infusions, but the blood pressure wouldn't rise above seventy five. "He stuffed it with that bleed out," Gibbs muttered to Drummond.

"We'll have to keep external pressure off the heart," King said. "Clamps please Nurse," He inserted two connecting clamps into the chest wound to hold open the two halves of the bony skeleton. He glanced at his assistant. "This enables the heart to fill better. Hopefully as a consequence, we'll get a better blood pressure."

On the chart recorder, the blood pressure began to trend upwards. Encouraged, King covered the open chest cavity with a plastic dressing. Beneath it the heart was visible, gulping like a frog. The blood pressure settled at eighty.

Nigel Green appeared. Caught between the polished floors and the overhead fluorescent tubes, his face seemed to be coated with wax. His orange hair lay in a frozen wave. "This is no good guys," he said, eyebrows raised.

"Tom King special," Gibbs said. Green came around to the head end of the bed and peered over the makeshift drapes. "Failed graft anastamosis," Gibbs continued. "Blood everywhere. We almost lost him prior to reopening the chest."

"Any damage?" Green asked frowning.

"Probable heart attack I'd say. The heart just hasn't performed since the bleed-out. We haven't had a blood pressure over seventy-five until just now."

"His oxygen saturation is down a bit too," Drummond chipped in. "His lungs must be filling up with oedema."

"Really?" Green's face became serious. "It's just as well the Prof wasn't running the unit this week then. He'd have had the patient on a truckload of hyperPEEP."

I noticed there was much eyebrow raising and laughter about Boatwood's penchant for high PEEP. It was clear that Boatwood's ideas were not widely respected by his colleagues. "Is he really using seventy?" I asked, remembering my conversation with Handwringer.

Green laughed. "No, those kind of numbers are strictly theoretical. You'd never use that on humans. At seventy, there would be so much pressure in the lungs, the heart and blood vessels in the chest would be almost squeezed flat. No, thirty of PEEP is about our upper limit. Isn't that right Trevor?"

Gibbs grunted and pointed at Mr Watkins. "We're not out of the woods here yet."

A nurse with straight bobbed hair came up to me. "Has the Handwringer handed over the other patients to you yet?" she asked.

I hardly looked at her. "He will – as soon as we can."

Green came over. "How is the super-nurse?" he asked. I glanced up at her. She rolled her eyes.

Handwringer and I walked over to the next bed, intent on starting the hand-over. "Gibbs is nice as pie today," I said.

"Oh for sure," Handwringer said, worry lines vanishing from his forehead.

"Do they leave the chest open like that in Canada?" I asked, grinning. "I'm wondering if it's only Tom King who does it. He's a bit of a maverick apparently."

The Handwringer seemed uncertain.

At that moment the ECG trace of Mr Watkins deteriorated from its regular conformation to a rapid fine oscillation.

"VF!" Gibbs roared.

"Oh shit," King said from across the room. "Get the paddles, quickly"

Handwringer, who had rushed back over to help, reached for the external defibrillator paddles.

"Not those ones stupid – the sterile ones," Gibbs yelled at Handwringer.

"You bungling incompetent," I whispered in Handwringer's ear.

King whipped on a pair of sterile gloves. He tore away the plastic dressing. The heart was shaking, as though it was having its own private seizure. "O.K. I'm ready for the paddles," he said. Green's 'super' nurse dropped the correct paddles to King from a sterile packet. King threw the cable ends over the drapes to Green, who plugged them into the defibrillator. King applied the paddle blades to the fibrillating heart. "O.K shock now," he said.

"Stand back," Green shouted. He pressed a button on the defibrillator. There was a sharp resonance. The heart jumped under the paddles before coming to lie still. King tapped it with the palm of his gloved hand. It contracted each time he touched it.

"Come on you bastard," King implored.

"Asystole," Gibbs shouted from the monitoring screen.

"O.K. lets give adrenaline. One milligram," Green said.

King began squeezing the heart, once a second. "It's hopeless," he said, his shoulders dropping.

"Atropine," Green ordered, observing the flat ECG trace.

"He's stuffed," Gibbs said

"0.6 or 1.2?" the 'super' nurse asked.

"The bigger dose, thanks," Green said.

"And now more adrenaline – three milligrams," Green continued.

"It's a waste of time, it was never gonna survive that bleed out," Gibbs said

"Yes, maybe, but let's at least go through the protocol," King said, sweat soaking his green top.

As soon it was over. King headed out the door, to confront the relatives. Gibbs and Green shuffled away towards the central station, discussing where the blame lay for the dismal outcome. Handwringer stayed to help the 'super' nurse and I remove the tubes and lines from Mr Watkins. Surreptitiously, I eyed up the nurse. Her freckled skin was pale but the shape of her face had a benign disposition. The corners of her mouth seemed to angle upwards so that she always appeared good humoured. She was leaning forward into the wound, gloves on, removing the clamps. Her hair fell forward half obscuring one eye. Her uniform was loose at the top. I could see her cleavage disappearing downward, between shadowy curves.

"Do we throw these tubes away super nurse?" I asked.

She laughed. She said her name was Melanie.

"How long until you start the nightshift Gerry?" It was the Handwringer who spoke. Melanie glanced up at me and our eyes met momentarily.

"It's only a week away," I said. "You'd better wash out the red carpet for me."

Melanie smiled and walked away with the clamp.

Chapter 2

Eleanor had been back a few days. From the beanbag where I lay, I watched her fussing about a flower display. She worked up against a mantel piece, her feet apart to keep balance. Her pleated skirt was loose over her narrow hips.

Outside, the city hummed. It was Friday night. I imagined the revellers hustling along in groups, excited by each other and their destinations. But myself and Eleanor, we had nowhere to go – not together. I had understood that for some time. As an isolated couple, we functioned reasonably well. Each knew that there were lines drawn, that should not be crossed. But as a couple, in a social setting, we didn't fit. People who stimulated me, usually proved an irritation to Eleanor. We were virtually rendered dysfunctional. Time after time, I felt foolish and hamstrung in her company. And I knew I irritated and embarrassed her.

"Aren't you going to study?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess so. There's nothing else happening." I padded along the hall to the kitchen. My books lay scattered about one end of the kitchen table. They had been strewn there for days. I knew she barely tolerated the mess. But if I passed my exam, a rich vein of income would be ours. Money and its comforts appealed to her.

I opened the fridge door and peered inside. Nothing tempted me. I pulled back a chair and sat down. I shuffled the books around. My thoughts flicked onto the ICU. I thought of Jenny McVie, a recently separated woman of about 30. I'd only been working in there for a week. Already she was leaning into me, as we worked together at the bed end. She smiled at me sweetly and looked up demurely from under her long lashes. I could do without another crush. An English girl had wrecked my time in Tunbridge. Nothing much had happened physically - a couple of bungled rendezvous. But the heartache . . . the anguish . . . The wasted time spent daydreaming, instead of exploring the new country.

I lumbered through to the bathroom. I drilled several hundred mls of urine into the residual at the base of the pan. Through the crack in the door I could hear the television grinding on in the living room. After I had finished, I immediately needed to go again. I tried to unzip, but too late, the excess distributed itself inside my trousers. Terminal dribble, I thought. It was the stress of approaching exams that did it. I took off the wet clothes and left them in a pile on the floor.

Midnight came. My eyelids were heavy. Eleanor had long since gone to bed. I had achieved very little. I was too much of a dreamer. Haunting music played in my head. I pondered on the English girl, Jenny McVie, Melanie. Unlikely options for my future circulated. Mostly I was plucked from obscurity into revered success. A rock-star or a writer. I seldom dreamed of a medical Nirvana. Somehow that seemed too ordinary. I would merely following the paths of my brother, my father, and my grandfather . . . Richard had of course followed the revered pathway before me. But in the end he had disappointed Graham. It took Richard many years to shake off the shackles Graham had placed on him. But when he did, he'd done a reasonable job – disappearing into the Australian outback. He'd become a rural GP in the fullest sense. He'd swapped the suit and tie for dungarees and a 10 gallon hat. Graham had been stunned. He'd wanted another specialist, a surgeon . . . But he couldn't criticise or lecture – Richard hadn't caved in to the new generation's debauchery. He was still an upright chap. It was just where and how he was working that had Graham puzzled.

I heard the sound of voices through the drapes. I held my breath and listened. A car sped up the street and drowned the voices temporarily. Howling laughter burst forth, followed by an excited babble –some philosophic argument in the middle of the night. I felt my skin crawl. I should be out there. I should be laughing. I should be one of the drunken melee, not trapped here, in this silent regulated tomb.

In the morning she was happier. She liked things organised. The morning forced us into a template. Breakfast was to be had. Beds were to be made. There were jobs to go to. I watched her bustling about. 4XO chattered in the corner – road conditions, the temperature and the time. They always told you the time, I thought. You always knew, how close your next obligation was.

From the front door came a series of heavy blows.

"Who is that, at this time of day?" Eleanor said, screwing up her nose.

I knew perfectly well who it was. Nobody else pounded the door in such a way. A voice hurled abuse down the hallway.

"Oh . . . it's Remington," Eleanor said. She slipped out of the kitchen.

"How's the intensivist," said Remington, thrusting through the door. He grabbed the electric jug and rammed it up under the cold tap.

"Help yourself," I said unable not to laugh. "And the intensivist – ask me after the exam. Maybe by then I'll really be one. But, do I really want that? Perhaps I am the new Bob Dylan."

"Jesus what a speech. There's no evidence for the latter. You've never done a single thing of any note." Remington began emptying instant coffee into a mug.

"Why don't you have it all?" I said.

"What a septic unit," Remington said, raising his top lip. "Anyway Davenport, what I've come to tell you, is that there's a party tonight. And you're going."

"Aren't you going to study?" I asked, my mood lifting.

"Do a couple of hours, then go," Remington said. He added a few more spoonfuls of coffee to his cup - then a load of sugar. Wrapping his hand around the front of the mug, he drank deeply. He slopped some of it down his shirt front. "I'll pick you up tonight then – make sure you're ready." Away he went, as abruptly as he had arrived.

Eleanor reappeared. "He always gets his way, doesn't he," she said.

Later I sat in a cold dimly lit living room. Chairs with gaping holes in the fabric, rested on threadbare rugs. Through the window, long grass was bathed in lamplight and drizzle.

"I had trouble extracting Davenport from his happy home," Remington said, hanging one leg over the arm rest of his chair.

Arnold sat on the low coffee table. He was short, but of ample girth – hairy like a grizzly bear. He emptied marijuana heads onto a filter paper. "I've got something here that will sort him out," he said. Some of the heads bounced off the table top onto the floor. He bent down to retrieve them. The meagre overhead lighting reflected off his broad forehead. He rolled the filter paper and its contents into a tight cigarette. He licked the ends, moulding them with his fingers. The other two watched in silence as he lit one end and sucked hard on the other. His face reddened. His temporal veins bulged. The cigarette tip flared. Glowing embers floated down to the floor. Remington came over and stamped them out.

"We don't want to wreck your pristine floor Arnold," he said.

After Arnold had filled his lungs he cocked the cigarette towards Remington. The radiologist took it and inhaled. He held the smoke in for several seconds to maximize absorption. His eyeballs seemed to swell with the strain. I clutched at the proffered cigarette as Remington's exhalation mushroomed up between us. I created gaps at the corners of my mouth to dilute the smoke as I inhaled. A tendency to asthma underlay my caution. The hot tide overwhelmed me however and my efforts ended in a coughing fit.

"What a poor set of lungs," Remington said with glee.

"Here we have – the blue bloater," Arnold added.

"Bastards," I wheezed.

"Crank up some music Arnold," Remington ordered.

As the drug hit home, I sensed something akin to distortion inside my skull. A wave of relaxation rose up through my torso. I felt myself convulse with laughter.

"I'm in the therapeutic window," I announced.

Remington elbowed Arnold away from the stereo sending him sprawling across the floorboards. Soon the room was drowning in chiming guitars and desolate harmonies.

"Ah , , , the Bats," Arnold said from his supine position. He jumped up and launched into a clumsy dance, laughing uproariously at his own endeavours. The others joined in, flopping about the room to the throbbing din. Exuberant, Arnold reached for his doctor's bag. "Might as well go the whole hog," he shouted, as he fumbled about inside. He came out with a syringe, a needle and an ampoule. "Bare your shoulder Remington," he said. He sucked the drug into the syringe. There was a flash of silver as the needle drove into Remington's naked flesh.

"Morph is it?" I asked, rolling up my shirt-sleeve. I was often amazed at some of the things Arnold did. He had a conservative provincial background and I could sense that one day he'd go right back to where he came from. But for now he played an outrageous part with ease.

"Ten milligrams for you Davenport – a special gift from the taxpayer."

After we had all received the opiate, Remington, full of impatience, exhorted us to follow him to the car. Outside the weather was like a slap in the face.

"Cold turkey," Remington said, struggling to open his door against the wind.

The party was spilling out the door, when we arrived. Rain hummed in the down pipes coming away from the verandah roof. Remington strode in ahead of the rest of us, his clothes entirely black – his hair peroxide blonde. At the door they negotiated their way through a group of youths clustered about fiery cigarette ends. Inside the music was a pulsatile wall – the bass almost physically palpable. Off the hallway, in a side room, figures bobbed and gyrated in a virtual black out.

Remington chose to ignore that room, carrying on instead to the kitchen at the back. There amongst the white-ware, groups of three or four hung about in conversation, or in some cases – awkward silence. Remington, clutching a can of beer to his chest, sidled up to one of the animated groups, some of whom I recognised as radiographers from the hospital. We soon became separated. I found myself conversing with two girls named Lisa. "So you're both named Lisa," I repeated inanely, tugging at an earlobe. I looked around for my associates but they were not in the room. Swinging back to the two Lisas, I felt a rushing feeling in my head, as though my brain was trying to exit from my skull. I surveyed the girls again now feeling smug. I felt as though I was studying them from a superior realm – while they in turn looked at me with knowing smiles. This guy is off his face they seemed to imply. After a few more pleasantries I retreated to the room from where the music emanated. Inside it was dark and smoky. The blue light from the graphic equaliser jumped in time to the beat. I flattened myself against a wall, waiting for my pupils to adjust to the dark. The music hardened up and the crowd swelled like a rising tide. I was drawn off the wall to join them - a solitary figure, with only a beer can for company. I bounced about amongst the swaying mass of bodies. Out of rhythm, I was virtually jumping up and down on the spot. My beer boiled and fizzed out the keyhole.

I drifted in between two other women, older than the two Lisas. They were dancing together in a conversational way. Noting my peculiar dance, they laughed and tried to mimic my movements. I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of the two was Melanie from ICU.

"Hello Melanie from ICU," I said. My hair was falling into my eyes. I swept it back with the hand holding the beer can. One side of my head became sticky and wet. We all stopped the bouncing at the same time.

"Hi," Melanie said. "You've lost your drink."

I looked down upon the pale skin of her arm, and chatted about the party, the ICU \- anything. My gaze moved all over her. The thoughtful face with pensive lips, framed by the dark straight hair, The sensuous neck. The well defined legs below a short turquoise skirt. The burnt sienna top. . .

"Well, he's giving you the once over," her friend said, hands on hips.

"This is Beth," Melanie said, her face impassive.

"Were you dancing, or having a fit?" Beth said. She was shorter than Melanie – more buxom with powerful thighs and short red hair.

"I can't control my limbs tonight," I said.

"Oh really," Melanie said. "We had no idea."

"Most doctors are disabled in some way," Beth said. "Usually by their egos . . ."

"Not true," I protested. "My ego is as small as a peanut."

The opening bars of Hotel California struck through the room. Melanie and Beth became energised. "This really takes you back," Melanie shouted at me. The two of them danced away across the room.

Back to what? I wondered, watching them dance away. Something pretty good I surmised, judging by the way they had responded. The music stopped. As though a dyke had burst, we were all swept towards the door in a departing tide of people. Wedged up against Melanie, as we were jammed through the door frame, I was assailed by her trailing aroma of perfume. Who did she live with I wondered. On the floor behind us, a figure in calico struggled to unearth the next disc. "Don't go," he implored. "Don't go yet."

Later I snuck out into the drizzle. Melanie and Beth had been gone half an hour. Their presence and then their absence unsettled me. I had little stomach left for the party. I didn't bother informing Remington and Arnold about my departure. I kicked my way through puddles in a gutter. Reflections were shattered into flying droplets, like breaking glass. I said Melanie and Beth's names out loud. It was like sampling a new wine. I wanted another taste.

Two cars, full of revellers, came up behind me, blasting their horns.

"Off the road dickhead," someone yelled.

I didn't look up. To engage them was an invitation to be trashed. "Wanker," they shouted a few times, before speeding off.

I dropped off Highgate and descended Stuart Street. The harbour lay below – a black beauty, studded with points of bright light. I thought about Eleanor, asleep in the house. Years ago, I had idolised her - carved her name into my heart. But had she ever been similarly consumed? She was too pragmatic, I concluded. Now our chemistry was limp. My heart had dipped into a slow death spiral. How far was it to the cold hard earth?

I crossed into York Place, my jacket alive with raindrops. The house was in darkness. Inside, I stood silently in the hallway, clicking the door shut behind me. I heard Eleanor's breathing falter then regain its rhythm. Relieved, I padded on down the hallway, avoiding the squeaky floorboards. I hunted the living room for my walkman, groping amongst the shadows. For a few seconds I gazed out the window at the garden, next door. Lying on the back porch, a rubbish bag lay slashed to bits. Detritus had spilled out onto the adjoining pathway.

"Bloody dogs," I murmured. A chill shook me and I retreated to the spare room. I burrowed under the musty covers. I switched on the tape player. It was the Blue Nile – left field, minor key solitude. I envied the singer. Music and love – that would be something.

Chapter 3

The intensive care tearoom was a featureless box, with bench seats along adjacent walls. The cushions were covered in dull green vinyl. It was upon one of these that I lay when Boatwood strode in. The professor was bristling with energy, intent on conducting a ward round. I felt more inclined to siesta, it being two-thirty in the afternoon. However knowing my place in the medical pyramid, I jumped to my feet, forcing life into aching limbs. My mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool. Boatwood peered down at me, through horn rimmed glasses.

"The watchdog of eternal life," he said. He turned and strode out the door, coat tails flying behind.

I followed Boatwood across the shiny linoleum. Some natural light washed in from the north wall, softening the harshness of the fluorescent tubes. The large room had become known as 'The Barn' It had ten beds, all backed onto the north wall. A square white table abutted against the foot end of each bed. At some of the tables, nurses were bent over charts, recording data.

"How long have you been with us now?" Boatwood asked, pulling at his ragged beard.

"Three weeks."

"You should be getting the hang of it by now.Is your study coming along?"

Without waiting for an answer, Boatwood swooped on the patient in bed one. The patient's lungs were attached to a ventilator, via his endotracheal tube and the connecting corrugated tubing. The blue endotracheal tube hung out of his mouth like a bent cigar. The ventilator hissed every five seconds, as it pumped the lungs full of oxygen.

"Are you awake Mr Savage?" Boatwood hollered in the patient's closest ear.

"He's far away," the overweight nurse volunteered in a sing-song voice.

Boatwood flashed a skeptical glance at her, his forehead screwing up. He unleashed his stethoscope from his white coat. It was the longest stethoscope tube I had ever seen. Boatwood placed the diaphragm of the scope on Mr Savage's chest. However the sick man began to cough violently on the endotracheal tube.

"Go with the flow," the nurse cooed, emphasizing each syllable.

"Jesus," I laughed, drawn to hilarity by the nurse's earnest monologue. Now it was my turn for a Boatwood stare. The professor returned to his task, listening all over the chest, his face intent. Then his head swung around, eyes flashing.

"There's a third heart sound here Davenport - have a listen."

I pulled out my own stethoscope. I landed the diaphragm squarely on the chest. I heard sound one, sound two, an ejection systolic murmur and a pleural rub.

"There's a systolic murmur," I said, my voice barely audible, even to myself.

"Yes, yes, yes . . . but what about the third sound?"

I reapplied the scope. I couldn't hear it at all. "Oh yes there it is," I lied.

Boatwood lurched back to the chart table. He traced trend-lines with an extended finger. "The blood pressure is falling, because the heart is in failure. And the blood oxygen saturation is falling, because the lung bases are full of water. What can we do?"

I looked at Boatwood, then away at the far wall. "Well, we can increase the oxygen concentration in the breathing circuit, to prop up the patient's O2. And we can increase the adrenaline infusion, to improve heart function and blood pressure."

Boatwood shook his head.

"No. The oxygen concentration he is breathing is at the maximum safe level. At higher concentrations, the oxygen becomes toxic to the lungs." He smiled. "What can we do that will improve the lungs performance and solve our oxygen problem?"

I was silent. My mind could only think about what a pain is was being asked the questions.

Boatwood's eyebrows arched upward. "Well come on, what about the PEEP?"

A gangly figure in a white coat came over to join us. It was Niall, the medical student. I didn't relish the audience.

"PEEP may get more oxygen into the lungs, but the high pressure generated in the lungs by the PEEP, will flatten the blood vessels there and reduce returning blood flow to the heart. And if the PEEP is high enough, it may compress the heart itself. Therefore the heart has less volume to pump out and so the patient's blood pressure drops."

"That's true, but by increasing the adrenaline infusion, we can drive the heart faster and stronger to restore the blood pressure," Boatwood said. "Come over to the whiteboard – you too Niall." He led the underlings at a furious pace, across to the central station. "What is PEEP anyway Niall?"

"Positive end expiratory pressure, applied to breaths given by a ventilator," Niall intoned loudly. I stared at the student. He was as tall as Boatwood, but much thinner. His thin sallow face had no chin to speak of.

"That's right," Boatwood said. He flashed bold strokes across the whiteboard, with a blue marker pen. He regaled them with the benefits of higher and higher PEEP. Very high levels were called hyperPEEP. And he, Professor Boatwood from Dunedin New Zealand, was one of the leading researchers in the field.

"I'm advocating using hyperPEEP, because we intensivists are constantly hamstrung by really sick patients, who need more and more oxygen. You might ask 'Why not give higher and higher concentrations of oxygen?' Why not give pure oxygen even?" His eyes twinkled and his face relaxed. "Why not? I don't think the public realises, but pure oxygen is a deadly poison! Breathe it for a few days and the lungs will become inflamed and harden up. And you may well die. So it's not an option. But hyperPEEP gives you a chance. It expands unused segments of lung and enables you to use lower concentrations of oxygen." He wiped his brow with the back of a sleeve. He lifted a finger and waved it in front of his audience. "And as far as I'm concerned, the sky is almost the limit. You can give a large amount of PEEP, without causing harm – apart from the blood pressure drop. But I believe I can control the blood pressure with adrenaline." Boatwood kept at his relentless discourse. As he warmed to his point, so did his face further relax and a hint of a smile penetrated his beard.

We arrived back to the patient. "We're increasing the PEEP," Boatwood said to the nurse.

"But it's already twenty," the large nurse sang. Boatwood laughed, a long raucous holler, that temporarily silenced the barn. He lunged at the ventilator, snapping the dial around to thirty.

"One day thirty will be a conservative value," he said, his glasses misting. "We're doing research on pigs, right now, with PEEP levels as high as seventy."

"Really," the nurse cooed. "The lungs must be blown up like balloons."

"Yes, what about barotrauma?" asked Niall, his Adam's apple whistling up and down.

"Sure it's a risk," Boatwood said. "But remember, the reason for introducing the therapy, is to prevent the toxic effects of pure oxygen." He swung around to me. "In fact Davenport, you can come and help with the pigs, if you like. Saturday morning, eight o'clock."

Later I wandered from bed to bed, looking at patients and graphs. I took nothing in. Inside my stomach was in torsion. Boatwood's organisation of my weekend had darkened my mood. I hated constraints, appointments, meetings. I liked to exit the working weekend with a clean slate. In the ceiling 4XO throbbed – Boz Scagg's and Lowdown. The seventy's sound triggered thoughts of Melanie. I wondered if she was on the afternoon shift. I sidled up to bed one, pretending to look at Mr Savage

"He's done pretty well on all that PEEP," Jenny McVie said. I looked at her and our eyes met.

"Yes and no," I answered. "His oxygenation came to good, but the blood pressure has sagged, despite a truckload of adrenaline." I turned around and leaned back against the chart table. "What time does your early shift finish?"

"Three thirty." She flicked her hair back with a shake of the head. "Why?"

I smiled at her and walked away. I crossed to the central station. It was an elevated area, enclosed by benches. On the front bench, a large monitor showed the electrocardiographs of all the patients in the Barn. Pretending to be observing the monitor, I scanned the bench-tops, locating a clipboard. I brought it over, below the monitor screen. It was the nursing roster. I skimmed across the dates at the top. Tuesday the sixth of March. I ran a finger down the column. At the left margin I found her name – Melanie East. At the join of the column and row was a P. My pulse danced into my fingertips. P was for p.m. She was on the afternoon shift.

I missed her at three-thirty though, due to the untimely arrival of Nigel Green. At three-twenty-five the double doors burst open and a bed surrounded by figures dressed in theatre green came trundling in. The figures held aloft bags of blood and tinkered with syringes as they walked. The bed was backed head first into its space, like a ferry entering port. At the head of the bed, walking backwards and squeezing a ventilating bag, was Green. He beamed at me. "I've got a good one for you here Gerry."

"Aha," I said, forcing untidy hair behind an ear. I handed Green the ventilator tubing. "What's your minute volume?"

"Nine litres. Forty percent oxygen will be O.K. No PEEP. She's needed a little vitamin A". Green pointed at the adrenaline syringe pump. A technician fussed about, plugging in the power cables from the syringe pumps. "Have you met Tony Drummond Gerry?" Green asked. "He's our bypass pump and respiratory technician." I leaned over the ventilator and shook hands, even though we had met and shaken hands a few weeks before. Drummond was showing no sign that he remembered me.

"How are you," Drummond said.

I manufactured a smile and turned away towards Green. "What's your flow rate?"

"Adrenaline? Five mls per hour." Green arranged all the tubes and leads into parallel lines over the pillow case.

"So you haven't used any hyperPEEP," I said, grinning at Green.

"That's a dirty word around here," Green said frowning. "We're trying to help the patient, not knock her off." He looked over at Drummond, as if for support. The technician nodded, his smooth face mask-like.

"Bed one has been on thirty centimetres for a few hours," Gerry said.

"Yes well, in my book, that's the upper limit. I don't believe an institution like this should be indulging in marginal therapies such as hyperPEEP. As far as I'm concerned, the therapeutic window for PEEP, is between five and thirty centimetres of water "

"What about the rabbit studies?" I asked.

Green laughed, slapping a knee. "Come on Gerry . . . Are we operating on rabbits?" He made a wide sweep with his arm, "These are real people. Look, the methodology of those studies is open to question. The professor is way out on a limb with this one." He looked across again to Drummond, who again tilted his head in agreement. Green swung his stethoscope across the woman's chest, checking that the chest was inflating on both sides.

"How many bypass grafts here?" I asked

"Four. One's a mammary, so keep the blood pressure over a hundred will you?"

With Green settled in the central station, writing notes, I walked out to the back of the unit. Single rooms, with large plate glass windows, lined the back hallway. A balding male nurse, was in the first room. I carried on to the second one. I saw Melanie there, leaning over the chart table. Her dark hair was thrown forward, revealing the curve of her neck. Her white uniform ended at knee level. A hint of lacy petticoat, hung below. I hesitated at the door – apprehensive. Sensing me there perhaps, she looked up.

"How are you," she said. She gave me a broad smile. The sound of her voice, hit me like a punch. I lurched into the room, like a new private on his first parade. I leaned awkwardly against the back wall, making a ham fisted job of looking casual.

"Recovered from the party?" I said. She moved effortlessly around the patient, emptying the urine measure, taking blood off the arterial line, zeroing the pressure transducers.

"Not a problem. How about you?" She kneeled down to check a suction drain bottle. I followed the lines of her calves, down to her black leather shoes. She stood up and tossed her hair back. "Have you come to see me, or the patient?" she said. Our conversation meandered in this fashion, an insecure probing of the minds. Eventually the door opened and Nigel Green came in.

"How's super-nurse?" he asked, unveiling his superlative again. I watched them interact. Melanie was tolerating Green's verbal treacle. Later, long after Green had disappeared into the night, Melanie appeared out at the central station, where I was writing notes. She was warming her hands around a cup of coffee.

"You've been relieved." I stated

"You're really observant, aren't you," she said, leaning up against the counter.

"I'm trained to keep an eye out for trouble."

"Trouble?" she laughed. "I'm not that much of a problem - I don't think."

"I bet you are," I said, biting the end of my pen. I drew it out like a cigar. "I bet you take a bit of taming,"

"Taming?" You make it sound like I'm some wild animal . . . I'm just your normal emotional girl."

I gazed at her glowing face ""I'm starting to feel emotional, right now."

"You get on with your work boy," she said. I watched her walk over to speak with Jenny McVie. Along the axis of my body, I felt electric, vibrant, trembling. I shifted uncomfortably on the stool.

The following day, I had much of the day free. A crisp Northerly breeze blowing up the harbour, tempted me to the shoreline. I parked up at the University Yacht Club, which in essence, was little more that a dilapidated wooden shed, and a steep concrete slipway. My car stereo pumped at full volume, as I rigged the sail. I raced through the preparations, hungry to pitch myself against the white-capping bay. My mind throbbed with the new situation. I savoured the name yet again – Melanie East. Yes it seemed perfectly agreeable. She had revealed something. No doubt about it. All that talk about emotions. That was the giveaway. She was interested alright.

I carried the sail and board to the water's edge. I lifted the sail to the wind and stepped up onto the board. I pumped the sail into my body to generate liftand speed. As the board rose onto the plane, it accelerated abruptly. My body exalted to the wild ride. Hanging out over the thrashing sea, I screamed out with the full force of his lungs. "I want you, Melanie East. Yes. . . I need you. "Halfway across the bay, I climbed up a wave and flew into the air. Adrenalised and crazy, I released the board in mid flight. "Yes!" I yelled, smashing head first into the green pulsing sea.

Later, working the evening shift, I struggled. I knew from the roster, that Melanie wouldn't appear. The shift dragged, as I waited for the last cardiac patient to arrive. I stared out the windows behind the monitor stacks. Darkness insidiously overtook the landscape. Daylight saving had ended. The big windows, murmured in the evening breeze that ghosted about the upper reaches of the clinical service's block. I watched the car lights winding up to the northern motorway. I thought of her out there, breathing, moving about. His insides slumped and seemed to drain away. My throat was contracted into a dry lump. As I watched the evening sky outside, it seemed to darken over and become night in a few short seconds. I turned away.

A day later Eleanor moved crumbed fish about the fry pan. "Isobel phoned," she said.

"What does she want," I asked. I was a bit surprised. Isobel hadn't gone too much out of her way to engage us since we'd come back to Dunedin. She had been back in Dunedin herself for little more than a year. After 12 years spent in Europe she had emerged as a registered nurse, much to everyone's surprise – especially Graham's. Secretly he was probably quite chuffed that she was aligned to his great profession, even specializing in theatre nursing. I had been stunned. The 60's radical following the family road. But Junot, who had also emerged from the underworld had it in perspective. Family culture was like a magnet. It was so hard to shake off the blueprint. It was hard to argue with him. After all Graham and Julia had produced two doctors and a nurse.

"We've been summoned over to dinner on Friday night." Eleanor continued.

"OK. That should be interesting." I said, thumped my bag down onto the kitchen table.

"Or a bit of a pain," Eleanor said, wrinkling up her nose. She didn't relate well to Isobel and Junot's legacy of the street.

"Anyone else?" I asked.

"Yes, some guy Junot's met in the real estate market. Apparently the guys wife works in the ICU with you. Melanie someone or other."

I was almost floored by the coincidence, My heart climbing out of my chest, I left the kitchen. In the darkened living room, I could see moonlight glistening on the harbour.

"She-it" I said.

Water dripped off my elbows, onto the grey linoleum. I towelled myself languidly without any plan. The wall heater blasted the room full of hot air. I yawned at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I knew what I needed most. I needed a drink – a strong one.

The `therapeutic window' was the desirable place to be. It was Remington, who had borrowed the term from clinical pharmacology and reapplied it to recreational alcohol and drug use. They all knew how good it was to be there – in the 'window'. It was more a question of how to get there. And once inside, how long could you stay there, before drifting out the bottom? Or worse, you might shoot over the top into toxicity and end up `losing it'.

I was almost entering the 'window,' when Eleanor and I pulled up outside Isobel's flat. Three double gins had seen to that. I felt really good. Isobel answered the door.

"Hi there," she sang huskily. "Short time no see."

Isobel was by appearance still part of the hippie scene. Her head was swathed in dreadlocks. In the operating theatre, she stowed the whole intricate maize up into the standard issue cloth hat. In Dunedin that meant white with navy-blue trimmings. Her wrap around skirt looked like an advert for lazy days in Kathmandu. Here we were again, both in Dunedin. Amazing to think we'd both run away from this same city back in 1975 – not at the same time – I'd quit several months after Isobel . . . But we'd both come to good in many ways during the succeeding years. I'd ended up making a belated entry into medical school and had married Eleanor (a long and difficult pursuit). Isobel had travelled extensively and done the nursing training and reconnected with Junot. The latter had toned himself down a little since his time in Nelson many years before. He was having a go in the real estate area and on this night wore a floral shirt with white voluminous pants. His hair was only shoulder length now – not halfway down his back as it was during the aggravating Nelson visit.

"A touch of Malibu tonight," I said to Junot provocatively. Junot laughed and pretended to cuff me around the ear. He had good insight into how the transformation from hippie to property aspirant appeared. He was good at laughing at himself and I liked that.

Melanie and her husband were waiting in the living room.

"Nice to meet you," Rikki East said, wine glass in hand. Beside him was Melanie, in a short black skirt, a white top and a transparent lacy jacket. My eyes couldn't help but linger on her for a moment, as the three women, Eleanor included, burst into animated conversation and sat down around a coffee table. I noticed that Isobel and Melanie seemed to know each other. The men gathered by default around a mantle piece, at the opposite end of the room, below Isobel's Gretchen Albrecht painting. Rikki, a stout affable guy with a Mexican moustache started a discussion about property valuations. Junot nodded and frowned. I clung to the coat-tails of the conversation. I noticed Rikki looked a lot like Bernie Leadon out of the Eagles and thought about asking him if he was a musician but realized that was a ridiculous assumption. Unable to get interested in property, I stood silently, allowing my peripheral vision to take in Melanie. She stole a glance at me and smiled.

"Everyone up at the table," Isobel announced. I noticed she was staggering a bit as she sought the kitchen. She and Junot had almost certainly had a smoke before everyone's arrival. I managed to get myself sitting beside Melanie. I pulled off the manoeuvre adeptly, making it appear to be a random event. I felt the quickening pulse in my veins and drained a quick glass of red wine, seeking another realm to support my actions..

Eleanor gave me a haunted look. Wedged between Junot and Rikki, she was probably anticipating a double whammy of the property market.

We piled into the food, Junot launching the first dig. 'Taking the piss' seemed to be endemic in our generation. "So Melanie, where did you pick up that husband of yours? He's such a shark!"

"No, no," she laughed. "He picked up me. I would have gone for a priest or a judge – someone with some integrity."

Laughter flowed then died away. The pointed intonation of her voice and her fragrance were simultaneously arousing for me. I checked myself mentally. I had to be careful not to alert Eleanor to my out of control mindset. When the conversation, flowed away from our corner of the table. I stole a glance at Melanie. Reassuringly she held my gaze for a second so I drifted a knee across to touch one of hers. A slow movement, it could almost have been involuntary. After a few moments, I felt her respond with pressure. Such was my alcohol intake, I was starting to lose the thread of the banter. I knew I had to slow up, or I would be doomed to passive silent observation – or worse, giving the game away

"You're a friend of Tim Remington's?" Rikki was speaking to me.

"We go back a bit," I slurred. This bizarre moment lodged in my mind – to be recalled many times later - the knee pressure with the wife below the table – the conversation with the husband above the table.

"He's pretty smart that guy, actually," Rikki continued. "I was involved in getting them their house in Balmacewan."

I felt the knee pressure come and go like a slow massage. The drink, the conversation, the knee pressure.. It was like a dream. I really had to focus on Rikki. I didn't look at Melanie at all. I kept my eyes on Rikki's face. My heart was thumping – pulsing up into my neck.

"At the bargaining phase, I couldn't put one past him. He had his finger right on the pulse. Sure as hell he wasn't going to meet the vendor half way"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Smart cookie." The conversation continued around innocuously, eventually drifting away along the table again, as Isobel chimed in. Out of the limelight, I glanced at Melanie. The eye contact was sustained. I ran a hand onto her knee, caressing the warm flesh lightly. In a few moments a hand came down upon mine. Beneath the white linen, our two hands squeezed, in silent embrace.

Homeward bound, Eleanor and I crossed a railway over-bridge and descended onto the one way system. The streets were deserted, apart from a solitary figure hurrying past the chocolate factory. Eleanor turned on the car radio, perhaps to fill the silence. The sound waxed and waned as we travelled. I wondered if she had seen something. I stared blankly out the side window. My throat had constricted again. I thought of Melanie, wrapped now in a purple overcoat. Being driven home, or driving home, legs angled into the front compartment - feet in Italian leather, adjusting the clutch - the brake, the accelerator. Ascending Pitt Street, the city lights glowing below. A scatter of raindrops flayed the window. I gazed down, through the semi-translucency. The backdrop barely registered then. But now of course it is recalled easily. In the forefront of my mind, Melanie East shimmered. Pristine – brand new – like a goddess. I felt her infiltration, seeping through my pores. I shrank before its importance.

Saturday morning came and Boatwood strode around the lab, switching on ventilators and monitors. His brow knitted, he pored over the protocol, running a finger along the lines of print. On a bench-top sat clear vials of oleic acid. The drug was a deep yellow colour. I felt drawn to look at them, aware of their destructive power.

We wrestled down the first pig. The animal staggered on its feet. The pig's food had been medicated earlier. I anaesthetised it with gas and maintained an airway while Boatwood obtained intravenous access. The professor injected a muscle relaxant into the drip line. As the breathing declined with the onset of paralysis, I was able to take over respiration with a resuscitator bag and pass a tube into the trachea. I attached the breathing circuit from the ventilator to the top of the tracheal tube. We repeated the process eleven more times, until all the pigs were asleep and on ventilators.

"You draw it up, will you," the Professor said. His eyes were glowing like a small boy with a new train set. "It's 0.11 mls per kilo. I've got the weights of the pigs here."He handed me a clipboard.

I drew up the toxin slowly. I felt like an executioner. When I had twelve labelled syringes on the bench-top, I turned my attention back to Boatwood. The Professor continued to radiate excitement.

"Right. The baseline PaO2 measurements are between 110 and 140 mls of mercury," he announced. He looked up from the computer screen. "That's with an inspired oxygen of 0.28 and a tidal volume of 10 mls per kilo." He smiled benevolently through his beard. "O.K, have you got the acid?"

Systematically we moved down the line of piglets. I injected the yellow liquid. Boatwood recorded each injection time. "Alright," he announced. "We wait for forty-five minutes, then we apply the hyperPEEP to the study group."

At forty-five minutes, we took more arterial blood samples before applying the PEEP. I injected the samples into a blood gas analyser on the bench top. The printer whirred continually, as it spat out the results on a thin strip of paper.

"All the forty-five minute arterial oxygen measurements, are well below the starting levels," I said, studying the reel of paper.

"Lung injury occurs incredibly quickly after oleic acid injection," Boatwood said. He began stalking amongst the ventilators, racking up the PEEP by turning a control wheel on the side of each ventilator. His stiff white coat, with starchy erect collars, flapped as he bustled. "The control-group have ten of PEEP, the experimental-group seventy. I'll do the eight hour measurements and you can do the sixteen." He ran fingers through his beard. "Make sure you calibrate the blood gas analyser, before you enter the samples."

I did some mental arithmetic. Sixteen hours time. I would have to come down to the lab at two in the morning.

"Two o'clock," Remington howled. He had one arm around his girlfriend Alana, the other around a parking meter. "This is the tongue hanging out at its most extreme. It's Gerry Davenport, the new colonic hoover."

"What could I say," I said, wishing the chance encounter with my friends hadn't happened. "Sorry Prof, but I'd rather sleep than get up and poison your unfortunate swine."

"We will be sleeping," Alana said. She reached up and touched me on a cheek.

I watched them walk on up the street. Alana was a theatre nurse and often worked with Isobel. Already she and Isobel were friends – even though Remington and Alana had only been back in Dunedin as long as myself and Eleanor. They were both a bit bohemian. Isobel was the hippy and Alana the punk. I wished Eleanor would strike up friendships that quickly. But she was crippled with reserve.

Eleanor was faced away from me when I got into bed. She grumbled a bit as I lifted the duvet, but otherwise her breathing remained regular. Relieved, I let my head relax into the pillow. It wouldn't be long until the alarm-bell rang. Below, in the city, Saturday night rumbled. I imagined the revellers buzzing, the cafe people chatting, the movie goers transfixed. I thought how little Eleanor knew of my inner self. Physical images of Melanie reappeared. Words we had spoken together recycled – her knee against mine, her hand descending upon mine under the table cloth – that moment, a thunderbolt. The prospect of the alarm, sounding in a few hours time, became unsettling. Stomach acid burned at my throat. I thought of the piglets. Their lungs flooded with exudate – oleic acid misery and half of them, had lungs inflated to bursting point. Little hearts squeezed. Back to Melanie – the purple coat falling open – a flash of thigh - tantalising curves – pale smooth skin – dark hair fashioned, asymmetric, across one eye.

The alarm shattered the night. My heartbeat raced, then steadied. I groped for the clock, shutting it down. Eleanor grumbled. I slipped out to the kitchen. There my clothes lay, draped over an old wooden chair. Through the back door, dew glistened on the porch. In my rush to get going, I buttoned my shirt up unevenly. Ripping the shirt open, I dislodged a button. It spun across the linoleum. I fly kicked it under the refrigerator.

I drove down Pitt Street, huddled down behind the wheel. A small area of visibility appeared at the base of the fogged windscreen. I tried to enlarge it, by running the wipers. Instead my hole of transparency smeared over." Christ," I ranted. I wound down the side window and drove on, head out in the breeze.

It was warm inside the pharmacology building. The corridors seemed interminable. The overhead lighting stabbed at my eyes. An odour of floor polish rose to meet me. Inside the lab, the ventilators hissed asynchronously. The air was denser now with a pungent smell of animal. The piglets lay in parallel on the floor, their flanks ballooning with each breath.

I crossed to the bench and sat down on a high stool. Before me, sat the blank screen of a desk top computer. I reached down to the floor and switched on the hard-drive. I rubbed my eyes and yawned as the screen flickered and flashed with the warm-up images. A wave of nausea washed through me, as I considered the task ahead. I stood up and traversed the floor to the first pig. A brown clipboard, rested on the ventilator top. I picked it up and began to check the baseline parameters on the ventilator. Tidal volume 100 mls, minute volume 1 litre, inspired O260 percent, airway pressure 210! The figure made my senses sharpen up rapidly. The indicator for airway pressure, was jammed on the right side of the dial. I slapped the glass cover of the dial, with the backs of splayed fingertips. Surely the airway pressure wasn't that high – far too high.

"200 plus . . . Jesus that's high. What the hell's going on?" I was talking to myself. "Should be the PEEP, 70, plus the breath, say 20. That's 90." I checked for an obstruction of the ventilator tubing. There was none. "Surely the bastard isn't getting all this pressure." I ran to the work bench, wrenched open a drawer and grabbed a stethoscope. I inserted the ear-pieces as I scrambled back to the pig. I clapped the diaphragm onto the little chest. The breath sounds were muted. I percussed over the rib cage. I heard hyper-resonance everywhere. It meant the chest was over inflated with gas. I reached up and groped for a carotid pulse. None. "Christ, he's a goner." I shouted to the empty room. It had to be a pneumothorax. A lung had ruptured and the rupture was acting as a valve. Each breath was stacking up pressure in the confines of the thoracic cavity, crushing the heart, lungs and the great veins. I rotated the PEEP valve back to zero and ran back to the draws below the bench-top. I grabbed a large intravenous catheter. I struggled to rip the sterile wrapper away as I came back at the pig. The needle drilled into the chest wall between two ribs. Immediately, air streamed out the catheter, with a strident hiss. The deflation seemed to take an age. As the chest volume reduced, I ran fingers up onto the neck, searching for a return of the carotid pulse. There was nothing. It was too late. The pig was dead.

I looked across the line of pigs, the hyperPEEP group and the control group. I noticed for the first time, the taint of Navy blue under the pink fur as if they were all battered and bruised. I could feel the blood exit from my face and the prickling of a break-out sweat between my shoulder blades. The oleic acid was doing its thing. I felt transiently barbaric – immoral. I approached the next adjacent ventilator pressure gauge with trepidation. Again it was jammed to the hard-right. Like a zombie, I raced through the same resuscitation procedure again – again with the same result. I approached the third pig – by now a resuscitation automaton – fully alert - skin prickling. I knelt down beside the animal, poised to enter the chest. But under palpating fingers, I felt a little pulse wave thumping. I glanced at the pressure gauge on the ventilator front. Peak pressure, 102 cm H20, 32 for the breath and 70 for the PEEP. I felt a faint vibration of relief inside. No deflating catheter was required. Pigs four and five were also survivors. Not so number six. My penetrating catheter went too far this time and a shot of blood exited through the needle and a crimson stain grew upon my stone washed denim. I withdrew a few centimetres, until the exudate changed to air. Again the heart didn't restart.

I started on the low pressure pigs. I glanced at the pressure gauge on the ventilator front – peak pressure, only 30 centimetres of water – 20 for the breath and 10 for the PEEP. Again there was a fast thready pulse. All the control animals were sick, as expected. The oleic acid had made them that way. But they were all alive. I felt further relief inside. And with it, the seeds of realisation germinated. HyperPEEP was a killer! Gibbs and Green were right. The professor was on to a loser. His maniac idea was a death sentence. I surmised that all the control group pigs would be alive, and I was right. There was not one burst lung amongst them.

It came into my head to ring Boatwood, with the bad news. The voice that croaked on the end of the line, was uncomprehending. The receiver was dropped. The pitch of the voice rose. Ten minutes later, Boatwood crashed through the door, hair and beard dishevelled. His pyjama top poked out from under his suit jacket.

"This is a bloody disaster," he shouted. He rushed over and surveyed the deceased swine. His stethoscope flashed from chest to chest, while his large fingers searched for nonexistent pulses. "I don't believe it," he said. He perused the ventilators, checking the settings. I hadn't switched them off. They carried on, pumping gas into the lungs of the dead.

I stood over the kneeling professor. "You think it was too much PEEP?" I asked.

Boatwood looked up, his forehead corrugated and his shoulders slumped. "I'm not the only one doing this," he said. "They're doing it in Baltimore. They're doing it in Utah as well – admittedly with different animal species. And they're using 50 cm." He covered his nose and mouth, with a hand. "The thing is, these pigs have died from a burst lung. Not from hyperPEEP compressing the heart and killing cardiac output. Three burst lungs. Maybe it's something intrinsic to pig lungs – a susceptibility to high airway pressure."

We stood in silence for a moment, staring at the cyanosed hides. "Switch the dead ones off will you," Boatwood said. The ventilators alarmed as they lost power – a curious sound, rising in pitch, but falling in volume. And as the sounds died away, Boatwood rushed around to the monitoring station, looking at data – searching for something positive in his experiment. Within minutes he had found it. "Without the benefit of statistical analysis," he announced, "the remaining hyperPEEP pigs are oxygenating better than the control group."

I felt like saying that sure that was good but three of them were dead. Instead I asked about the blood pressure data.

"Well yes, the control group have a stronger circulation," Boatwood said. "But that's to be expected."

We spent another half hour taking samples and replacing near empty IV fluid bags before Boatwood called it a night.

Chapter 4

The pillars and ramparts of the medical school block, towered above me as I .made my entrance. Inside the atmosphere was sombre. The wooden staircase, tinted with dark varnish, was difficult to discern in the subdued lighting. The scent of thick floor polish stung my palate, already dry and rancid from a poor night of sleep. I marvelled at the energy and efficiency of Boatwood. He had managed to get the three lifeless pigs over to the pathology department by nine o'clock. It was quite an organisational feat.

We lifted the first pig onto the dissection table. It was stiff with rigor mortis. Its hind limbs were in full extension, the eyes open but glazed. Boatwood introduced me to Baerwald the pathologist. He was a short middle-aged man, with wild staring eyes, distorted behind wire rimmed glasses. He scarcely acknowledged me. He stood on a broad footstool, clipping away fur from the chest wall. A scalpel blade flashed, as he made a vertical incision. His face was only centimetres above his handiwork, as he carved down upon the bony skeleton. Bone cutters smashed through the ribs. Sharp fragments were scattered about the corpse, as the narrow bones were crunched. Soon the heart and lungs, were liberated from their internal attachments,

"Here's your trouble Boatwood," the pathologist announced. He was pointing to a bleb on the surface of the right lung. "The lung has ruptured here."

"The lung has collapsed?" Boatwood asked.

"Ooh yes. Yes it's a tension pneumothorax," Baerwald said, one eyebrow rising sharply.

By the time we had completed the last post mortem, Boatwood's face betrayed disappointment. Venous blood dripped off the table, forming a pool that ran away across the floor to a gutter. On another table, labelled organs lay dormant on silver trays.

"Experiment go wrong Boatwood?" Baerwald said, after a lengthy silence.

"I think three pneumothoraces speak for themselves, don't you?" Boatwood said. Baerwald, his wild hair looking uncombed for days, declined to comment.

We left Baerwald to his work, contented amongst the debris. Halfway back along the dank corridors, Boatwood stopped in his stride. "One might conceive of one lung rupture due to hyperPEEP, but not three. Clearly something extraordinary happened here," he said.

"What sort of thing?" I asked.

"I can only speculate," he said. "Maybe a power surge upset the ventilators. We must repeat this as soon as possible. I want to have results, to present at a Sydney meeting in May. This time though, we won't leave the lab unattended. We'll be in there watching the dials like a hawk" He squinted at me for a second, then recommenced his stride. I surmised that it would be Gerry Davenport watching like a hawk, not Professor Boatwood.

Left to struggle in Boatwood's wake, I duly arrived at the top of the concrete steps that led down to Great King Street. Boatwood was already halfway across the road. Outside, Sunday had progressed. Although the sky was uniformly overcast, he light was nevertheless sharp. Suffering a boring sensation between the eyes, I sauntered over to George Street. I was hoping to get a coffee and something to eat. Typically though, Sunday morning Dunedin was manifested by empty streets and locked doors. The thought of Eleanor's matter of factness had little appeal, but there was little option except to go home. Kicking my way through old fish and chip papers, I imagined running into Melanie. I had no idea what she might be doing. Friday night seemed a century ago. So, I had held hands with her under the table. Weird. Somehow its significance seemed in doubt today. Maybe she hadn't given it a thought since. Or she might now regard the episode as an embarrassing irrelevance. She would put it down to too much alcohol. Soon I was at my car. The dream was surely over. A listless Sunday beckoned.

The medical library slumbered. Journal stacks on coarse green carpet. Vertical slit windows recessed into the walls. I was hunched over books, head in hands. How to distinguish intrinsic from pre-renal failure? I closed my eyes and mentally listed markers of each. Urinary sodium greater than forty, or less than twenty – urine osmolality less than three hundred, or greater than five hundred. Then there was the fractional excretion of sodium to consider. Work however, only intruded sporadically into my consciousness. And that required a concerted effort on my part. Mostly I dreamed of Melanie. Not in any structured sort of way. My vision was a potpourri of images, words and actions. I dwelt on the returning memory of her face. I knew enough of myself, to appreciate I was falling in love. It had happened before. My wife had survived a number of my emotional catastrophes. Mercifully I thought, she remained in the dark about them all. Once again, I didn't consider walking away from this new emotion. Without it, I faced a familiar void. I clung to the taste of a life force that I knew existed for others.

I opened my eyes. Ahead of me was a long line of desks beside a wall. Heads were bent forward, or tilted to one side, as their owners wrestled with some problem or concept. Papers rustled and pens scratched. Across the room, behind journal stacks, a photocopier toiled. Aware of movement in my peripheral vision, I looked up. Melanie was there! She was between tall stacks, coming towards me. I jumped up and went to meet her. Pulses bounded up my neck. Electrified, I could hardly speak.

"What are you doing here," I blurted out.

"I thought I recognised you there, slumped over your desk," she said. We stood awkwardly, just short of each other. "I've got some photocopying to do – for an assignment," she explained. "And I guess I was hoping someone else might be here."

I felt my body shock to her disclosure. I scrutinised her face – looked into her eyes. I could see tension in her facial muscles. I saw her breathe deeply and sensed her need for me. She was falling for me. It wasn't myself alone who was affected. I pressed forward. Our hands entwined. My body shook, as her warm palms contacted mine. Her lips, painted and fluctuant, locked onto mine. I delighted in the perfumed warmth of her face and neck.

"Come up to the third floor," she whispered. "Not straight away – in a minute."

I staggered back to my desk. I looked for my reflection in the slit window, looking for traces of lipstick. I scanned up and down the line of desks. Everything was as it had been before. Nobody was staring at me, thankfully. My skin throbbed to a thousand pinpricks. My chest heaved, as though its contents might jump up into my throat. When I stood up again, the blood drained from my head and I had to grab at the desktop, to regain some composure.

The third floor housed historical journals and ancient textbooks. Consequently it was less busy than the other floors. I spotted Melanie, pretending to thumb through a dusty old tome. She saw me and gestured that I follow her. We came to some enclosed cubicles, designed for the student who preferred a cloistered environment. My body exalted, as I anticipated the scene chosen for our encounter.

A short while later back between library stacks we talked about the what was happening tentatively. She was now riddled with guilt. She hit me with questions. 'Why are you doing this? What is wrong with your marriage?' I said what's wrong with yours. I said we had both been taken over by something resembling a virulent disease. As we talked an air of gloom descended over us. The complexity of the situation was hitting home.

"I'd better get going. This is dangerous," Melanie said.

But now that it was time to part, the impending feeling of loss over rode our previous reflective mood. I kissed my way up her arm, inhaling to recapture her fragrance. As she fled the cubicle, she reached out to me, to touch fingertips for one last time. Then she was gone, running for the stairwell.

That night, I was in a ferment. Study was impossible. The company of Eleanor illogical. It was as if she were an innocent bystander, to this fever growing in my head. I took to bed early, light out. I relived all the stolen moments with Melanie, time after time. The new perspective of her, at close proximity, enthralled me. The things that she had said, I recalled. As much as my marriage to Eleanor was inert, I didn't want to see her hurt. My volatile emotional state and hunger for living were no fault of hers. Eleanor came to bed. Her physical presence seemed almost alien. I rolled against her back, as we often lay, testing myself in this new predicament. Our bodies touched, as I sought to encompass the dichotomy. Her familiar shape against my body felt strange, like a newly transplanted limb. I slept eventually – a blend of clashing images and sounds.

In the following days, I had only time for dwelling on my new obsession – Melanie East. On the kitchen table, my study books lay dispersed and ignored. The desire to pick up the phone and call her, gnawed away at me. I knew when she was working. But who would answer? Could I disguise my voice? I dialled the number. It rang a couple of times before I dumped the receiver. I had nothing prepared - no accent, no line of patter. I practiced speaking like an American, an Indian, an Englishman. I decided the American was the most convincing. I rang through again. Nancy, the charge nurse answered. I had the wherewithal to realize that she, being a genuine American wouldn't fall for my fake accent and so once again the receiver crashed down onto the telephone. When I did get hold of her, she wasn't initially in the frame of mind I sought.

"I felt very guilty last night," she said, interrupting my train of thought.

My enthusiasm shrank with her words. I didn't want to hear anything negative. Eventually I talked her into meeting in the back bar of the Robbie Burns, a tavern adjacent to the hospital on George St. Gibbs his face set in a frown, was walking towards me as I parked near the hospital. He nodded to me.

"He's horrible," Melanie said, in the bar.

"He's an ape. He's an ape in a suit," I said.

"Have you noticed, how medical specialists are often exceptionally unpleasant people?" Melanie said The back bar was deserted. There was only the smell of beer soaked carpet and a rotund barman to greet us. The barman silently prepared a gin and tonic for her and a pint of lager for me.I squeezed in beside her, our adjacent legs jammed together. I took both her hands in mine and we kissed. Our hunger for each other once again exploded. The blood did somersaults in my head.

New custom to the bar, halted our fervent embrace. We fell back against the cushioned seat, our heavy breathing conspicuous in the listless bar-room. Melanie smoothed her dress with the flat of a hand and picked up her glass. I stared at her, feeling dumbstruck. I reached over and ran a hand up onto her face. I lightly traced along her lips, feeling the texture and curve. I whispered into an ear. "I love you," drawing back to watch the pleasure in her smile.

The following weekend began early when the shrill tone of the telephone cut through the room. I groped for the receiver in the dark. A distinctive voice reverberated in the earpiece. "Golf at eight thirty," it said. "Be there."

Eleanor was up on an elbow in the dark. "I didn't hear you say no," she said.

"I didn't say anything," I said, sliding back under the covers.

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"I haven't been for ages," I said, staring at shadows on the ceiling.

Eleanor exploded. When were we going to do something together, she ranted.

Half the day was lost to my study. That was fair enough, she conceded. But the rest of the time, there was always some scheme contrived to take me away from her.

"Well why can't you get some interests of your own," I retorted. "Can't you get passionate about anything?"

Eleanor, stung by my counter-attack, turned away in disgust, hauling the duvet off me as she moved. I started to apologise, but half heartedly, sensing the damage was done.

"Just go," she screamed. And I went. I bolted. Unshaven and shabbily dressed, I quit the house and drove wearily to the golf course. How often I wondered, had I fled the house with a bad vibe. All too frequently it seemed. Maybe this time though, I didn't mind the disharmony.

I stopped at a little dairy on Balmacewan Road. A Pakistani man, barely taller than the shop counter, sold me Coke, potato chips and the Otago Daily Times. I arrived at the golf course, half an hour early. I looked in the mirror. Stubble and greasy hair reflected back. I was thankful Melanie couldn't see me in such a state. Aware of my bladder, distended with the night's accumulation, I left the car and dropped down onto the first fairway. A large stand of macrocarpa provided some cover. Vapour rose off my stream, as I released. I looked out through a gap in the trees, at the distant suburbs. Was Melanie up and about yet? I visualised her lying with Rikki. The vision was highly distasteful. I turned away and shut my eyes. Back at the car I rinsed my mouth with Coke and attempted to read the sports news.

The sound of a car approaching caught my attention. I surmised it must be Remington, since it was coming at maximum speed. The car, an orange battered Datsun, skidded to a halt beside my Triumph.

"Where are your sticks?" Remington yelled, jumping out of his car. Egg yoke stained one corner of his mouth.

"You haven't washed properly," I said, getting out the driver's door and standing up. Remington wiped his mouth on his black jersey.

"Come on Hyperhead," Remington yelled, looking back up the road. "The boys are getting impatient."

"Hey that real-estate agent you had for buying the house – what was he like?" I asked.

"Bit of a buffoon," Remington said.

At that moment, another car pulled up, this time at a more leisurely pace.

"Arnold" I said by way of greeting.

"Feeling confident," Arnold said, grappling with his clubs inside the boot.

Typically, Arnold dominated the score card early on, so that by the time we came to the thirteenth hole, he had a substantial lead. First off the thirteenth tee, Arnold had a useful drive up the right hand side of the fairway.

"No wrong," Remington chanted.

"Pearler," I said.

A deluge showered us, and we were forced to shelter under some pine trees.

"Dunedin weather," I said

"No good," Remington said. Arnold nodded. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a crumpled paper bag. He rolled a cigarette and lit up. An odour of cannabis pervaded our hide-out. Arnold offered the smoke around, but we declined to partake. With the rain easing, Remington and I got our drives away, a pair of hooks into the left rough.

"The wheels will come off Arnold now," Remington said, as the tubby one coursed off to his side of the fairway. "That joint will disable his swing."

"Yeah. And he'll almost certainly be seeing two balls soon," I said.

"We had the house of the long faces down on Tuesday," Remington said.

"Who?"

"The ICU doc's. Where were you?"

"Day off."

"It was quite strange really. Nigel Green really lost his rag. He's normally such a polite guy. It was something Boatwood said. Something about the use of PEEP, in respiratory distress syndrome."

"That's Boatwood's hobby-horse."

"Yes, well it really got on Green's goat. What a boil over. Then he apologised. Said he had a headache. Gibbs of course, was loving it. He looked like a dyspeptic camel – a grimace from ear to ear."

We came upon the golf balls. There was still a fine drizzle. In the southern sky, large thunderheads were billowing up. We both hit reasonable second shots, then crossed the fairway to observe Arnold address his ball. Arnold came at it with a huge swing. His body followed through impressively but he only managed to clip the top of the ball which scuttled away over an embankment, into some thick bracken.

"Head up, ball down." Remington announced with deliberation.

"The wheels are off Hyperhead," I said.

Arnold slashed at the grass with his iron, carving out a divot. To the south, the sky rumbled. The drizzle intensified. The bracken was laden with droplets as we forced our way in to look for the ball.

Like a sea breeze dying at sundown, the bustle of the intensive care unit diminished in the evening. The interminable doctors' rounds were absent. The elective post surgical admissions, with their coterie of attending staff, no longer appeared at the double doors. With no emergency admissions impending, I was able to relax at the central station and write some notes. In front of me, the life support systems hissed and purred. Pin point lights, glowed on the front-sides of the electronic equipment. From the ceiling piped music from a local radio station was just audible.

I had a warm flush of satisfaction. Melanie, who was also working that evening, would finish at eleven o'clock. That meant she could join me for a while in my bedroom adjacent to the unit. The thought of her warm flesh up close had me tremulous in anticipation. But simultaneously, I feared that work might come and destroy the opportunity.

As the time drew near, I wandered around all the patients, making sure everyone was stable, and that the written orders were up to date. Knowing how worked up my psyche was, I took special care to avoid making a mistake. I had to avoid spending too much time at Melanie's patient. The ICU staff, while dedicated to resuscitation, were a ruthless gossip machine.

"Gibbs made a pass at me yesterday," Jenny McVie declared, when he stopped by her table. She stood up close to him. "I was waiting for the lift, after my night shift, when guess who popped out in front of me?"

"Mm . . . Let me guess. How about Gibbs?"

"Yes, you smart boy. And you know what he said?" She cocked her head to one side. "He said `I want to sleep with you Jenny.' "

"Bold as brass, "I said, scratching my nose.

"Yeah. And guess what I did?" she said, her face boring into mine.

"Said yes I guess," I said, trying to protect his personal space.

"Funny boy," she said beaming. "No, I said `No way,' " She put her hands on hips with closed fists, and carried on the discourse with transparent satisfaction. "But, can you believe it? He got into the lift with me, and came all the way to the ground floor and all the way out to my car – trying to talk me around."

"What a pest," I said

"Yeah. What do you think about all that?"

"You're a lucky girl." I said.

Out the back, in one of the single rooms, I regaled the story to Melanie

"Good old Jenny," she said, bending down to zero an arterial line pressure transducer. "She'd like to think everyone's after her."

"Well it sounds like they are," I said. "Imagine Gibb's visage poised over you, ready to strike."

On the other side of the bed, Melanie went cross-eyed.

"Though I suppose his wife must have loved him – once upon a time," I said.

"Actually, I'd even let him make love to me, if he promised me my fellowship exam."

At ten to eleven, I went through to the resident doctor's bedroom. An iron hospital bed, was covered with a drab green eiderdown. An angular stainless washbasin, beneath a smeared mirror, dominated one corner. The taps were controlled by a long swinging arm. When Melanie appeared, shortly after eleven, she absorbed the surroundings with a look of horror. We stood for a while, gazing out the big windows at the vista below. The north city glittered under the starlit night. Headlights wandered on unknown journeys. The hills above North East Valley, were black as ink. In the shadows of the interior, silhouette and shape became almost illusory. As though floating on a warm tide, we swirled around each other, teasing then withdrawing. Her white uniform was almost luminous in the darkness, the shoulders adorned with red epaulets. The image . . . the nurse unveiled . . . heightened my physical urgency. I spoke softly against her lips. The words enhanced the urgency between us. Exalted to fever pitch, we were oblivious to notions of morality, to the nearby ward of illness, to the telephone primed to shrill on the bedside table.

Emerging from the final paroxysms, there was ecstasy in the aftermath of love. But there was again a palpable unease. It was the guilt and the burden of the burning love and desire.

A volley of blows shook the door. We jumped up from their embrace.

"What is it?" I shouted testily.

A voice penetrated the woodwork. "There's an ambulance arriving at A & E, with a cardiac arrest aboard."

"O.K, I'm on my way," I retorted, stepping into my trousers.

"I'll slip out in a few minutes," Melanie whispered, hastily retrieving her clothes.

I grabbed her naked figure. "I'm sorry it had to be like this."

She shook her head. Her eyes were half-lidded and her smile dispelled my concern. One last embrace and then he was gone, out the door, running. Ignoring the lifts, I hit the staircase at speed. Leaping down two or three steps at a time, I tried simultaneously to flatten my shirt and straighten my hair. I arrived in the emergency department, as the vehicle was backing in. An ambulance officer, earnest behind rimless glasses, jumped down as the rear doors burst open.

"It's an asthma attack - she's in asystole." He turned to help extract the stretcher bed. She was large as well. Obese. I took over the top end from a second officer who had been ventilating the lungs with bag and mask. The earnest officer continued with chest compressions.

"E.T. tube," I called. One appeared immediately at my right hand, while a laryngoscope was placed in my left hand. I ran the blade down the right side of the tongue, sweeping it out of the way. I found the entrance to the larynx and was about to pass the tube through its inlet. Immediately though, my vision was overwhelmed by vomit. It flooded out the mouth - a yellow river of bile, food and acid.

"Suction," I called.

The vomitis was aspirated away into a glass jar, and I was then able to insert the endotracheal tube. With oxygenation secured, I turned my attention to the ECG. She was still in asystole. "Adrenaline, one milligram," I said. A figure appeared at his elbow. I was dismayed to see it was Gibbs.

"I was calling by ICU to pick up some papers," Gibbs said, flashing a row oft teeth. "Christ, she's a load of blubber," he sniffed, after surveying the scene. "A real lump of lard."

"Try atropine now," I said. I looked at Gibbs "She's had it, I'd say."

"What about pneumothorax?" Gibbs snapped. His early smile had vanished.

"What about it?" I said.

"We need to rule it out, that's what," Gibbs yelled. He picked up a ten millilitre syringe and needle, and partially filled it with saline. He gestured for the officer doing compressions to move aside, then drove the needle into the chest wall. He aspirated with the plunger. "We'll get air if there's a pneumo," he said to no one in particular. Instead however, blood shot into the endotracheal tube and resuscitation bag.

"Christ, you must have hit an artery," I shouted, the vivid memory of my night with the pigs flashing through my mind. I squeezed hard on the bag, but there was now marked resistance to my efforts. "She's virtually impossible to ventilate now."

"Well squeeze harder, we are obligated to rule out a pneumo," Gibbs said

"Maybe that needle finished her off," I said.

"I'm the bloody consultant," Gibbs roared. "I'll decide whether she's had it or not." Then more quietly, he gave orders for five milligrams of adrenaline and fifty milli-equivalents of bicarbonate. There was no effect on the heart's rhythm. Blood continued to come up the airway. "O.K you can stop now," Gibbs said, and he immediately turned and left the room.

I looked at the woman lying naked and bloated on the bed. Blood trickled out one corner of her mouth. Her chest wall was bruised, from aggressive cardiac massage.

"He's a tough nut," the ambulance officer said, disconnecting ECG leads.

"Yeah," I said. "He's different alright." I vacated the scene also, leaving the grisly task of the clean up to the nurses.

Back on ICU, there was another problem. A young man, concussed in a motorbike accident, had arrived for observation.

"He's had internal fixation of leg fractures," Tucker, a night-shift nurse said. "He's causing us a few headaches though. He's bloody obnoxious."

I walked over to look at him. "Who the hell are you?" the patient spat.

I felt a surge of irritation. I didn't need this sort of issue after the nihilism of Gibbs. I strode over to the drug cupboard and drew up some valium. "This will fix the bastard," I said to Tucker. The male nurse raised his eyebrows and nodded. I returned to the patient. I picked up the drip line and began to inject the sedative. It was grimly satisfying for me to hear the volley of abuse become slurred, then incomprehensible, and finally silent. Tucker with a wry smile nodded his approval. "He won't bother us again tonight," I said, suddenly conscious of the dampness in my groin. The memory of Melanie flooded back, as I dragged my feet along to the tearoom. Inside I snapped the jug on. The cool night, seemed to sneak in after me and I shivered.

Alana, short and thin, pale, with a dash of freckles, let me in. "Eleanor couldn't come?" she asked"

Too tired," I said with a wan smile. How many times had I said that?

Remington and Alana's house, was similar in many ways to mutual GP friend Arnold's. An old wooden villa, that was perpetually untidy. However, whereas Arnold's place was threadbare and unadorned, the Remington villa was embellished with bright colour and exotic artefacts. There were pink walls, juxtaposed with purple carpet. A Van Gogh print, shared wall space with a stolen street sign. Out the back, a home made deck overlooked a lawn, that had not been harvested for several years.

"Have a beer Davenport," Remington said, gesturing to a carton on the floor.

"How's your study going Remington?" I said

"He's always in there now," Alana said, pointing out the door.

"I'm always bent over those tomes. My back's got a fixed flexion disorder now,"

Remington said, scratching his knee through a hole in his jeans.

"One of many syndromes I'm afraid," Alana said, staring at the ceiling.

"What about you Davenport. Putting away a few hours?" Arnold chipped in.

"Bugger all actually," I said, twisting open a beer. "I'm a bit distracted at the moment."

"What's the problem?" Alana asked.

"You don't want to know," I said, sliding down into a moth eaten armchair.

"Well that sounds mysterious."

"Sounds like trouble if you ask me. Your writtens are only two months away, aren't they?" Remington asked.

"It's bloody hard to concentrate though isn't it. Every half hour, I have to get out of the chair for some relief," I said.

"What sort of relief?" Alana asked.

"To play with his organ," Arnold crowed.

"Yeah, yeah. No, it's usually something like playing the guitar or eating. I'm always carrying some treat back to the table, to ease the burden."

"Remington's put on alot of weight since he started cramming," Alana said.

"Yeah, he's like a bloated frog," Arnold said.

"Actually, you look like you've lost weight Gerry," Alana said.

"Yeah well, that will be the mysterious distraction," I said. Nowadays, everything that entered my mind, had to share space with Melanie. But I wasn't about to tell them all about that particular agony. Instead I stood up. "Well, is it dark enough yet?"

Remington looked out the window. "Yes, we're underway – just as soon as your sister and Junot arrive."

"Hopefully they'll bring more than fireworks," Arnold said.

"Mmm, with Junot involved that's a foregone conclusion," Alana said.

When they arrived, Isobel put an arm around my shoulders. "No Eleanor again?" she said. "What's to become of you both? We'll don't say I didn't warn you." Isobel was staggering despite standing with legs braced apart and leaning on me.

"Ok, ok" I muttered, feeling embarrassed

Remington came to the rescue. He reached down beside his chair and picked up a large plastic bag.

"It's a long time since November the fifth," Arnold said.

"Never mind, the neighbours will enjoy the spectacle," Remington said with a grin.

For the next half hour, Remington hurled a great array of fireworks into the sky. The cacophony of sound was relentless. After a while, he got down onto his knees and taped two sky-rockets together – one pointing up – one pointing down. Captivated, the rest of us watched, as he tied the two wicks together. He stood the rocket up in a glass jar and lit the wicks near the upper rocket. The thing blasted into the black sky. Near the top of its arc, the lower rocket ignited and down they came – driving straight at the ground. Enthused by this conception, Junot sent up several more, setting fire to his long hair in the process. As he put out the smouldering locks with his fingers, the last rocket lost its way, and smashed into an adjacent roof. Remington was delighted when his elderly neighbour appeared, gesticulating and shouting over the hedge.

"Have you got choreo-athetosis?" Remington yelled back.

"Easy on," Alana whispered. "They don't get on," she explained to the rest of us.

Back inside, there was Isobel – laid out on a couch – a pile of dreadlocks, hessian skirt and sandals. Junot looked at her benignly, not at all fazed by the chemical coma.

Chapter 5

Three of us sat and waited for Green. I felt light headed, my stomach knotted. Tutorials always wound me up. This one, quite close to the exam, was bound to be testing.

"I hope he doesn't ask about the liver," Boy Wonder said. "I know nothing about the liver." He lay back on a chair, one foot resting up on the table in front of him.

The lying bastard, I thought. The Wonder Boy would know it all, inside and out.

The Handwringer was living up to his name, pacing up and down by the windows, wringing his hands. His face was pinched, his mouth a tiny chink on an ashen skull.

Green came in. "How are you guys?" he announced cheerily. "Got all the answers doc?" he said to Boy Wonder. He sat down behind a large table. "Who's in the hot seat first? Looks like it's you David."

The questions came. The Handwringer agonised. He shifted in his chair, buttock to buttock. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He leaned back, arms folded, his shoes drumming the carpet. His answers though, were solid.

Green sat back, when it was over. "O.K. guys, what's he doing wrong? Gregory, any ideas?"

Still reclining back, the Boy Wonder smiled. "It's his body language. He's like a cat on hot bricks."

"Worse than that," Green laughed. "He's like a New Zealand opener, about to face the West Indian pace attack. You've got to sit still David. Lean forward, put your hands in your lap and look the examiner in the eye. Your answers are fine. With a decent presentation, you'll bolt in. Right Gerry-o, it's you."

Taking note of the advice, I took up the desired body position, fixing my gaze on Green's mouth. Green asked me a very general question, about the management of a patient with burns. I started off confidently enough, describing history taking, physical exam, the rule of nines, and fluid resuscitation utilising the Parkland formula. Then I dried up – my mind had seized.

"You've gotten too bogged down in fluid resuscitation," Green said. "You must cover the whole topic. Try and think laterally, across the breadth of the question. You failed to mention which investigations you would do. Sure fluid therapy is a cornerstone in the management, but don't forget basic things like patient cooling, topical antisepsis, systemic antibiotics and surgical debridement - early or late etcetera. And for God's sake, don't forget to mention the airway. It should be one of the first things you do. Look for signs of inhalational injury. Elective intubation is right in vogue at the moment."

I was relieved to quit the chair. I had really stiffed the question. I watched dazed as Boy Wonder trounced Green's question about management of an asthmatic patient in respiratory failure. At first, Green seemed to lap it up. His face seemed to say, 'This is one of my boys – my alter ego'. Then the Boy Wonder began to advocate high levels of PEEP and Green frowned.

"Come on Gregory, the patient's asthmatic. The lungs are already stretched up with dynamic hyperinflation. If you put on more PEEP, he'll have trouble emptying his lungs."

"So what," the Boy argued. "I'd increase the expiratory time on the ventilator. Besides, the increased end expiratory volume, will stretch his respiratory muscles and put them on a better part of the compliance curve. "I was astonished to see Green jump to his feet.

"That's bullshit Gregory," he thundered. He pointed a finger, right at Boy Wonder's face. "You're too big for you're boots mate," he continued. His hand was shaking. "You better watch it, or you'll go down the gurgler." He scooped up his briefcase and headed for the door.

Boy Wonder's oval mouth hung open Blood rushed to the roots of his curling hair. He turned to us.

"What? . . . What's gotten into him? Is he alright?"

"I've never seen him react like that before," the Handwringer said.

I laughed. "You irritated him to hell. You'll just have to hope you don't get him in the vivas. He's an examiner, don't you know."

"But, you know what he's like. He just doesn't react like that normally." Boy Wonder shook his head, as he stuffed some papers into a folder.

We left the room silently. I too was perplexed. It certainly had been out of character. Was Green that churned up about hyperPEEP? I walked across to the lifts and pressed the down button.

My conscription to a monitoring role in the second hyperPEEP experiment had turned out to be something of a blessing. I had relieved the professor during the afternoon, to keep an eye on the prone pigs. Unintentionally, Boatwood had provided something of a sanctuary in which a couple hungry for love could blossom. The adjoining office at the back of the laboratory had sufficient separation from the adjacent vivisection, to allow for romantic love. A wooden table scoured by graffiti, a pink and grey filing cabinet, a bookcase of weathered tomes and dark stained floorboards – those were our prop. The sterile interior injected a violent freneticism. We simply devoured each other. We were all over the office – upright, supine, sitting – eroticised by circumstance. Afterwards, emerging shattered from the office, into the gleaming laboratory, Melanie had faltered in the face of the acid-lung montage.

"This is in your face," She nervously laughed, turning her back on the spectacle. "I don't know whether I agree with using animals for research purposes. It's kind of like cynical exploitation."

"Yeah it is a bit ugly," I said. "But what else could we do instead – to make drugs and techniques safe for people?"

Hours later, forced by my monitoring role to sit in one spot, I could at last reflect positively on a period of productive study. Physically spent, I leaned back on a rickety chair, my eyelids beginning to weigh down heavily.

Footsteps approaching down the corridor surprised me. I glanced up at the electric clock. It was ten-thirty. Niall wasn't due to take over until midnight. I watched the door as the sound got closer. I felt slightly apprehensive. The handle turned. The door edged open. Gibbs stood there, blinking as though dazzled by the bright light.

"What are you doing here?" he barked.

I was baffled by the question. It was the sort of thing that I might be asking him. However I spelt it out for him.

"More lambs to the slaughter," Gibbs said, with the familiar flash of teeth. I pointed out that the animals under study were pigs. "You know what I mean," Gibbs growled. He disappeared out into the back office, reappearing moments later with a bundle of papers. He stumped about amongst the ventilators, peering at the displays. "Bit of a cock up last time," he said, in more friendly tones – as if pleased by the poor outcome. I said nothing. Had Boatwood spoken to Gibbs? Perhaps Baerwald had said something. Gibbs picked up the clipboard, holding the four o'clock results. I watched the short man peruse the numbers.

"The hyperPEEP group is oxygenating much better than the controls." I volunteered to my senior.

"Sure," Gibbs said. "But it's a question of what will happen side effects wise. Pneumothorax has already tarnished Boatwood's figures. And with that pressure for three days say, you're bound to get some structural lung damage. Capillary fracture principally. Then they will leak and compound your original problem."

"Yes, but in the short term, hyperPEEP could keep someone alive, while the primary problem is corrected with some other therapy - antibiotic treatment of pneumonia, for example."

"We already use ordinary PEEP for that purpose," Gibbs said. "It's a question of degree. Boatwood's gone right over the top. He will get complications. He already has." Gibbs started heading for the door. "You here all night?" he asked, stopping short of the exit.

"No, it's Niall after midnight," I said

Gibbs bared his teeth again. "He's keen, that boy," he said. Then he was gone.

Niall's gangly frame, finally manoeuvred through the door at midnight. I was busy, drawing the sixteen hour samples.

"Great results," Niall said, peering over my shoulder. "No sign of pneumothorax?"

"No, the airway pressures have hardly changed at all." I gestured to a pressure dial. "Makes you wonder what happened last time."

Niall seemed unaffected by the late hour. He frisked about amongst the piglets, his stethoscope darting from chest to chest.

I packed up my books sleepily. I looked wistfully at the door leading into the back office, where Melanie and I had been lovers a few hours before. I felt the chill of loneliness. Life seemed to have no other meaning . . . only Melanie East.

Chapter 6

The book lay open before me. The message it conveyed however, was lost on the reader. My eyes, though directed at the text, were unfocused. I fidgeted about, rocking back and forth, as if in pain. It seemed every few minutes, I would look up at the library clock, to check the progress of time. With each glance, I was doomed to disappointment. Time was virtually standing still. Eight-thirty was unobtainable.

When the time time finally arrived there was a sense of relief,I got up. I left the books open on the desk, as though I had just gone to the bathroom. Out on the footpath it was cold. A southerly wind darted up between the buildings, whistling in the overhead wires. I huddled deeper into my navy coat. A Honda Civic flashed its lights and jerked to a halt. A door flew open. I dived in, pulling the door behind me. I flung myself about her neck as she manoeuvred the gear stick, soaking up the scent and the feel of her smooth of hair. I thought about what Melanie had revealed to me, earlier that day – that she had shared their secret with a friend. "I can totally trust Beth," she had argued, after I had questioned the wisdom of the disclosure. She was struggling to understand her compulsion to be with me, when morally it was considered so wrong. She needed a confidant.

"Better get your belt on now," she said. "We don't need any attention from the cops."

I scanned the pavement for any signs of life. The traffic department was the least of our worries. It was spies of a different breed I was worried about - doctors, nurses, friends, relatives or acquaintances – someone who would gape in astonishment upon seeing us together. Especially someone named Eleanor or Rikki.

We pulled up beside a cream weatherboard bungalow. An outside light illuminated a corner of the house. We had another go at our usual discussion about guilt.

"Obviously I feel guilty," Melanie said, lowering her voice, as the engine went idle. "But you must have reasons why you are doing this, just as I have reasons." She leaned back against her seat and looked at the roof. "I don't know your wife at all, apart from what I saw at the dinner party. I'm sure she's very nice. But you do seem quite different - at least in that setting."

"We're poles apart," I said, relieved at the attempt to be understood. I delivered my history in a compressed discourse. I wanted her to know about the early obsession with the way Eleanor looked. And the rejection that further fueled the obsession. I needed her to understand the romanticism of the young marriage – the possession obsession. And after that – the twin problems of not relating to the same people and of vastly different commitments to the giving of love.

Soon we had to leave the conversation in the car. I followed her inside to meet her friend Beth again. Beth seemed to be a person who was always positive – always in balance. She was also very much into the physical aspects of life. For the first half hour, she had wandered about in her running gear. Her upper body, the parts I had seen outside her singlet, rippled with definition. And below there were powerful looking quads and hamstrings. Every few minutes, she'd stop involuntarily and stretch a different muscle group. However, she plied us both with champagne, and I noticed her own intake was considerable. She was not a complete health freak obviously. She treated Melanie and I as though they were a well seasoned couple. Despite this, I felt very uncomfortable. It was a weird feeling to be abruptly in the lives of the two women.

Like any good athlete, Beth spent half her life in the shower. That day was no exception and soon Beth and I were alone in the kitchen . . . But not for long. A male voice materialised from behind us.

"Nice to see you still know how to enjoy yourself Melanie," it said. We broke apart. The newcomer was in his late thirties, tall and broad with a flat friendly face He smiled at us benignly.

"Oh it's you Larry," Melanie said. "God you gave me a fright. Melanie and Larry conversed easily. Having no history with either of them, nor with Beth, I was sidelined as a passive observer of their conviviality. Larry unearthed a bottle of peach schnapps and liberally topped up their champagne glasses. I managed to discern that he was an ex boyfriend of Beth's and that they were clearly still close friends. Larry worked occasionally on the till of the Robbie Burns bottle store. In addition to that he had a milk run. "It can be bloody stressful," he explained. Some people forget to put out their tokens. Then there's dogs. There's always some mangy mutt snapping, at your heels. I keep a handful of rocks in my back pocket, to hurl at the bastards. There are so many hopeless dog owners about."

"God, don't get him started on dogs," Beth announced, coming back into the room. She had on a slip of a skirt and a sleeveless white top. He was started on dogs however. He regaled a story about a five year battle he'd had with the owner of a barking dog. The dog had irritated him night after night many years before.

"I used to ring this dick virtually every night. He did absolutely nothing to silence down the mongrel. In the end I didn't bother talking to him. I just phoned him every time his dog barked and barked down the phone myself – woof, woof. Then I'd hang up"

I slipped down in my easy chair. I gazed at the roof, as the champagne lifted me nicely into the therapeutic window. A warm glow began pulsing in my dermis. The voices trickled on in desultory fashion – mildly accusatory, tinged with irony, but easy and familiar. I only joined in sporadically. The strangeness of being with the new people passed off. It was different to Remington and Arnold's abrupt and naked cynicism. And certainly different to Eleanor's measured delivery. I became aware of Melanie being close, her body moulded in beside mine, on the chair. I pulled her in closer. I was good at giving and receiving affection. I didn't have anything to learn about that.

"Let's leave them for a while Larry," he overheard Beth say seemingly from afar. "Come and tell me how the milk run has gone this week." Their voices ebbed away, to a distant recess of the house.

The madness continued a few days later. I thought it a crazy idea – to go out to a restaurant – the four of us? Larry, however stuck to his guns. If someone they knew saw them, well so what? I could be an acquaintance of Larry's. There wasn't necessarily an implied link to Melanie. We chose a midweek night. I had my usual alibi of studying in the medical library.

"Gerry's got himself a watertight excuse," Larry said, as I climbed into the station wagon. "What's yours Melanie?"

"I'm out to dinner with Beth," She said, entwining fingers with me across the back seat.

"Hey, of course, why piss around with elaborate stories. Just tell the truth." Larry swung onto the one-way system.

"I'm often out to dinner with Beth - and yeah, it's often at Palms Cafe."

Outside the restaurant Melanie leaned across me and tried to peer inside. The ground floor of a 1930's commercial building, the cafe was triangular shaped. The roadside facade was mainly glass. But reflections of the street lights obscured the interior. "It's too difficult to see. Let's just go in." The entrance led immediately into the kitchen area, separated from the entrance foyer by an L-shaped bench top. The chef, ponytail and beard, poked at the fryer. The stocky greying matriarch ushered us to a circular table, by an imposing window. Headlights of on-coming cars travelling on the one-way system, beamed straight in at us. At the last second, the cars veered away around the side of the building.

"If we get a car through the window, you can inherit the milk run Beth," Larry said.

"No thanks. I think we'll all be wiped out anyway."

"Think I'll have the baked camembert," Melanie said, scrutinising the menu."I have it every time.

"You've lost weight Melanie. Why are you losing weight?" Larry asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"Well, why do you think dumbo? Don't you think she might be a bit stressed?" Beth looked up to the heavens.

"Okay, Okay. Not everyone stops eating when they're stressed. Some people really binge out."

"I'll go and get ithe wine." Beth said. "Marion's probably busy. Staff are a bit thin on the ground here." Beth got up and squeezed past Larry.

"Get two bottles," Melanie said, waving an empty wine glass.

Marion came and took our orders, straightening her apron, with the flat of a hand. From wall mounted speakers, music trickled, blending into the rising sound of voices.

"Stormy Monday," Larry crowed, losing half his wine.

"You like this one?" Marion asked, her plump bland face devoid of expression.

"She's almost Parkinsonian," I said when she'd gone.

"Who? . . . What?" Larry shook his head.

The wine, the conversation and the music, washed into me like an intravenous purge. No longer aware of any risk, I wallowed in the gregarious company. By the time the main-course had appeared, and each had sampled the other's fare, I was properly soused. The room started spinning and I lost control of my wine glass. The red distillation flooded the table top – the white linen becoming stained with crimson.

Marion appeared, "I'll change that if you like," she said, her mouth a straight line.

"You can't take a doctor anywhere," Larry said.

"So it would appear," Marion said, clearing away the empty bottles. "I'll order you a taxi," Marion stated and we got up and went to the counter to pay up.

"Hey, we'll get him to take us to the beach," Larry said. "Let's go for a swim.

Get the gear off."

The taxi purred out through South Dunedin, to the seaside. Melanie leaned forward and read the license certificate attached to the inside of the windscreen. "Hey there Rob," she said. "How about stopping here at the store, so I can get a packet of fags" We watched her enter the late night dairy. We could see her figure through a window, pointing up at the rows of cigarette packets.

"Imagine what old Rikki would think about that?" Larry mused.

"Mm . . . Well I think he'd be more concerned about something else," Beth said,

Slumped on the back seat, I probably appeared to be asleep.

At the coast, we dismissed the driver and sat on the sea wall smoking. The sea rolled in and out, white foam on a wobbling black jelly. There was no wind. Behind us, anonymous tenancies cast angular shards of light across the road.

"I only smoke when I've had quite a few drinks," Melanie said. "I just get this uncontrollable urge."

"Better get it over with Larry," Beth said, pointing to the surf. We descended precipitous steps, down the face of the sea wall. A pile of clothes mounted up on the encrusted rocks. The others flesh looked chalky in the dim illumination. Larry led the charge, war-whooping as he sprinted across the sand. I followed the two girls, watching their white bottoms bouncing as they ran. I plunged into the icy breakers. Under water it was black, freezing and deathly. The tide grabbed at me as it retreated back down the slope. Flashes of light, lanced the surface, as I broke through from below.

"It's incredibly cold," I said.

"Let's beat it," Beth said.

With no towels, we dressed uncomfortably, underclothes adhering to wet skin. The taxi reappeared and we piled in, puffing and blowing in the cold. Outside my flat we lingered in soft conversation.

"It's half past one," Larry said

"What will you say Gerry?" Beth asked..

"Ah . . . Yeah . . . I don't know. I'll think of something," I muttered.

The door slammed and they were gone. The engine faded away abruptly, as the car dived off around a bend. Above me, my flat was dark and silent. But I smiled at the night and climbed the steps. I was really living.

In the weekend it was impossible to see Melanie. I accompanied Eleanor in an outing to Tunnel beach. She was driving and I lay slumped in the passenger seat. In my head Melanie's words of an encounter the previous day replayed. 'I'm worried about all this. The fallout would be enormous if we got caught – around the hospital – our families – our friends. I'd rather our marriages dissolved for their own reasons, rather than as a consequence of this.'

The car crested the hill. The Pacific Ocean, grey, miasmic, turbulent with white caps, opened out before us. The road descended steeply, ending at a wire fence line. Tufts of grass were flayed by the wind. Outside the car, we could barely hear each other talk above the roar of the sea. It was grinding into the cliffs hundreds of feet below. Eleanor led the way, climbing over a rickety stile to clear the barbed wire. The wind tore at her yellow jacket, threatening to uplift her slight frame entirely. A clay track wound steeply downward, towards some terminal bluffs. It skirted across their tops, before finding a natural tunnel that led right to the seabed itself. She walked hands in pockets, face impassive, held up to the wind. At the end of the tunnel, steps led out onto a massive rock that was judiciously by a guard-rail. The wild sea, tore at the rock, sending exploded foam into the air. It was too dangerous to venture out to the guard-rail. We remained at the tunnel entrance. She came and rested up against me. I put my arms loosely around her. I sniffed the top of her head. It felt strange holding her. But I still loved her. It was just that . . . I couldn't bear the way we had to live

We crossed back over the stile and immediately the background roar was cut by the curvature of the hilltop. Eleanor stopped and waited. Her face was a deep pink. Strands of hair, stuck to her temples where sweat lay. I linked my arm through hers. If she knew where my mind lay! She would be floored. One day soon it might come. My stomach shrank, imploding at the prospect. I looked westward, across the rolling fields to the horizon. The far away images yielded nothing tangible. Only that old feeling of displacement.

Monday came and I went to retrieve a head injured patient from Alexandra. I thought about Boatwood's grandiose experiments. That type of thing was in the outreaches of my mind normally. Rather, my inner retreat, was consumed by aesthetic dreams - music and love. Out the back windows of the ambulance, the winding road receded rapidly. The white line whipped about, like a kite in a gale. The grey bitumen, was framed by lazy hillsides and ragged bush. The ambulance began to slow down. It pulled over and stopped.

"Single gunshot wound to the head," the Alexandra paramedic said. "Twenty-two rifle \- suicide attempt. His wife and a friend heard the shot. He'd gone out to the milking shed. No obvious reason. The farm was doing well. Good marriage too, the friend said."

As the ambulance began the return journey, I wrestled with the encircling head bandage, elevating it to reveal the forehead. As I did so, a geyser of red blood climbed into the air from the pinpoint wound in the middle of the forehead. "Oh Christ," I said, tugging the dressing back down to stem the flow. No brain was going to survive that amount of pressure. No wonder his pupils were fixed and dilated.

On arrival at the Barn, we hooked the patient to a ventilator. Blood not contained by the dressings seeped down the face in a continuous trickle. Boatwood was of a mind to let the brain dead man slip away. He elected not to replace the blood loss.

Gibbs who was taking an interest, was outraged. "You should be replacing the blood and I'd put a tourniquet around his neck to compress the carotids. We should harvest his kidneys for organ donation."

Boatwood looked down at Gibbs and laughed. "What's his wife going to say, when she sees her dying husband with a noose around his neck and his face going black?"

"It could be your son receiving those kidneys," Gibbs said. "Think about it." He transfixed Boatwood with an unblinking gaze.

"No you think about it Trevor," Boatwood said, frowning and raising his voice. "You should show some sensitivity for once. The patients aren't just a physiologic preparation for you to experiment with. Put a tourniquet round his neck – what an outrage. It's certainly not happening on my unit. You can be sure of that." He strode off at once. I followed him to the tearoom. Inside, Boatwood filled a white electric jug, from a hot water cylinder. He looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "Tea?" he asked. I was amazed at how unperturbed Boatwood appeared to be. Boatwood laughed as if perceiving my thoughts. "Trevor's prone to take the contrary view. Sometimes it's quite ridiculous, as you can see."

Niall appeared, willowy and looking pleased with himself. "Those results the other day – are they significant Prof?"

I grimaced. Niall knew damned well that the results were significant. It was yet another case of student-professor colonic hoovering.

"The statistics are very good," Boatwood said. "There's no doubt. The hyperPEEP really improved lung function. I'll have them on their feet in Sydney. I'm presenting the data over there at the scientific meeting, in a few weeks."

"It makes you wonder what went wrong the first time," I said, tipping coffee granules into three mugs.

"Tea for me," Boatwood said. "Yes, well clearly something happened while those pigs were unsupervised. I wouldn't risk it that way again."

"What do you think happened?" Niall asked.

Boatwood's eyes shifted about. He scratched the back of his head. "One can only hazard a guess," he said, tugging at his beard. "Maybe there was a power surge, which made the ventilators deliver a large wave of inspiratory pressure."

"Causing the lungs to rupture," Niall added helpfully.

I poured hot water over Boatwood's teabag. "Surely the ventilators are able to cope with that. They've got a pressure release valve at 60 cmH2O."

"No, no, no," Boatwood said, frowning. "They were removed. The PEEP's already at 70. There's no way we can have pressure release at 60."

I covered my face with my hands. Then I said, "What about someone tampering with the ventilators?"

"Eh?" Boatwood's eyebrows descended, his pupils black. "I don't know what the mechanism was. A pressure wave, or something of that nature occurred. This isn't Chicago, we're in Dunedin."

Niall interrupted, his long fingers splayed around his coffee mug. "Tony Drummond turned up at the lab, while I was doing my shift the other night. It was about two o'clock in the morning. He had keys for the door. He looked bloody surprised to see me there."

"He helps with most of the research. He's in the lab, all the time." Boatwood said.

"At two in the morning?" I said, my voice rising.

"He'd had a few to drink," Niall said. "He'd come to collect something."

"He runs the lab for us. Why shouldn't he turn up? Anyway, I've got the results I want. Whatever happened is irrelevant now."

I was going to ask why we could simply ignore the results of the first study but Gibb's stunted figure appeared in the door frame. "Your patient in bed four is going off a bit. His oxygen saturation is falling."

"Lung oedema again," Boatwood said, putting down his cup. "That's Mr Hart. He was hypotensive for quite a while in theatre."

"He had a big transfusion," I said. "David Ngai gave him sixteen units of blood."

"That's the second nephrectomy that has been cocked up this year," Gibbs said.

"The vena cava was wrapped in tumour. It's not a cock up. There's bound to be a large bleed out in that situation." Boatwood finally was sounding irritated.

"Well I'm glad I don't have a renal cell carcinoma," Gibbs said as a parting shot.

"Better put some PEEP on Mr Hart then Gerry," Boatwood said.

Later when I left the ICU on an errand, I noticed Gibbs and Drummond conversing in the corridor of the adjacent anaesthetic department. Gibbs was gesticulating with one arm. They both looked up simultaneously when I appeared. Gibbs frowned, while Drummond stared through me, his face inscrutable. I entered the lift well and escaped from their gaze. I felt sure that they'd be talking about HyperPEEP and it's stalwart, Professor Boatwood. Perhaps in their minds I was tarred by the same brush – guilty by association.

Chapter 7

Thirty-six hours had passed since Gibbs had poked his nose into the tearoom. Rostered onto the nightshift, I watched with growing dismay as Mr Hart's condition took a further deterioration. Melanie was calling to my little doctor's bedroom at eleven o'clock. The patient's deteriorating lungs were putting that rendezvous in jeopardy.

Boatwood on his evening ward round, looked at the data pensively. "There's no room to move here," he muttered. "He's been on eighty percent oxygen for two hours now. His arterial oxygen is still falling. His lungs are filling up with water. He's got ARDS. We'll have to put his PEEP higher."

"Why not increase the inspired oxygen?" Mary the nurse asked. Her lips seemed black, against a chalky white face.

"Well we could," Boatwood said. "But it's not a long term option. Oxygen at these high concentrations will cause fibrosis in his lungs. If it is used for several days, you will get permanent damage. So no, I'd go for increasing the PEEP. His circulation is reasonably stable. It can handle some increased intra-thoracic pressure."

I moved to the ventilator, reaching out for the control knob. "Up to twenty-five?" I asked.

"No . . . No make it seventy,"

I laughed. "Seventy?" I glanced back at the Professor. But there was not a trace of amusement behind the horn-rimmed spectacles.

"Seventy," Boatwood repeated. "This man will die, unless we do something drastic."

"Yes, but seventy, that's unheard of," Mary butted in. Her little mouth was pinched at the corners, her nostrils flattened and blanched.

"I repeat, the patient is going to die." Boatwood said, emphasising each word. "Conventional treatment is failing. Let's show a bit of guts and take control."

Impressed by Boatwood's resolve, but sensing that the proposed treatment perhaps wasn't properly validated, I twisted the knob around to seventy. I watched the baseline airway pressure gauge indicator rise to seventy. We all knew where to look next. I imagined the lungs growing and growing – surrounding the heart with drum tight tentacles. And venous blood, trying to return to the chest, would be meeting a 70mmHg wall. There was bound to be a fall in cardiac output. Sure enough, as we watched, the blood pressure began to descend.

When it got to eighty, Boatwood cleared his throat. "That's no good. Start an adrenaline infusion. The pigs withstood hyperPEEP in the end. And so will Mr Hart, with a little help from our friend adrenaline. This heart needs supporting."

Mary began filling a large syringe with the adrenaline solution. She and I exchanged glances. Mary shook her head and grimaced. When it was ready, Mary plugged the end of the adrenaline infusion line into a port of the central venous line and I began immediately to wind up the infusion rate. When the rate was up to twelve mls per hour, we had what we wanted. The blood pressure was 105mmHg and the hyperPEEP had made the arterial oxygen saturation improve markedly.

"Fine," said Boatwood, his eyes softening under the fluorescent glare. "Now I'll just confirm that we're winning, with a blood gas analysis. Then we can all go to bed – well, I can go to bed anyway."

Porcelain Mary, perhaps impressed by the figures, sprung into action and provided the professor with a blood sample from the arterial line. He virtually snatched it from her grasp and strode smartly through a store room, to a mini-laboratory across the back corridor. Within minutes, he was back clutching the print-out. "You can turn down the oxygen," he said, his eyes ablaze. "The oxygen saturation is ninety-six."

I surveyed the slip of paper. I imagined the heart squeezed by its lung envelope, struggling manfully to force enough blood out to the waiting organs, the liver, the kidneys . . . the brain – and the adrenaline soaking into the screaming myocardium, driving the heart muscle harder and faster.

Over the course of the evening the patient remained stable, so that when eleven o'clock came around, and Melanie slipped into my bedroom, I was there waiting for her.

"Green's in his office," she murmured, her complexion reddened by the night air.

"But he's not on call tonight," I said, pulling her in close. Green was always in the hospital. We both knew that. He was addicted to being the dedicated doctor – it was a calling that over-rode everything else in his life. "There's a problem case tonight unfortunately. I'm liable to be called at anytime." I said. As if on cue the telephone shrilled. A three second sustained burst. I swore. I scooped up the receiver. Mary needed me to assess Mr Hart.

"Is there a problem?" Melanie asked.

"Porcelain is up in arms about something. Hopefully I won't be long."

"I'll wait for you for a while," she said. "I'll just rest here on the bed."

Outside in the dark corridor, the air conditioning hit me with an blast. I shivered momentarily before entering the barn through the double swing doors. Porcelain Mary had beds three and four. They were both ventilated patients. There was Mr Hart on the hyperPEEP, and a patient in bed three called Miller.

"Mr Miller has developed this fast heart rate," Mary said, pointing at the monitor screen. The heart was beating at 130 beats per minute. I was familiar with the man. He had been admitted to the ICU earlier in the day, after failing to breathe adequately following gall bladder surgery. He had emphysema as an underlying condition.

"Is he breathing much for himself?"

"He's not synchronising well with the ventilator. I've had to use quite a bit of diazepam."

"We don't want to overdo the sedation, or we'll never get him going in the morning."

Mary looked at me, her thin black lips a straight line. "Boatwood said to keep him quiet – even paralyse him if necessary."

That was the trouble with being a trainee, I mused. There was always someone above you with greater authority. "Well if you do paralyse him, make sure he gets adequate sedation as well."

"I'm not an idiot," Mary said, eyes blazing. "What are you going to do about this heart rate?"

"He's out of sync with the ventilator. He's probably retaining CO2. They've either got to be awake enough to receive commands, or alternatively you wipe them out with enough sedation to let the ventilator take over. We're in no man's land with him. I can't reverse the sedation, so we will have to take him deeper."

I felt quite pleased with myself, after the exchange. I crossed to bed four, to check on Mr Hart. I looked in awe at the drum tight, dilated chest. The ventilator breaths, were barely causing any noticeable movement of the chest wall. I aspirated a blood gas sample from the arterial line and took it out of the barn to the mini-lab. The oxygen saturation was still satisfactory. On the way back, I noticed the light on in Green's office. I walked silently down the corridor, towards the light. The door was partly open and I stopped outside to listen. I could hear Green's breathing and his fingers tapping on a computer keyboard. If Green knew I had one of the nurses in the bedroom!

Back in the Barn, I stapled the blood-gas printout to Hart's notes, then headed for the exit. Passing by the patients in beds one and two, I noticed the male nurse looking after them, slumped in a chair, almost asleep. I went over to him. It was Tucker. It was well known that Tucker managed a geriatric home during the day and often did an ICU nightshift as well on the same day.

"Bit tired Tucker?" I ventured.

"Stuffed," he said sitting upright.

"Today's cardiac patients seem O.K," I said.

"Not a problem fortunately.."

Melanie was asleep on the bed when I returned. I lay down beside her, wrapping my limbs all around her. "You're very cold," she murmured, from the depths. "How is that patient with all the PEEP?" She opened her eyes.

"Yeah, he's going well actually."

"I don't see how Boatwood can just do that."

"Do what?"

"Put on all that PEEP – without some authority condoning it."

"Well in reality, a clinician can decide for himself, when he thinks that research has shown the safety of a technique. Drugs are more closely governed maybe. But something like a respiratory therapy? It's anything goes really.

"But there were problems with the first pig study," Melanie said yawning.

"Boatwood prefers to think that a mechanical problem occurred. A power cut or surge. Something like that."

"It seems weird to me that he can just disregard the problems that occurred with the first experiment. If you add the two studies together, there were three deaths from 12 pigs. You wouldn't think that would justify immediately using the therapy on humans."

"True. Boatwood's ruled out the first study. He's assumed some technical problem occurred while we were out of the lab."

"What's he really like; Boatwood? Green's always grumbling about him."

"Oh he's quite likeable. Bit of the absent minded professor about him. He does tend to take a polarised position on things. That's what irritates some of the others I think."

"Green is always finding fault with others," Melanie said.

I laughed "He's always right too. I can't remember an instance when he was wrong."

We lay back together. Melanie pulled the top cover up over us both and we clung together for warmth. It was after midnight and we both fell a sleep.

The phone shattered the peace at half past two. Porcelain Mary's strident voice shot down the line. "Mr Hart is going off."

I sat up on the edge of the bed. "Ah Christ," I lamented.

"God, it's late. I fell asleep. I'd better run," Melanie whispered.

I crashed irritably through the double doors, making a bee line to the problem patient.

"His blood pressure is dropping," Mary said.

I looked at the monitor. The pressure read 84. As he watched it slipped to 83, then 82. "When did it start falling?" I asked.

"It was a hundred ten minutes ago."

I looked over at Tucker, to see if he had noticed anything. One look and I realised Tucker was in no state to observe anything. "You'd better give him a kick," I said to Mary. I turned Hart's adrenaline infusion up a couple of notches, to buy time for a rapid physical examination. I was worried about a burst lung – the killer of the pigs. However the airway pressure was unchanged and both lung fields were fully aerating. I palpated the radial pulses, gauging their volume and pulse pressure. I felt the temperature of the skin of the extremities and tested for capillary refill in the nail beds. Capillary refill was poor and the pulse pressure weak. I looked at the central venous pressure trend. It was stable. With this information I phoned Boatwood. "The blood pressure drop is associated with vasoconstriction so he's either under filled or has poor cardiac output due to poor cardiac function," I explained to the professor.

"What about the ECG – any sign of ischaemia?" Boatwood croaked down the line.

"No ST or T wave changes."

"Mmm – doesn't rule it out though. I'd try more fluid volume – say a 250 ml challenge. Be cautious with the adrenaline but you may have to take that higher by the sound of it."

"You don't want to take off some of the hyperPEEP?" I asked

Boatwood's voice rose up a couple of notches. "There's no indication that it's a hyperPEEP problem. It sounds more like hypovolemia. What about sepsis – have you done a sepsis work up?"

"No. I's thinking more about MI." I said. "Early sepsis would be more likely associated with vasodilation and a hyperdynamic circulation.

"Ah well that can be a trap making an assumption like that. It could be a rapidly progressive infection with poor myocardial function and vasoconstriction. You'd better get on to a sepsis work up just in case," Boatwood said and rang off.

I was about to add that the temperature was plum normal but then of course Boatwood would have invoked the idiosyncratic cases where the temperature is normal or even reduced during sepsis. I duly opened the tap on the intravenous line and let the fluid run into the central veins. My palms turned to sweat though, as I watched the blood pressure continue to trend downwards further. "Oh shite," I said to no one in particular. "I'd love to try taking that hyperPEEP off." Instead I wound the adrenaline infusion higher.

Tucker appeared at my shoulder. "Green is around. I heard him talking to Tony. Shall I get him to help?"

"You must have been dreaming. You've been unconscious."

"He's gone home," Porcelain said. "He was here before, and Drummond, but they left to go home. About ten minutes ago."

The blood pressure hit 65. A continuous alarm sounded and the digital readout began to flash.

"Get a pressure bag," I barked, looking with alarm at the ECG trace which was starting to slow and show multiple ectopic beats. Mary wrapped the pressure bag around the saline, pumping it up and driving the fluid into Hart's blood stream. But the blood pressure continued its descent, down through 60. "Get Boatwood in," I shouted. "We're in the crap here."

"What about the hyperPEEP?" Porcelain Mary asked, her face drained of all colour. I wanted to take it off. The subconscious hand-break of the will of Boatwood was all that had prevented me taking it off earlier.

"Take it off . . . Take it off," I exhorted. "And adrenaline up to 25 micrograms per

minute. Let's keep squeezing the fluid in."

"BP is 55," Tucker called. "Now 56 . . . 57 . . .still 57 . . .59, 65! We're getting somewhere now."

Green appeared at the double doors, immediately spotting the fracas. "What's going on here?" he asked, an edge entering his voice. And behind him, there was Boatwood, out of breath, his own urgency obvious to all. I explained the current situation, being careful to attribute the improvement had occurred to the giving of IV fluid, increasing the adrenaline rate as well as removal of PEEP. I was trying to avoid embarrassing Boatwood.

"BP 88," Tucker called again.

"You've done well Gerry," Green said. "But how did he get into trouble in the first place?"

Boatwood interjected. "He's post nephrectomy – major intraoperative haemorrhage, and subsequent ARDS. He's needed maximal therapy to prevent overwhelming hypoxia." He neglected to add that he had been applying 70mmHg of HyperPEEP over night.

Green only appeared to be half listening. He was looking intently at the ECG trace up behind the patient's head. "There's your problem Prof," he said. "Look, those ST segments are getting more and more elevated – even as we stand here talking. I'll bet my bottom dollar he's having a myocardial infarction. He's probably been ischaemic for a while – that's why your cardiac output and blood pressure have been falling."

Boatwood was only too willing to agree – no doubt eager to focus on something other than the fact that hyperPEEP had been in use. We started a glyceryl-trinitrate infusion, and optimized blood pressure with a metaraminol infusion and more volume. Green, apparently satisfied with the events, headed out of the unit. Boatwood stood staring at the patient for a few seconds.

"Tidy him up can you," Boatwood said to Mary. He walked away, over to the central station. I followed him. He watched as Boatwood worked at the computer, flicking through the electronic trends. The professor activated a printout for each trend.

"It was all quite stable for hours, then . . . He went off quite quickly." He murmured.

"A heart attack at that stage seems plausible?" I ventured.

"Mmm maybe.. If so the knives will probably be out. They'll say the heart was made ischaemic because of the large amounts of adrenaline required to counteract the HyperPEEP effect on the circulation. Something like a preceding pulmonary embolus inducing increased work on the heart would be a better scenario."

"Better?" I began to speak then faltered. There was no reason to carry on with my enquiry. Boatwood clearly wanted a cause for a heart attack, other than that of a heart struggling in the grip of hyperPEEP.

"We'll get a V/Q scan in the morning, With any luck it might confirm a pulmonary embolus," Boatwood continued." And there's always sepsis. You did do a sepsis screen earlier?"

I nodded in assent.

Boatwood shook his head as if in disbelief. He inhaled deeply. "The knives will be out," he said, standing up, "unless there is sepsis or a PE."

I left him there and went to check on a few of the sicker patients, before going to my room. Mr Miller, next to Mr Hart, was sweating profusely. His heart rate was back up at 130.

"Hey Mary, is this man paralysed?"

"Yes," she said, not looking up. She was washing Mr Hart down.

"Well he's sweating. You've got to sedate him. He could be awake in there."

"I've been busy – didn't you notice?" she snapped "There's diazepam under the chart table."

I injected ten milligrams of the drug slowly. "Poor bastard," I said. "Let's hope he hasn't been conscious through all this."

In the bedroom, Melanie's fragrance had impregnated the pillow. I inhaled, deep down into my lungs. I ached for her physical presence. But my body was wracked with tiredness and sleep came swiftly.

The next day I slept soundly and was back in the Barn at 6pm to commence another night shift. Boy Wonder was in a ferment, his face alive with enquiry, "Wow. You're right in the thick off it," he announced as I entered the tea room.

"Oh yeah," I said, pretending to be in the dark.

"Oh come on," Boy Wonder smirked. "Haven't you heard? Nobody is talking about anything else. Mr Hart died earlier this afternoon. Looked like an overwhelming heart attack."

If it was true, Boatwood was indeed in the gun. I could guess at the route the rumour had taken. Starting from the righteous Porcelain Mary, word would have reached Green and Gibbs in quick time and the moral outrage would now be manifest . . .

Chapter 8

The day of my exam, I woke early, long before the alarm. Beside me in the darkness, I could hear the respirations of my wife. My eyes were captive to a boring sensation and my mind was engulfed by medical jargon – the management of asthma, the differential diagnosis of post-operative jaundice, the laboratory characterisation of acute tubular necrosis. Inside my abdomen, my colon writhed python like. I had to dash down the hall. In the bathroom, I scrambled for the pan. My insides exploded. Wretched, I almost lost it at the top end as well. I hung over the basin, clutching the white porcelain. Slowly the spasm ebbed away. I straightened. I scuffed through to the kitchen. Outside the window, I could see a vivid illumination permeating the skyline. I stared at the horizon and felt an intense desire to escape. If only I could be over that hill, with my foot on the accelerator – window down – a cool breeze brushing my neck.

Across the table my books and papers lay, their utility almost completed. I picked up a folder and gazed at it in a dazed fashion. I recognised the information, but felt I had no hope of recalling it. I threw it back down onto the table. It was too late now. My study effort had been well short of the mark. I would know as soon as I saw the questions. There were certain areas where I was deficient. If one of those topics came up . . . The prospect of defeat brought a lump to my throat. I swallowed - an uncomfortable manoeuvre in my desiccated mouth.

I thought of Remington, like myself, facing written questions that day. My friend had been far more focused. He was confident. His study program had been fulfilled. Soon, maybe, he would be crowned a radiologist. The bastard! The cocky prick. I didn't have any confidence. Nil. Zero. Zip. I snapped the electric jug on. Half a cup of coffee – that would be all I could manage. I would never absorb any food. The previous night's meal was still repeating. God I felt awful – just plain very bad.

Nine o'clock loomed like the hangman's noose. Soon they would kick away the stage and I would swing. I stopped on the footbridge over the Leith Stream and stared for a few moments at the beer coloured water slipping by. It was quite warm for May. I unzipped my jacket, to forestall a glandular eruption. The cold air soothed. I continued on, across emerald grass, toward the clock tower. Underneath it, I could see my associates Boy Wonder and the Handwringer. I almost laughed out loud, thinking of the contrasts between the three of us. Boy Wonder, although claiming to be under prepared, would be brimming with confidence. The Handwringer would be wringing his hands. What else! His face would be a picture of agony. I could sense my own features to be set like stone. My jaw was rigid and my teeth hurt.

We entered the building. Before the grand staircase was the ablution room. There were rows of columnar urinals. We stood foolishly, our streams arching down in parallel. Then the Handwringer had to dash in behind a swing door. Like a machine gun, the Canadian gut exhausted, while Boy Wonder and I hurriedly washed our hands.

At ten to nine, we were let in to the examination room. It was a conference room, with a huge round table in the centre. The supervisor lady sat us down, well apart. She had thick glasses, a fur coat and pinned up grey hair.

"I will hand out the question papers now," she fluted. "You may start to read the questions, but you must not write anything down, until I say so."

I felt a little calmer. There was a job to do, that was all. Maybe the questions would be good?

They weren't. The python reawakened inside. My vision became unfocused. I looked at the paper again. Question one. Forty five minutes on the liver. I hated the liver. All those hepatocytes and kuppfer cells – sieving the blood – cleaning it up like a bleech. It smelled bad as well. At postmortem, it slid its way across a silver tray like a giant green amoeba. Nauseating. A glucostat. A hemostat. The producer of a green slime.Bile. Child's Classification of liver diseases came to mind. Sure, I knew some things, but not enough.

Question two. Planning a new intensive care unit. No, no, no. God please – it cannot be so. I had done no preparation for that at all. Defeat loomed in my shimmering vision.

Question three: Forty five minutes on the utility of pulse oximetry in the intensive care unit. I was half prepared for that. I would start on it first. Get a little confidence going. That might help with the other questions.

I looked up. To the left, the Handwringer – his eyes screwed tightly shut. The small dark mouth spoke silently, like a feeding goldfish. Opposite, the Boy Wonder was well underway. Head down, eyelids halfway closed, he spewed forth. His pen scratched furiously. He was soon asking for another answer book. He was smiling and nodding, as if he had already won the gold medal. In comparison, I was off the pace. I had only filled a third of my first answer book.

The supervisor irritated – always clearing her throat. Then she began to suck a sweet. I couldn't believe it. Couldn't she wait until it was over? No, slowly she unwound the paper. It crinkled and cracked agonisingly. Only I seemed to notice. The other two were totally focused. Stuff her. Where did they get these women? Oh Christ, don't waste precious time, get back to the liver.

"You have fifteen minutes left," she announced. I would have loved to be sprinting – gunning for the finish. Instead I was nearly spent. I jotted down random bits of information – thoughts that begrudgingly came to the surface of my under-achieving brain. It had become hit and hope. Great chunks of time had passed, where I was vacant. The Boy though, was flying - with a capital F. The lady literally had to grapple with his pen at the finish, to stop him writing. She was very snooty about that. Indignant. Time was up. Tie up your papers and get out.

It was a long climb up to Highgate, past the psychologists, the dentists and the lawyers in their offices made from converted houses. Further on up the road, partly concealed mansions perched on sunny promontories, alternated with run down wooden shacks in shady gullies. The day weighed heavily. Surely I was already out of the exam race. Boy Wonder, and a slightly reluctant Handwringer, were in a bar celebrating. I had no desire to indulge in a post exam analysis. The Boy would be unctuous, the Wringer quietly knowledgeable. Question two would have been a gift. And just as well they had read the article in the Lancet, related to question one. Trouble was, there hadn't been enough time to get it all down. If only that fox-fur lady hadn't come and pinched his pen. Surely the Wonder-boy could have written into the next century.

I carried on through the exhaust fumes, up the gun metal sidewalk. Eventually the cream weatherboard bungalow, was before me. I stopped momentarily. If Melanie was already there, could I face her? I felt close to breaking. I really didn't want sympathy. I swallowed a dry lump in my throat and went in. Sade pulsed in the background. On the floor below me, a contorted body lay, limbs skewed, left foot above the right ear, muscles contracted beneath a glittering bodysuit.

"Oh God, it's you," Beth screeched. "How embarrassing," she laughed, not looking at all abashed. "Help I almost forgot," she said touching me on the upper arm. "How was your exam?"

I shook his head, unable to hide my despondency. She came forward and put an arm around sagging shoulder.

"No good huh?" she said. Her eyes, hazelnut and translucent, looked up beneath a worried brow.

"I've burned my boats, I think," I said. I laughed mirthlessly, but it helped relieve the tension. She suggested a drink and I needed no further enticing.

"It's no wonder really, when you consider all that's been going on," she said, pouring wine into spotless glasses. "How could you concentrate? There's just no way." She led me away from the kitchen bench to the open plan living area. "Come with me onto the couch. I'll cheer you up." She guided him back to the recent past. It was therapeutic talking about Melanie and the tumultuous force that had overtaken them. "She's a beautiful lady," Beth said. "It's great she's been romanticised. Rikki is a nice guy, but he's a man's man really. He's always out drinking with the boys. He doesn't understand women. Larry was much the same to be honest." She looked down at her splayed fingers. "It's been on again, off again with him. That's the way he lives. He's one hundred percent enthusiasm, followed by a period of intense introspection –when something doesn't go right. He's been married before you know. He's got a child. A boy called Sam. Lovely kid. He dotes on the boy. He spends half his time around there, with the ex. She's got a new man, the ex. But they all seem to get on together, like a house on fire." She jumped to her feet, put her hands on her head and began to stretch her lateral thigh muscles. I admired the firmness and volume of her thighs. As each side came under tension, the lateral muscle groups stood out in anatomic definition.

I sought the bottle, and she flipped the cassette over and activated the play button. 'Smooth Operator' filled the room with its syncopated sound. She turned it way up, as coincidently, Melanie entered the room. The two of them got into a dance groove, not bothering with any 'hello's or 'how are you's. I came over with a wine glass and joined in, happy to try and forget about the exam.

A few days later I was summoned to Boatwood's office. He scarcely looked up as I let myself in. He was studying a document laid before him on the huge oak desk. His high backed chair was grooved with the faculty coat of arms. On the wall behind him hung an oil painting of Mount Cook. The brush strokes were heavy, chunky, multi-layered. On the floor was a carpet of royal-blue. A window in the south wall, gave a vantage point to see the adjacent city centre. Through the glass, I could sense the throb of the C.B.D. Life went on, despite my troubles.

"How did your writtens go?" Boatwood asked, smiling. The smile withered, as I told my morbid tale. "Oh well," Boatwood said abruptly, "Maybe vivas are your thing."

They weren't my thing. However I was disinclined to enlighten Boatwood of his pupil's shortcomings.

"Now to get to the point Davenport," Boatwood said, "You'll have to go to the Australasian Scientific Meeting in Sydney, in two weeks. I need you to present the results of our HyperPEEP study. I was going to do it myself of course, but unfortunately, this business with Mr Hart has complicated matters."

I had heard the rumours. An enquiry was imminent. The hospital ethic's committee, was to be convened for an extraordinary meeting. There was a feeling about that the controversial therapy applied to Mr Hart should have had prior ethic's committee approval before use.

"Various people are running amuck with sharp knives," Boatwood said, after a lengthy pause. Tugging at his beard, he launched into a monologue concerning the merits of ground-breaking scientific research in medicine. "Too often, research is merely a timid rehash of someone else's work," he said. "I'm sure I don't need to convince you, that to progress, one has to venture beyond the normal constraints of the mediocre." Boatwood's eyes, were fixed on the wall behind my head. He wasn't really talking to me at all, but to an invisible audience of seraphic professors, who might redeem him – set him free from earthly constraints. "Ethical matters have cloaked research in a strait-jacket in recent years. But ethics are inconsistent across time and cultures. One moment your program is acceptable, the next it is banished to the catacombs of the earth."

Suppliant to the examiners – a victim of love – I could hardly get excited about the Professor's dilemma. My own plate was full. Boatwood was talking to the wrong man. In academic intensive care, I was a coaster. I was uncommitted and a slave to fanciful passions. I lacked that pragmatic drive.

The trip to Sydney had few attractions. The prospect of speaking to the academic masses, sent a pulse of fear up my backbone. It was an order though. You didn't turn down that sort of invitation. Boatwood appeared unconcerned by my lack of commitment to the academic cause. Probably, he was unaware of the levels of dedication amongst his underlings. He would consider them all to be unwavering workaholics. Why wouldn't you be he'd reason. If he knew of my perilous relationship problems, then he would see that as the explanation for Davenport's under performance. In Boatwood's view, a bit of hard work cured everything. Engage your brain with a good research project Davenport. That will take your mind off trivial matters of the heart.

"Sure, I'd love to go to Sydney," I lied.

"Good." Boatwood stood up and I arose with him. "We'll go over the content of your presentation, sometime before you leave."

Later I met Melanie in a student cafe in upper George Street, reasoning that our contemporaries would not frequent such a place. 'The Governors' it was called. I remembered it from my student days in the late seventies. We sat down at a square table of recycled timber and I started massaging her knee under the table.

"I'll come too," she said, after I told her of my impending trip to Sydney.

My massaging hand became still. "Eh?" I said.

"I'll come with you to Sydney," she said.

My laughter resounded around the tiny cafe. Bohemian patrons looked across, appearing bemused by these foreigners. "How will you swing it?" I finally managed.

"I'll say I've been specially selected as the speaker's concubine," she said, swiping my roving hand away, as I tried running it up the inside of a thigh.

"Ah well – I must be supremely naive. What will you do? Wear a paper bag over

your head? Gibbs or Green will probably be there too"

"Yes, you're right – I am just dreaming . . .

The conversation moved away from the topic but I sensed she was a bit on edge about something. When our coffees were finished she launched an unexpected attack.

"To be honest, I just can't believe that you're able to do it."

"Do what," I asked

"Stand up in Sydney and cover up the truth. I presume you're only presenting the second successful study?"

"Well yes. Boatwood says the first study was invalidated by not having constant supervision."

"Oh come on." Melanie sat up straighter. "What if there was no technical issue – that the animals just died from tension pneumothorax?"

"You're right'" I said quietly. "I'm not very comfortable with the whole thing."

"So why do it then?"

"I don't know. I like Boatwood I guess. He's human. Green is so plastic and Gibb's is frankly horrible."

"That's not a good reason to support something so immoral. And what about the death of Mr Hart? That even further derails hyperPEEP. Everyone knows he started to improve when you took the hyperPEEP off."

"Boatwood reckons he can defend that. He said it could equally be the volume and adrenaline resuscitation that promoted the recovery in BP. Blood tests showed Hart had a heart attack. So who knows whether that was caused by the hyperPEEP effect on the circulation or whether it was happening anyway because of the ARDS illness."

Melanie wriggled free and stood up. "No Gerry. That's all just a smoke screen. I've got to get home now. But I'm going to be pissed off if you go and do that presentation. It's just not right."

Astonished by the attack, I watched as Melissa strode out of the café. The door swung shut and she was gone from sight, striking out down George Street.

I looked around. The windows were festooned with colourful notices. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Woman's Refuge –that sort of thing. The lighting was subdued, in concert with the leaden atmosphere outside. The bohemians were wrapped in woollen scarves and cloth-caps. Gothic pale rakes, dressed entirely in black, sat hunched over novels. Another, with hair like a birds-nest, stared vacantly out the window, as if in a drug induced catatonia.

Seeing Melanie leave, the neotrotskyite behind the counter, emerged silently with the bill. I took the account with a murmur. My mind was working overtime – unused as it was to the fiery display from Melanie. Here I was, recklessly sitting together with her in a public café and we were having a row. I accepted the risk, because I accepted the consequences. The demise of my own marriage seemed inevitable. However, I wasn't about to broach the subject with Eleanor. It was easier to allow fate to precipitate disaster, than to be the catalyst yourself. But the spat with Melanie was a surprise. I'd never considered there could be any anger between us.

Outside, under the autumnal sky, amongst the two o'clock exhaust, I felt myself sinking down. I felt her detachment all the more. I thought upon her physical perfection and it cut me to the quick. I looked up and there was Drummond, standing at the door of a Chinese restaurant, Leaning against the door frame. The technician was grinning broadly. He was looking straight at me. Faltering in my step, I looked across the road, to see if Melanie was out of sight. But there she was, stopped in front of Knox Church talking with another nurse. I turned back to Drummond. The technician had followed my gaze over to Melanie. His eyes flicked back to me and his smile broadened. Disturbed, I had no option but to walk right past him.

"Good company?" Drummond asked, still smiling.

"What's that you say?" I said. I didn't stop. I looked away and strode on by and slid around the corner. It wasn't where I had intended to go. But I needed to get out of sight. My heart thumped in my chest. I had sensed immediately, that the exposure was significant. There was something about Drummond's expression. 'Got ya,' it said. Why? What was he after? Why did it benefit him to have that kind of knowledge? I felt distinctly uneasy. Not that Drummond would have seen much. But one slight show of affection between himself and Melanie, would have spoken a thousand words. I wandered absently into the hospital foyer. Green was coming the other way. My immediate thought, was to dive off into the adjacent washroom. Too late.

"Gerry, how are you?" Green announced, his face softening with a benevolent smile. He feels sorry for me, I thought. Green was interested in discussing ethical matters. Boatwood's ethics specifically – or lack of them, I, he said, was a key functionary in the case. "You'll be interviewed by the Ethics committee soon," he said. He placed a hand down on my nearest shoulder. "You're the main man, boy-o. You'd better be prepared for a grilling. It's that jump from early animal study to human application that has annoyed people. There should have been quite a few steps in between," Green said.

"Like what?"

Green folded his arms. "Like verification of efficacy in other animal species. Like accrual of a significant population base, over several studies. Like a stepped approach to PEEP application in humans, rather than going straight to seventy. Like getting informed consent from relatives, before applying an innovative therapy. Like getting ethic's committee approval, prior to using the therapy."

"Yes, put like that, it sounds bad. But on the other hand, the patient was on his last legs. Maybe it was better to do something, than do nothing."

Green's face showed his disapproval. "That's the heroic view is it?" However we're not living in 1914. There's no place for shotgun remedies nowadays. Every treatment should have a scientific basis. It's got to be evidenced based medicine nowadays. Imagine if it was one of your relatives, your wife for example. What if Boatwood was applying an unsubstantiated treatment to her?"

I considered this. Green had a point. But then if it was the last resort? It wasn't a simple issue

That night at home there was a telephone call from Alana. "I need to see you ASAP," she said.

"Why, what's up? I asked. I felt nervous about more trouble. Had Alana cottoned on about Melanie?

"It's to do with Isobel, and it's bad. I need to see you tonight if possible." I agreed immediately to meet at the Kasbah in Kaikorai Valley.

In the bar Alana unveiled her story. She'd noticed in recent weeks that Isobel seemed to be going in and out of operating rooms at unusual times of the day – at times when you would expect her to be ensconced in one theatre, or down in the tea room, or chatting in a corridor – anything but going from theatre to theatre. As well as that, she had seen Isobel emerging from the bathrooms quite frequently – more than would be expected. That day she'd spotted Isobel hanging around a back corridor behind three of the theatres that fronted the west corridor. Alana trailed her and saw her go into the anaesthetic room of theatre 2. A case had been under way in the theatre there for about half an hour. Alana burst into the anaesthetic room and there was Isobel, sucking fentanyl out of a left over ampoule from the anaesthetic induction, into a syringe. Alana realized her suspicions immediately about what had been going on. The fentanyl, a powerful opiate, was likely being drawn up for personal use – in the toilet block presumably. Why else go into someone else's theatre and draw up opiates. "She tried to deny it, "Alana said. "But I said 'don't be ridiculous – I wasn't born yesterday.' She continued with the denial for a while but then I made her show me her arms and she tried to kind of push me away but we fought a little and I managed to see needle marks in an antecubital fossa."

The f word was all I could think to say.

"Exactly," Alana agreed. "But what's happened is she's sworn me to silence. She's promised she'll stop doing it forever more." She took a long pull on her beer.

I sat back in my chair, blowing out a long expiration. "Mmm . . . I wonder how long she's been doing it. If it's only a short while then maybe there will be no withdrawal issues," I said. "I'd better go talk with her."

Alana's eyes bore into me in an unfocused way. "She didn't want you to know."

"Well you told me anyway," I said, standing up. "It's my problem I guess. She's my sister. I'll have to deal with it."

"I guess." Alana looked uncomfortable. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well . . . Leave it with me. I'll keep in touch."

I didn't go to confront Isobel – nor did I go home. I couldn't discuss it with Eleanor because she loathed anything to do with drug use. Her relationship with Isobel was cordial at best. I sat in my car in the floodlit hotel car park stewing. Maybe Isobel could come off the opiates without going into withdrawal. Maybe she was only injecting sporadically. That's what she'd say anyway – so how could I be sure. If I took it to management and the nursing hierarchy, she'd be fired for sure. They'd help her get treatment – but nevertheless she'd be fired. What she was doing was very, very illegal. I wanted to talk it over with Melanie, even though earlier in the day she'd gotten angry with me over another ethical issue at the café. She had since contacted me and apologized – agreed to disagree. She was on the afternoon shift so I'd have to speak to her at work. A problem I had was that I was on a day off. I wouldn't be expected to be seen up in the Barn. I'd have to ring from inside the hospital somewhere – put on one of those accents again. At least Charge Nurse Nancy wasn't be there so I could use the American one – I found that the easiest.

I rang from an anaesthetic department phone and managed to get past the border guards with my patter and asked Melanie if she could get out for 15 minutes or so. I stressed the urgency. She said she'd see what she could do.

"'I'll come out to your car. There's no where I can think of in the hospital that's safe. Boy Wonder's in the registrar room."

I went out onto Great King Street, jumped into the car and waited. I watched the main entrance in the rear vision mirror. Soon I saw her coming, her white uniform partly covered by a mauve cape. Our embrace was guarded, the hangover from the morning disagreement only partly assuaged. Immediately I spilled out my story, outlining the dilemma I faced, watching warily as each set of car headlights drifted by up and down the street.

Melanie was staring out the windscreen too, and as the story progressed her eyebrows came together with consternation. "Fuck Gerry, there's no dilemma. What's got into you lately?" It seemed her left over anger from the morning was millimeters from the surface. "Isobel has to be removed. She's a danger to patients. They have to know."

"Who has to know?"

"The authorities, the managers, the Nursing Council, rehab . . . "

It wasn't what I wanted to hear. I was hoping Melanie would come up with something else. I wanted an escape route for Isobel – a solution that I hadn't been able to conjure up. "Why are you so high principled today? "I said. "First it was medical ethics this morning and now this. The letter of the law isn't always the right thing to do."

Melanie withdrew back across her chair, her head backed up against the side door window. "Ït's not tiddlywinks that's being played here . . . and I know right from wrong."

I laughed, unnaturally loud in the confines of the car. The windscreen was misted over now and I wound down the driver's door window a little. "Right and wrong," I barked. "Right and wrong. . . That's a joke coming from you. What on earth have we been doing for the past month. You've been having an affair. You can't talk about right and wrong."

Melanie exploded. "That's only affecting us. No one else knows. Isobel continuing to work is hazardous to patients. It's different altogether . . . OK I'm no saint. My marriage is stuffed but that doesn't make it right to have an affair. You're right . . . But this issue with Isobel is on a different scale."

There was silence. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I looked out my window at the heavy brick of the medical school. "I'll go and talk to her. I'll find out the extent of it."

"Extent? She will minimize the extent. There's only one solution. She has to come clean."

"Well . . . I don't know. There might be a way of getting through this without wrecking her nursing career."

Melanie snorted. "There won't be . . . I'm going back to work. . . . You know, you're more in love with your sister than anyone else." She quit the car and the slammimg door smarted in my ears. I watched in my rear vision mirror as she strutted away –head down – angry. And for the second time that day I felt the brunt of a 180 degree shift in affection. After weeks of giving and receiving love – in an almost religious like fervour – we were now at loggerheads.

In the evening I went to Isobel and Junot's flat. I addressed the topic and the three of us were watchful. Junot especially was guarded. The fact that Isobel was injecting opiates at work had not induced a discernable reaction. He had had a decade of association with drug use in all its forms. To him it was business as usual. His wariness was to do with wanting to avoid trouble. In Dunedin he'd gotten into a new rhythm with life. His focus was shifting towards normality and Isobel's problem was a threat to this new life.

"It's vital that it doesn't come out," he said. "I can help her get through the withdrawal." His eyes were fixed on me – unblinking.

"Yeah, I can do it," Isobel said. She didn't look at me. Her eyes seemed fixed on some imaginary horizon. Her legs were angled underneath her on the chair in a lotus position. "Junot will know what to do – with his bag of tricks."

I had beads of sweat on my forehead. I played the devil's advocate, parroting Melanie's position. I hadn't told them that I'd confided in Melanie of course. They didn't know the relationship existed and I wasn't about to own up to it.

Junot still had me in his cross hairs. "No Gerry. Isobel will be fine. She won't be a danger to the patients. I'll make sure of that. It's got to be business as usual tomorrow."

I had an idea - perhaps a compromise. "What about taking a few weeks off. Ring in sick. That way you can recover and go back to work clean." I was talking to Isobel but looking at Junot. Junot appeared to be in control of Isobel.

Junot rocked his head from side to side. "Mmm . . . yeah . . . that's possibly a way to do it."

It seemed like a breakthrough solution and I felt some relief as the conversation eased in intensity. When I left, Isobel came out to the road, her arm around my waist." It's gonna be cool Gerry," she said. " Don't you worry about it."

But I was worried. As I drove away I had a nagging feeling that this compromise solution wasn't going to suit some people.

My solution didn't get to see the light of day. Certainly Isobel rang in sick at 7 am on the Monday morning. But overnight Melanie had contacted Alana and between them they worked themselves up into righteous indignation. By 10 am hospital and drug clinic personnel were at Isobel's flat while a belligerent ashen faced Junot was stalking the living room floor in agitation. Isobel's employment by the hospital was over and there was unlikely to be a future for her in nursing – certainly there would have to be an extensive rehabilitation period.

I took the day off work. I went straight around to the hornet's nest.

"How the fuck did Melanie East come to get involved in this?" Junot demanded. His lips were pinched and nostrils flared.

"Cause I fucking needed some help that's why."

"Well why her? You hardly fucking know her."

"I knew her through work."

"You've wrecked it for Isobel."

I found myself arguing the authority's point of view – patient safety – Isobel's own safety. How It was an easy argument to take up but it didn't go down well with Junot.

"You're sounding like your father," he said. That was the cue for me to leave. I wasn't going to be put in the same bag as Graham.

As I opened the ranch slider Isobel piped up. "Stop arguing guys. We can't turn back the clock. I've got to face up to reality."

I looked back into the room. "Well that's about right," I said.

Chapter 9

It was seven-thirty when I left the hotel. The sidewalk was already a sea of faces, briefcases and suits. Traffic flowed in stop-start fashion, frustrated by sequential red lights. Normally I would have been uplifted by the big city dynamism. Today though, I was Boatwood's messenger boy. A sea of conference delegates awaited my delivery. It occurred to me that it was only two weeks before that I was in a similar state of agony leading up to my exam. Past traumas quickly lose their significance. I would have given anything to be transported back in time, if it merely meant sitting a written exam paper. I looked in envy at the patrons of early morning cafes, curled up with their hot croissant and Sydney Morning Herald. So what was I worried about?A stuttering, ineffective performance - with incorrectly packed slides, followed by penetrating questions from the floor. Someone pointing out that the presentation was selective submission of data. That someone would have to be Gibbs or Green – or both. Above all, the death of Mr Hart hung over the whole thing like a big dark cloud. In the audience were Boatwood antagonists, Green and Gibbs – ready to strike. Boatwood had played it all down. They weren't presenting a major series. It was merely a primer – to show the way for the future.

The conference centre was imposing. In the main corridor, I sat on a bench seat, swallowing and yawning. Filing past me were hundreds of earnest looking delegates, clutching giveaway conference satchels. I was the third speaker of the session. My predecessor on the podium was the typical power dressed, booming voiced, sycophant, I had seen many times before at such events. The zealot had of course given impassioned thanks to the organising committee for inviting him. Similarly, it was a great honour for him to be in the beautiful city. And, he was completely humbled, by the elegant presentation of the previous speaker.

I was humbled as well – by nausea and a dry mouth – almost retching in the penultimate moments. Once I had ascended the stage though, and activated the first slide, and it was the correct one, I felt more relaxed. The slide, a pretty picture of Dunedin city and Otago Harbour, was my prop to enable me to get my voice activated – to get a flow going. I gave a short history of the use of PEEP. The upper value for its application I noted, had settled at around 30 cmH20, after it had become apparent that higher values seriously impeded the blood's return to the heart. The modern push to higher and higher settings, had arisen because clinicians realised they could counter the negative effect on the circulation in other ways, for example with fluid and catecholamine infusions. Additionally, it was thought the failing heart might actually benefit from hyperPEEP, via the induced afterload reduction. Boatwood's pilot study was small. The results nevertheless achieved statistical significance, when one looked at the improvement in arterial oxygen of the study group compared to the control animals. Much larger American studies, were going on in Baltimore and Utah. However this data of Boatwoods, was the first presentation of any successful HyperPEEP data.

As the applause died down, people were queuing up behind microphones in the aisles. My heart sank. I had been hoping for a quick exit. The early questions, Iwas able to fend off relatively easily. Gibbs however, had made his way to the centre aisle. In the dull lighting, he stood erect, face set. "Do you believe there is enough evidence from animal experiments, to allow the application of hyperPEEP to humans?" The voice that sounded like a sneer, reverberated about the walls of the lecture theatre.

My mind looped in turmoil. Gibbs knew damn well that Boatwood had already carried out one such application. If I chose to ignore that fact, then I could be rudely exposed by Gibbs, and in turn sink Boatwood into controversy. I also knew that time was running out, and the chairman would be soon forced to close the debate. I cleared my throat. "Codes of ethics, vary from country to country. This variation is due to differences in cultural and ethnic make up of those countries. What is acceptable in one country may be unacceptable in another." I paused, uncertain where to go next. Gibbs made a move to speak again. I had to recommence quickly, to not allow Gibbs any air time. "Medico-legal history," I barked, "medico-legal history is important, when considering this issue. In the USA where legal action is commonplace, the release of drugs for use in humans can be much delayed when compared to their release date in Australia or New Zealand. Therefore the answer to your question, is that human application of HyperPEEP could be ethical, given the right balance of completed animal research, and a liberal governing body."

Gibbs rode in rapaciously. "Specifically Dr Davenport, in your country, is the application of HyperPEEP ethical, given the current state of animal research in this area?"

"There is no governing body that sets limits to the amount of airway pressure delivered to the patients. Individual clinicians have to decide what is reasonable and what is not, based on the potential therapeutic gain of the treatment, against the possible deleterious effects of that same treatment."

Gibbs had more to say. "You're just side-stepping the question . . ."

The chairman jumped in to the argument. "Thank you . . . I'm sorry, time is up and I'll have to interrupt at this point. The question of when it is appropriate to apply the results of animal studies to humans, is an interesting one, and important to all of us. I ask you to thank Dr Davenport for his presentation here this morning."

As the scattered applause broke out, I bolted for the side-door. I had no inclination to argue the toss about Boatwood's research ethic with any incensed zealot who might try and accost me. After all I was merely the messenger boy. The main attraction was holed up in Dunedin, preparing to defend himself against a sententious lynch mob at home.

I had barely gotten out of the building however, when I was halted in my tracks.

"Hey . . . stop right there." Gibb's voice was like a gunshot. He marched up to me, his face crimson and his eyes hard and penetrating. He grasped the lapels of my shirt.

"You . . . You fool," he spat. "You think you can bypass me . . . Why are you supporting that maverick? . . . You are making as ass of yourself?"

I didn't move a muscle. Gibb's had nearly lost all decorum. I looked around and noted people watching us. Gibbs followed my gaze and thought better of his actions. He released my shirt and stepped back. His voice became more even.

"Boatwood killed that patient, and you know it. Yet you stand up here, in Sydney, in front of Australasia, and make out that hyperPEEP is the greatest thing in the world."

"I'm an innocent bystander here," I said. "I'm just doing what I was asked to do by the head of department. If you've got a problem, take it up with him, or someone else appropriate . . . Just leave me out of it." I turned and walked away from Gibbs, into a crowd of tourists milling around some quay-side shops.

Gibbs strode along behind me for a short distance. "When I'm the professor, you'll be dancing to a different tune. Mark my words."

I carried on, threading my way through the crowd. When I sensed he'd stopped and turned back I turned around to look. It was a relief to be free of him.

Back in Dunedin, Remington had organised a midweek dinner at Palms. At the last minute Eleanor pulled out of attending. It was all too much for her to cope with. It was the inebriation, the verbal jousting and the leaden cloak of her own conservatism. After a heated exchange I clattered down the steps to the car. The metal door handle was freezing in my grasp. In the rear vision mirror, a plume of exhaust billowed with ignition. The icy grip of winter had fully engulfed the city. Through a windscreen of splintered ice, the city lights resonated like stars in a fractured cosmos. As I negotiated through the streets, I reflected on my recent visit to Palms Cafe. Then, I had revelled in the embryonic stages of what appeared to be new and consequential relationships. Now I carried the wounds of the fracture with Melanie. My sluggish approach to two ethical dilemmas had driven a wedge between us. It was a grim time – the penetrating cold complemented the mental torture of all the struggles – my marriage, Melanie, Isobel the exams and Boatwood's experiments.

In the restaurant we talked about the impending oral exams.

So it's all next weekend, is it?" Arnold's new girlfriend asked. She wore a black and yellow striped sweater. Naturally, she became known as 'Bumblebee.'

"I've got to go to Auckland for mine. How about you Remington?"

"Christchurch."

Insults increased in length and ferocity, as the evening progressed. A potent combination of alcohol, provocative spirits and stress electrified the conversation. Marion was looking at us sideways, as she waited on other tables. Her face was a mixture of stoicism, annoyance and pity. Whenever she took our orders, she was assailed by an onslaught of wicked barbs and double entendre. She kept looking at me, I assume trying to place me – as if I was some trouble-maker from the past. And I, seeking escape from all the crises, entered the therapeutic window for alcohol at maximum speed. Toxicity grabbed at me like an undulating fever. I came to say something, but it was gone. My friends' faces wobbled, then rotated about me.

"Davenport's losing it," Remington announced, in a loud voice.

I pretended to loll my head back in uncontrolled extension, which rocked my chair over backwards. The resulting smash, reverberated around the room. The table erupted in laughter and Marion came running.

"What on earth are you doing," she said, her mouth set. A figure rose from the adjacent table. Amid the shouting and hilarity, he was an abrupt apparition in our presence. Tall, bespectacled, blue cardigan and square jawed, he stood beside Marion.

"Now excuse me," he announced. "We've just about had . . ."

"Look at this boy!" Remington shouted, pointing at the intruder. "Where'd you get that nice blue cardigan sir?"

"And an excellent square jaw," Arnold chimed in.

The man was outraged. He took a step forward and berated us. Who did we think we were? He'd been in hundreds of restaurants, all around the world and never had to put up with such a racket.

"You're well travelled then?" Remington asked.

"I've had enough of you," Square-jaw hissed, coming forward to grab the xray doctor by the lapels.

I rose uncertainly to my feet. "Come on now old chap. Where's your sense of humour?"

Alana smiled up at the man. "Look, we're very sorry to cause you offence. They're in the middle of exams. They're a bit wound up."

Square-jaw absorbed the information and released Remington. "Exams eh?" he said, rubbing his hands together. "So what are you studying lads?" His ruddy face, twisted into a bridge-building smile.

"He's studying rocket science," Remington said, pointing at me. "And I'm doing anology."

"Anology?" Square-jaw looked puzzled.

"Yeah. It's the study of arse-holes. That's why we came here. We thought we might see one."

There was a pregnant pause, as Square-jaw's face transformed. His pupils dilated and his mouth dropped open. His decorum completely unhinged, he lunged at Remington, who hastily beat a retreat around the back of the circular table. Bumblebee jumped to her feet, effectively blocking Square-jaw's progress with her ample frame. The enraged red-neck, thought better of manhandling a woman. Instead he unleashed a plethora of insults banging the table between himself and Remington with closed fists. The crockery jumped, spilling sauces and food onto the cloth.

Marion enraged, thumped the table as well. "You're out of here. All of you. This whole table. I want you out. I'll get the police otherwise. I'm not putting up with this."

Patrons from the other room came through, attracted by the fracas. They stood and watched as Alana, in a bid to win a reprieve, followed the fuming governess to the foyer. At the same time Square-jaw stood with legs apart and arms folded to deliver a stuttering discourse on how one should conduct oneself in a public place. Remington clearly thought better of further character baiting, since he remained silent through the whole monologue. When Square-jaw had finished, he stood for a few seconds, hands on hips, glowering. Then he smacked his hands together and retired to his table. With the fun seemingly over, the spectators faded away. The restaurant buzzed with accelerant conversation.

Alana came back. "We can stay, but she's really pissed off."

"Where's Eleanor?" Arnold asked, noticing the empty chair.

In my inebriated state, I absorbed the news of our reprieve with indifference. I could have been anywhere.

In the uneasy peace that had pervaded the room, Arnold lit up a cigarette. Through half shut eyes, I watched it glowing between the benign one's lips. The smoke rushed out, decelerated and billowed into a mushroom cloud. It rolled over towards me, entering and lighting up an inscribed olfactory memory.

"Ah . . . Cannabis," I said.

"Let's hope Square-jaw isn't familiar with the smell," Arnold said, holding fingers and cigarette aloft. Square-jaw wasn't but the chef was. This time we were out. Dessert was off. We had to pay up and go. "I know you're just in high spirits," Marion said, as she received the cheques and credit cards. "But we survive on reputation. I can't have you turning this place into a Turkish smoke shop. I feel I've given you every chance."

Alana, in the Henry Kissinger role, rolled out the platitudes. On the street, Remington said, "That was a great spiel Pixie. You probably saved us from a lifetime ban."

"Yeah, you were excellent Alana," Arnold said.

"Nevertheless, I feel there is unfinished business in there," Remington said, gazing back in through the plate glass.

"Square-jaw," Arnold said quietly.

"Oh no," Alana said hurriedly. "No you're not. Definitely not." She tugged at her partner's arm. "You're not students now."

Reminded of his latent maturity, Remington shrugged off his clamouring desire to paste a dessert all over Square-jaw's face. We lolled along the street towards the mid-city bars. Driving was out of the question, since everyone was soused. We came upon a phone box. I excused myself and went inside. I fumbled for the required coins. I dialled the number, 580330. Rikki's voice came into the earpiece – slightly puzzled, but polite. Although it was a fifty-fifty shot, I was shocked at the sound of his voice. I banged the receiver down and stood pensively in the sudden silence, feeling ridiculous and annoyed. Melanie was probably in bed with Rikki. The thought made me angry. Jealousy was always great punisher.

"Who were you ringing – the Whitehouse?" Remington asked, when I caught the other three up.

"No, no, my girlfriend."

"Naturally," Remington said.

Monday, I felt down – sullen and negative. The drunken weekend, ached in my bones. The ominous spectre of examination defeat, loomed at the week's end. But mostly I hurt. I hadn't spoken to Melanie for three weeks. Her absence deflated me.

In front of me, the automated Xray viewing box clanked and whirred. Remington, who directed the device with a remote control, was acting the big know-all. His face was flushed with blood, the lips pouted and full. His voice boomed out at an excessive volume. Beside him the radiology professor, a bald pate, but with thick slabs of hair over his ears, looked over the throng of intensivists with bemusement. Behind his heavy glasses, the eyes were magnified and distorted, like a pair of poached eggs. We were all there to discuss Xrays, taken during the previous few weeks in ICU. The intent of the session, usually took second place to a battle of egos. Gibbs harried the radiologists like a virulent fox terrier.

"That's oedema fluid, not consolidation," he spat at one point.

"Impossible to tell the difference," Heavy-glasses retorted, in a southern English accent.

"Bollocks," Gibbs said, his top lip raised.

Nigel cleared his throat. "I think we should respect our radiology colleagues' opinions here. They don't have the clinical information that we have, to fit the whole puzzle together."

I noted Nigel's diplomacy with silent amusement. Remington looked over and raised his eyes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had just been furnishing his own ego, a few minutes before. To get on in this medical battlefield, I reasoned, you had to bloat yourself up with self confidence. He who shouted loudest and longest, had the most satisfaction at the end of the day. However today wasn't going to be my day for ego projection. I was too dispirited for that. I remained silent.

"Mr Lionel Hart," Remington announced, as the next Xray screen shuddered into place. My heart beat raced and there was a pregnant pause before Boatwood spoke.

"You give the history Davenport," he said.

I straightened up in his chair - apprehensive in the limelight. A dozen pairs of eyes were focusing on me. I shifted in my seat and closed his eyes. "This sixty two year old man was admitted to ICU, after nephrectomy. His operation had been complicated by a large blood loss, low blood pressure and subsequent blood transfusion. On admission he was hemodynamically stable, but it was decided to ventilate him overnight to allow body temperature, electrolyte status and acid base balance to be optimised. However that evening, his lung function deteriorated, and by morning, he was on seventy percent oxygen and five centimetres of PEEP."

"Just stop there will you Gerry," Boatwood interrupted. "Can we look at the chest xray for that morning."

Remington began outlining features of the film, with a laser pointer.

"There is patchy opacification over both lung fields, but it's not dramatic. The heart size is normal though – so we can assume this is noncardiogenic pulmonary oedema or bronchopneumonia."

Gibbs grunted, his nostrils flaring. "There's no way it's bronchopneumonia."

"You can say that now, with hindsight," Heavy-glasses said. "Radiologically though, we can't tell the difference at this stage."

"Well maybe you can't," Gibbs said.

"Lets go on with the history," Boatwood said hurriedly. "Gerry?"

"Over the next thirty-six hours, his lung function gradually deteriorated, requiring higher oxygen concentrations and more PEEP. On the evening of the third day, his inspired oxygen concentration was so high, that we feared the onset of oxygen toxicity."

"How much oxygen is toxic to the lungs?" Heavy-glasses enquired.

Nigel entered the debate. "It depends how long the exposure time is Geoffrey. Anything over sixty to seventy percent for many days is likely to damage lung tissue. If you're up to one hundred percent oxygen, then considerable damage can occur, quite rapidly."

Nigel turned and nodded at Gerry. The latter cleared his throat. "The lungs were

drowning in fluid by this time. Even with eighty percent oxygen and twenty of PEEP, there was a falling oxygen tension in the blood. We decided to increase the PEEP rather than risk oxygen damage to the lungs. Prof decided to jump up to seventy of PEEP at this point."

A portentous few seconds passed, before Boatwood spoke. "Let's see the chest Xray from that morning."

Remington flashed his pointer over the black and white film. "You can see here, that both lung fields are considerably affected by fluid accumulation. The left base has collapsed and really there's not alot of normal aerated lung remaining."

"Do we have any films taken, while this patient was subject to seventy centimetres of PEEP?" Gibbs barked from the background.

"No, there wasn't time when the crisis occurred," Boatwood replied curtly.

"Yes, well there'd be bugger all blood to see in those lungs. It would have been all squeezed out by the enormous pressure."

"No. On the contrary Trevor," Boatwood said. "With the help of an adrenaline infusion, we had a normal blood pressure and urine output for several hours."

Gibbs raised his voice. "The fact remains, the patient died shortly after the application of a therapy, that should never have been tried in the first place. Christ, you still had plenty of room to move in the therapeutic window for PEEP. But no, straight up to seventy! It's irresponsible."

Boatwood's countenance suddenly looked irked. "The circulation crashed several hours after the PEEP was taken up to seventy," he said. "It crashed dramatically over a few minutes. If you analyse it, there is no obvious cause and effect."

"Well how do you explain this," Gibbs roared "I've seen the acid-base data. You had a pH of six point nine just before death. So do you think, maybe his tissues were a bit short of oxygenated blood for a few hours? . . . Eh?"

Boatwood was on his feet. "You listen here Gibbs," he said raising a finger. "We had a normal blood pressure and oxygen saturation up to a few minutes before death. So his tissues were receiving plenty of oxygen. Therefore the acid build up, was from a failure to use the oxygen. Something had poisoned the tissues."

In his peripheral vision, Gerry saw Nigel Green leap up. His face had become a rare shade of puce. "Poisoned . . . Yes . . . Poisoned," he shouted. "That's just it, isn't it. Here we have a patient dying an unknown death, from an untried therapy. God knows what toxins are released from lungs, subject to your controversial hyperPEEP. You don't know, I don't know . . . None of us know. But we know it poisoned the tissues – via the cytochrome system presumably. And you Prof, the head of this department, should have known better." Green was shaking, his face pinched.

Heavy-glasses rose off his stool. He stood with arms outstretched, palms facing downward. "Come now gentlemen," he implored. "This is an interesting debate, but we have come to discuss the radiology of the patients. So I suggest we do just that. Let's move on to the next patient."

Remington activated the viewing box. "Mr Miller," he announced."

When the day's work was over, I ambled out into the drizzle with a heavy heart. The evening of frantic study ahead had little appeal. It was unseasonably warm. My car was parked in London Street, quite a steep climb. I jay walked across the glistening damp tarseal, stopping in the middle to look down over the neon pattern below. Curtains of descending rain drifted down in slow motion, vanishing into the shadows between buildings. Turning back, I paused to allow a car coming down the hill, to pass by. I watched the oncoming headlights, two yellow moons, warily least the driver hadn't spotted me in the dark. I was surprised, when the lights abruptly flooded onto full beam. Puzzled, I took a step backward, lifting a hand to shield my dazzled eyes. The car changed direction. It was a subtle shift in angle. I was transfixed momentarily, inert in the face of this driver, intent on mowing me down. I flung myself away – a headlong dive onto black greasy tarmac. I hit hard but painlessly, flexing my legs away from the danger, and rolling onto my back as I slowed to a stop. My eyes followed the red tail lights as they ran the stoplight at the intersection below.

Moments later, I surveyed my palms under the weak inside light of the Triumph. Streaks of bloodied tissue underlay broken skin. I dug out specks of gravel with a fingernail, grimacing at each shot of pain. I was strangely calm despite the incident. The driver had lined me up, there was no doubt about that. But I felt sure the car had pulled out of the attack at the last minute. I hadn't seen that. I had been diving through the night air at the time. Rather, I sensed that the car had pulled away. Who? Maybe it was a bunch of hooligans, out to give me a fright. I hadn't seen the form of the car. But the throaty roar, as it crossed the intersection to get away, had a familiar sound to it – Volkswagen. I knew I had one black mark against me that might be bothering someone. My former attachment to Melanie – someone could be upset about that.

That night I phoned Junot. He was a bit clipped with me – still smarting over Isobel's fall from grace and my role in it. I feigned a bit of interest in what he was doing before getting to the point of my call. "Oh by the way, what sort of car does Rikki East drive?" I asked.

"A Volkswagen," he said. "Why?"

"Oh nothing important . . . Would Rikki know a guy called Drummond at the hospital?"

"Brother in law," Junot said.

The ethic's committee sat around a large conference table. The medical contingent included Geoffrey Stocker from radiology, Prof Whittle the aging cardiac surgeon and a physician called Delany. There were two nurses, including Nancy the charge nurse. 'Lay' people made up the other numbers. There was a lawyer, a social worker, an accountant and some unidentified do-gooder. In addition, they had pulled in an expert intensivist consultant from Australia, called Faulks. He was a short bald man with a perpetual smile. He grinned amiably at Gerry as they were introduced.

"You're the main man I hear," he said, in a gauche Australian accent.

Whittle, the chairman, opened up the proceedings, outlining the purpose of the evening. During the day they had heard Boatwood's version of events. Now it was time to listen to his registrar, who had been in the ICU the night Mr Hart had died. "Once again," said Whittle, beneath coarse luxuriant eyebrows. "Let me say, that we are here, to safeguard the rights of patients, and protect them from harm. In particular, in this case, we are considering the ethical aspects of an innovative procedure. We are looking for a direct link between the use of hyperPEEP and the demise of the patient. However this isn't the critical ethical issue. The more relevant issue to consider is this. Did the decision to apply hyperPEEP, have a sound scientific basis? It would appear the use of hyperPEEP on Mr Hart, had followed limited experimentation with animals. Was the clinical application of the new therapy to a sick patient justifiable? Or should there have been more animal study, perhaps across a wider range of species."

Whittle asked me, to detail the two swine studies, I had been involved with. I explained how the control and experimental groups of pigs had been given oleic acid to induce lung injury. "Respiratory management in the control group was low level PEEP, and a constant inspired oxygen level. The experimental group was managed in similar fashion, except that the PEEP level was higher by a magnitude of seven times. This level of PEEP is termed hyperPEEP"

"What was your expectation of results for the two groups?" Delany asked.

"We measured arterial oxygen levels, as the indicator of PEEP and HyperPEEP efficacy. We expected higher arterial oxygen levels in the hyperPEEP group based on a previous American study using rabbits, subjected to 40 cmH2O PEEP.

"Gerry, I'd be grateful if you could explain how hyperPEEP improves oxygen transfer from the lungs to the blood," Faulks said. "Alot of these folks wouldn't recognise PEEP if it came and bit them on the backside."

The social worker shook her head, while the do-gooder maintained a perpetual frown.

I carried on. "In disease states, blood passing through collapsed non aerated areas of the lung, will not pick up any oxygen. This volume of blood, joins up with oxygenated blood from healthy areas of lung and is pumped by the heart out into the body. The poorly oxygenated portion of blood causes an overall reduction in the measured arterial oxygen level. The idea of PEEP, is to get a better distribution of gases, to all parts of the lung, particularly those with high blood flow. By applying this baseline positive pressure – termed PEEP – throughout the breathing cycle, collapsed areas of lung are expanded, thereby improving the total area of aerated lung tissue exposed to blood."

I paused in my delivery. The unidentified do-gooder appeared puzzled. However Faulks was happy with this explanation, and urged me to continue with the chain of events.

I explained that the first time we had attempted the experiment, things happened beyond our control due to a lack of supervision. "When I returned to the laboratory at two in the morning, the pigs had been unseen for some eight hours. So we had no idea what caused many of the experiment group to be wiped out."

Whittle winced at my choice of words. "Yes, but whatever it was, it selectively caused rupture of a lung, in all the HyperPEEP animals. There was no problem with the control group, receiving the ten centimetres of PEEP."

Faulks raised a finger to the cardiac surgeon. "That's true Patrick. But what Gerry alluded to before, is the key here. The experiment was unsupervised, and therefore the results were invalid. When they did it properly the next week, the results were clear cut. HyperPEEP improved lung function. No doubt about it."

The Australian's assertion was so emphatic, that Whittle seemed disinclined to make further comment on the animal experiments.

Stocker, straightening in his chair, cleared his throat. "It may not be worth debating the failure of the first experiment, but how credible in fact, was the successful second experiment. Was the history of all animal experimentation – in Dunedin, the US, wherever – sufficient to then go on and apply the new therapy to humans? Your sample size was very small. It must have been difficult to obtain statistical significance with such a small study group. What statistical significance was in fact achieved Gerry?"

Stocker, chin up and eyes half closed had been looking at Whittle, but he finished the question by rounding on me. His face betrayed a hint of a smile.

"In terms of improved oxygenation, it was statistically significant. The p-value was less than point one." I glanced up at Stocker from my papers,

"O.K, you've got a good result in terms of oxygenation – but is that enough to go ahead and apply hyperPEEP to Mr Hart? Surely six pigs aren't enough on which to base such an important decision."

"Well you have to ask – is there a governing body?" Faulks declared. "If it was a drug therapy we were talking about, then –no problem – you've got the FDA and all its equivalents, right around the Western world, lining up with rules and regulations. They have protocols to govern how much research is necessary, before proceeding with the general application of a new drug. But who controls respiratory therapies such as PEEP? The answer is no one. OK, there is the College of Physicians or Intensivists or whatever, who might have recommendations. You'll note I say recommendations. So here we have this professor who applies an everyday respiratory therapy, the only difference being, that he gives a whole lot more of it. There's no governing body. There's no protocol saying you must do this, or you must do that. Therefore what he did was ethical, given the rules and regulations of the day."

"There was no precedent though," the lawyer said, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "There was no previous use of the therapy, to give credence to its use on this occasion. And importantly, this committee was not consulted to give its approval."

"There were hundreds of precedents," Faulks said, his glasses misting up. "Let's not forget that Boatwood set out to save Mr Hart's life. And everyday, right around the world, doctors are stepping outside protocols, in desperation, to save a patients life. Because protocols and accepted practice don't work every time. So I ask you, when these situations arise, what do you expect these clinicians to do? Walk away? No of course not. We expect them to fight to the end." Faulks paused in his delivery. He looked at Whittle. "We expect them to be heroic. And that's why these people are giving supra-maximal doses of adrenaline, that's why they are doing radical trauma surgery, that's why they are using high frequency ventilation, that's why Professor Boatwood gave supra-maximal PEEP to a dying patient in Dunedin. To save his life!"

I felt like applauding the speech. However I managed to contain myself. I knew Faulk's tirade could be pulled apart, just as easily as it was delivered. However the assertive delivery and those key words, 'to save his life,' seemed to keep the committee silent.

Whittle turned to his colleagues, to see if anyone was going to play the antagonist to Faulks. There were no takers. He cleared his throat noisily. "Well, I'm interested finally, in looking at the mode of death. Particularly whether there was a link between the applied hyperPEEP, and the death by circulatory shock. In the animal experiments, death was due to pneumothorax. In the case of patient Hart however, pneumothorax did not occur, but rather, death occurred from myocardial infarction after a period of very low blood pressure. Dr Davenport, since you were present during the last few hours of the case, it would be appropriate to hear your version of events."

I turned my mind back to that fateful night. The first image was that of Melanie, lying up against me on the old hospital bedstead .I fought off her image. Instead, I dragged Mr Hart and his respiratory failure, to the forefront of my mind. I told them of the deteriorating blood-gas values for oxygen. I explained the worry of oxygen toxicity, when the amount required by Mr Hart increased to above seventy percent. I outlined Boatwood's response – dialling the PEEP up to seventy, so that they might reduce the toxic oxygen concentration in the breathing system.

"Didn't it strike you as odd, that your Professor jumped from thirty centimetres to seventy centimetres, in one motion? I mean, why not increase the dial gradually, in five to ten centimetre bites?" Delany sat back in his chair, ready to savour the answer to his question.

I hesitated. It was a good question. I knew the real answer. Boatwood was quite impetuous by nature. He was well known for his all or none approach to medical practice. He was prone to get 'a bee in his bonnet' and push his ideas, no matter what the contrary evidence. That was why he had snapped the dial up to seventy. However, taking Boatwood down, wasn't on my agenda. "I assume he took the radical step, because the patient's condition was deteriorating so quickly. It's as simple as that."

Delany seemed satisfied with the answer.

"To maintain blood pressure after hyperPEEP application," Whittle said, "You needed adrenaline, correct?"

"Right."

"That's because the high airway pressure, reduced venous blood return to the heart and compressed the heart volume down. These actions reduced the heart's output."

"Yes, that's correct."

"So during the time period after adrenaline stabilisation of blood pressure, and the eventual blood pressure crash, were there any unusual trends in the measured parameters?"

"No, everything was stable for two hours."

"Describe then, the likely cause of the sudden decline in blood pressure," Whittle ordered.

"Well, because heart attack was confirmed by post mortem lab tests and autopsy, the most likely scenario is that the heart was having to work harder than it normally would – probably because of hyperPEEP induced reduced filling pressure. Alternatively there has been speculation that the human heart, subjected to hours of hyperPEEP, might release a vasodilating peptide such as atrial naturetic peptide in massive quantities. But since we can't measure that peptide, that is just speculation."

Faulks cleared his throat to enter the fray. "What we are here to ask is – did applied hyperPEEP cause the collapse of the circulation? I say, no way – not directly anyway. The evidence doesn't stack up. He applied the therapy and the BP was supportable for 2 hours. So we can only speculate on a hyperPEEP contribution to the heart attack. Boatwood says sepsis. O.K let him tell the coroner that. It's good enough. Good enough to close the case. Good enough to save a valid treatment modality from the agents of mediocrity." He sucked his breath in and surveyed the ethic's committee.

The social worker, a middle aged woman with a plump face, sat up stiffly. "Let us not forget that the health service is there for the consumer, not for the convenience of doctors and other staff."

There was a brief silence after her comment. Nobody came forward to support her so she sat back again. Faulks had brow beaten the committee.

When it was over I followed Faulks into a lift intent on finding out where he was coming from. "Good work mate," Faulks said, with a wide smile. "That's a good days work. Where do we get a beer round here?"

That made it easy and I took him to the Robbie Burns bar. HyperPEEP quickly became the focus of our attention without much effort by myself. "I thought it was bloody stupid what he did actually," Faulks said.

"Yes," I said. "It did seem rather over the top at the time."

"But I didn't want this case to become a precedent. Clinicians the world over would be hamstrung whenever they put themselves out on a limb. But Delany was right. It would have been more logical to rack up the PEEP in a stepwise fashion and watch for side effects along the way . . . But the main thing was that there was no clear direct link between the hyperPEEP and the cardiovascular collapse. That will save Boatwood's skin when the the coroner gets to grips with it. Boatwood's actions will be criticized in our report. He jumped in too early with his innovative therapy. But you won't be able to say his therapy killed the patient. So a censure from the ethic's committee is all that will happen. But Boatwood will shrug that off, with barely a thought."

We drank in companionable silence for a minute before I piped up. "That was a very earnest speech you gave about saving lives," I said,

Faulks roared with laughter. "That was so much bullshit. But I wanted to seal the thing up pretty quickly. I've always quite liked old Boatwood. He's terribly self centred of course. But when he's not too busy sitting in the ivory tower, he's really quite good natured and helpful. So I didn't want to see him go down. With Gibbs and Green ready to pounce, it is a slightly unsavoury situation."

Driving home I reflected on what Faulks had said – that part of his motivation for supporting Boatwood was because he liked him. It was exactly how I had felt. I'd instinctively looked at ways of supporting Boatwood because I liked him. And that had been the first nail in the coffin with regard to my relationship with Melanie.

Chapter 10

On the way to Auckland – to the oral exam – the handwringer had the window seat. Most of the flight he presented me with the back of his head, as he stared earnestly out at the clouds. Periodically he would lean sideways and invite me to observe some landmark drifting by, thousands of feet below. I would peer past the awestruck Canadian, through the double glazing, and pretend to be amazed by the distant mountain chain of the Southern Alps, or the volcanoes of the North Island. In truth I felt like vomiting. The visual spread seemed remote and irrelevant. Tomorrow we would be in the gun. It was do or die. One false move, and with a stroke of the examiner's pen, someone would be pulped – probably Gerry Davenport. The slack would be punished and deservedly so. It would be retribution from the Gods, for concentrating on Melanie East instead of the core texts. There was also the prospect of striking Nigel as an examiner. Normally this wouldn't be considered a problem, for the man was known to be quite reasonable. Indeed he often guided the candidate towards success. However I felt I had offended him by backing Boatwood and it would probably be better to not to strike him on this occasion.

"There's no smoke coming out today," Handwringer said, almost penetrating the glass in his bid to sight Mt Ruapehu.

I grunted. "The only thing that's gonna be smoking, is my arse – after the caning tomorrow,"

Handwringer looked across inanely before returning to the vista – immediately

becoming overwhelmed by the looming Lake Taupo. "It's a giant volcanic crater," he said. "I think the correct term is caldera, in the geological world."

"Really," I said. I longed for a cocoon of silence.

In Auckland, we checked into a plush Newmarket motel. Agitated, I paced amongst the white walls and tubular steel furniture, gazing absently at the etchings. Meanwhile, Handwringer unrolled his pajamas for an early night. As the door closed on my yawning colleague, I set out to revise the whole syllabus in four hours. I took nothing in, but consumed many cups of coffee, thus ending the evening with a wretched stomach.

In the morning the Handwringer came to his senses and showed a few frayed nerve endings. We snapped at each other over the Weet-bix. The ball-cock system failed in the latrine, after it had received many visits by us both. At eight-thirty, two sub-humans jerked their way down Newmarket road. Once again, I was struck by the bizarre juxtaposition of these two hyper-stressed individuals, mingling with all the lucky ones – those who didn't have an exam that morning. I envied the taxi drivers honking their horns, the shoppers stopping to browse at windows, and the power dressed executives striding confidently towards their places of work.

"Give me an ordinary life," I said. The Handwringer was too choked up to reply.

At the hospital outpatient department, we were absorbed into the melee of candidates. Boy Wonder grinned amiably in his broadcaster's jacket. We were placed on stools outside examination booths. I sat astride the stool, my mind a washing machine inside my skull. I gazed at my blanched hands as they writhed about, seemingly independent of central neural control. The bell rang and I bolted through the white door, like a gunshot.

Inside, on a bed, rested an old man with inch thick glasses and wayward grey hair. I introduced myself. There was only a blank stare in return. I asked the silent one what had brought him to hospital. Ah yes, an ambulance. Of course, what a fool I was. That classic time waster. Well at least he can speak. Time for the direct approach. What's wrong with you? What's your illness? The grey one suddenly became animated, his face breaking into a toothless grin.

"That's what you've got to find out, isn't it?"

My heart sank. I looked at his watch. Twenty two minutes to go. Please Gods. Come on you old fart. I haven't got much time.

"I'm diabetic." It was spontaneous – unasked for. It saved the day. I pumped the patient for the key points. Cataracts, angina, hypertension, ankle ulcers and an infected toe. Drugs: insulin, hydrochlorothiazide, metoprolol, a nitrate and flucloxacillin. I got up really close and peered into the eyes with an opthalmoscope. I could have wept with joy at the classic retinopathy in the right eye, and the cataract obscuring the left. The painless ulcer was malodorous, but I didn't notice. It was painless and that was the key. Peripheral neuropathy! I had all the pieces tothe puzzle. The examiners nodded approvingly when I presented my findings. One of them unrolled an ECG for me to examine. It was left bundle branch block.

"Too easy," the examiner said, ramming a chest Xray into the viewing box.

"Left ventricular enlargement," I said. "Fluid in the bases. Kerley's B lines."

"You're a winner," the examiner said, with a smile. "By the way, did you find him easy to talk to?"

A fortuitous train of thought led me through the triumvirate of halting delivery, forgetfulness and poor concentration, linking in the history of alcoholism, with a probable hyperglycaemic attack and thiamine deficiency. "Wernicke-Korsakoff," I announced and left the room triumphant.

Back out in the foyer, the Handwringer was ashen. His lips trembled as he regaled his story. He had gone into the booth expectantly when the bell rang, to find his patient dead. Rather than commence resuscitation, he had rushed out yelling for this and that and generally not displaying the cool head the examiners might have hoped for.

"Well at least you didn't have to take a history," I humoured him. "I'm sure they'll take into account that you were thrown a bit, by encountering a dead man on the examination bed."

"I hope so. After my panic attack, the examiners rushed in and we did CPR on the lady. . . for twenty minutes. When it was clearly no go, we left the corpse, and they grilled me about the new thoracic pump theory of CPR. The trouble was I got it mixed up with the chest compression theory. One of the examiners got angry and started thumping the desk."

"Oh," I said.

In the afternoon, we gathered on the fifth floor of the medical school. We were to face two half hour oral examinations. These were the big ones. The morning's skirmish with a patient counted for little. The hard edge of cross examination was about to begin. I slumped in a chair, waiting for the bell. My diaphragm traversed against a tense resistance; the abdominal wall rigid and unyielding. Spherical bubbles of stomach gas, seeking escape, burned my throat.

The shrill of the bell, cut like a knife. I stumbled to the room, limbs stiff. Rigor-mortis before death. I looked up to the examiners – two of them – Benign and Sanguine. Benign commenced, his half lidded eyes blinking repeatedly, as he fixed on the target. It was easy at first. I was hesitant, but covered the ground quite competently. Sanguine did everything but tell me the answers, almost apologising if I fell short of the mark. The bell rang and we all shook hands and smiled, Benign becoming effusive, Sanguine metamorphosing into a real enthusiast.

Back out at the halfway station, I had mixed feelings. They weren't going to lull me into a false sense of security. Handwringer was looking at his feet and hyperventilating. A flask of chilled water sat untouched between us.

"Who did you have?" I asked. It wasn't idle curiosity. I would be facing them next.

Handwringer looked up, his eyes dilated and unfocused. "Nigel and Black Jeremy," he said.

I felt the strangling of my distal gut. Was it possible to feel any worse? Black Jeremy was renowned as an examiner who was inclined to make the candidate squirm,

The ringing of the bell jolted us both. I made a face for Handwringer as we rose. The pasty faced Canadian seemed to look right through me, so removed was he from his physical surroundings. Clumsily he made for his door, like a drugged psychiatric patient with extrapyramidal symptoms. And I, feeling as though I was observing myself from outside my body, plunged through the designated door, and crossed the miles to the desk. Nigel jumped up, his face animated, his greeting effusive. Black Jeremy didn't bother rising. "Sit down Doctor Davenport," he said. "Tell me about your favourite ventilator," he continued, as I struggled with a chair. I commenced my answer, looking into the examiner's dull black pupils. I couldn't help but notice the large twisted earlobes, the triple chin, the huge gut upon which he rested his arms. As I described the Siemens Servo C ventilator, I had a brief surge in well-being. I classified it, discussed its power source, described the electronic and pneumatic units, outlined the monitoring functions and evaluated the ventilation modes. The competence of the delineation filled me with temporary solace. Even Black Jeremy seemed beguiled by the flow of words, as I dealt with the application of the ventilator to various patient management scenarios. The first fifteen minutes seemed over, as soon as it had begun. Black Jeremy raised his hairy eyebrows and nodded to me, perhaps indicating that this time, I had thwarted his black heart.

I looked expectantly at Nigel, waiting for the second fifteen minutes to begin. He had his eyes screwed tightly shut, and head bowed. There was a prolonged pause as we waited for the first question. Black Jeremy seemed nonplussed by the delay as well. At last Nigel spoke. "Tell me about plasma cells?"

The question was a surprise. It was peripheral to intensive care medicine. However it could conceivably have been a lead in to something more relevant. Therefore I set about the answer without great concern. "Plasma cells are leukocytes involved with the production of antibodies," I said. "They are a mature by-product of the B lymphocyte lineage."

Nigel wanted to hear about plasma cell disorders.

"Disorders?" I said, looking away from the interrogator to gather my thoughts. There were few thoughts to gather up. "Disorders result from overproduction of either the cells or their by-products. Examples of this include multiple myeloma and amyloidosis. These diseases may impact on intensive care services because of their involvement in organ system failure, or through failure of the immune system allowing opportunistic infection." In my peripheral vision, I could sense Black Jeremy nodding, but Nigel was looking annoyed.

"You haven't mentioned underproduction. A malignancy of lymphoplasmacytoid cells that secrete Igm – who described that?"

I had no idea. I shook his head.

"Waldenstrom," Nigel said colourlessly. He cracked his knuckles slowly. "How does it manifest?"

Beads of sweat broke across my brow. I shuffled about in the chair, my eyes dancing about, as if to find shelter. There was none. The walls were unfriendly. There were years of sterility, baked into the surface.

"Overproduction of Igm, effects organ system function and allows acute infection. Other plasma elements may be swamped."

"May . . . be . . . swamped?" Nigel said. He closed his eyes and held his head in his hands. He reached for a glass of water.

"There may be lytic lesions in bone," I said, hoping it was similar to multiple myeloma.

Nigel's face came up, as if to look at me, but the eyelids were down. "Well, like myeloma, the disease involves the bone marrow," he said. "But unlike myeloma, it does not cause lytic bone lesions." The eyelids came up. His eyes appeared just like Handwringer's had, a few minutes before. They appeared to look right through me.

"What I wanted you to describe," Nigel said, "was the Hyperviscosity Syndrome of Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia." He gazed at me for a few long seconds. "What are the units of viscosity?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I don't know," I said. My back felt warm and clammy.

Black Jeremy laughed suddenly. His earlobes waved like paddles. "There's no point apologising to us," he said, leaning back and placing his hands upon the considerable midriff.

"It's not a measurement we use clinically," I said, feeling annoyed.

Nigel ignored the remark. "What is the risk of renal impairment in such a case?"

I realised I was doomed. Nigel was going to flog the question to death.

"Quite high," I guessed. "The Igm is secreted into the renal tubules, resulting in stasis of tubular flow."

Nigel almost smiled. "No . . . quite wrong. The molecular weight of Igm is too high for renal secretion . . . What percentage of macroglobulins are cryoglobulins?"

I could barely focus on the question. Nigel was way out of line surely? These 'facts' were of no relevance to good intensive care practice. "Fifty," I said ,my face burning up in resentment.

"Ten," Nigel said. "What would you see in the optic fundi of such a patient?"

The bell rang. I rose from his chair. Black Jeremy laughed. "Too late, to be saved by the bell," he said.

Out in the foyer Handwringer waited, his face a lopsided grin. My head was in a spin. The lining of my brain seemed to be smouldering. "Come on," I said, pointing at the stairwell. We descended the five floors to the street, our voices echoing up and down the shaft.

Handwringer was astonished at Nigel's line of questioning. "That's not fair at all," he said. "They're not supposed to hammer one topic like that – especially one so peripheral to the job. They're supposed to open a new subject, if you are struggling."

"Nigel was bizarre. He was like a dog with a bone. Anyway he's blown it for me. I'm out. The writing is on the wall."

Out on the street, we walked along aimlessly, discussing our own personal misfortunes. We crossed the Grafton bridge, heading roughly for the city centre. "This is where Aucklanders come to commit suicide," I said. "Right now I might as well join them." Handwringer didn't respond. He wanted me to accompany him to view the city art gallery, to help kill the time before we collected our results at six. I opted to wander solo instead. I knew my prospects of success were very slim. I needed to start the grieving process right away. That would not be possible, while partaking in superficial parlance with Handwringer. I ended up in the docklands. The sea, a turquoise and grey slop smacking the undersides of the wharf, had an odour of fish scales, oil and rust. Overhead cranes, derricks and flagpoles split the sky. I leaned against a railing and disconsolately watched the rock and roll of the sea. All that study time wasted. The spectre of failure sat heavily in my gut. I sought refuge in meditating about aspects of life that might have greater meaning than the exam failure. I dwelt on Melanie and how such powerful love appeared to have great meaning. Such a great force must surely be totally relevant. This train of thought wilted as I walked. Melanie and I were estranged and our travails seemed distinctly earthly and basic. Leached of spirit, I meandered up the hills to the hospital. I looked at my watch. Five o'clock. One hour until the results were to be posted. I slid into the resident-doctors' quarters. I had stayed there once before, during a study course. The corridors were angular, closed in, dimly lit. I knew where I was going – to the showers. I threw everything off onto the floor. I ran the water with searing heat. The brutal rain scorched my back. I flung my head back, sending my scalp to a premature perdition. A stifling humidity infiltrated the cupboard sized room. Insentient, I stood in suspended animation, cushioned from the approaching doom. Just before six I roused, and shut down the steaming water. I stuffed himself into my clothes. Outside a foreboding wind tore at the kerb-side pepper trees. Like a spinnaker, my open jacket propelled me towards the antiseptic building.

On the fifth floor we stood and waited. The confident ones chattered rabidly, impatient for the triumph that was deservedly theirs. The uncertain ones were stricken, hunched over in their own personal agony. Handwringer and I were propped up against a wall, in silent companionship. I could see Boy Wonder amongst the confident group. There was an occasional flash of teeth, as the complacent one entertained another notion of personal success. A door opened and a balding man in faculty robes appeared carrying a sheet of paper. The atmosphere was electric. It was all slow motion for me. Images of the fateful moment, were laid down indelibly in my mind. The list of successful candidates, was taped to a bare white wall. We all rushed forward, craning to see if our candidate numbers were posted. The whoops and shrieks of the vanguard cut the air. Fists were raised in triumph. I arrived at the wall, almost in a fugue state. It only took a second. There were eight numbers. 256 wasn't among them. I knew I was going to fail, but even so, the reality of it left me punch drunk. Tears welled without control. I had to get out of that place. I thrust aside the grinning victors, to seek the sanctuary of the stairwell. I clattered down the stairs, two at a time. Outside the darkling sky enclosed me, like a mother's cloak around a grieving boy. I ran and ran, faraway from the cruel tower block, where the victors would be sipping sweet sherry with their examiners. When I stopped running, my body convulsed and shook, the realisation of failure too much to bear. Head swollen with grief, I stumbled through dark streets, oblivious to the malevolent surroundings. Back in Newmarket, the Saturday night crowds didn't notice this solitary tragic figure passing amongst them. My slow burning hell, was swallowed up by the human tide – the carefree masses.

On the Monday in my hospital mail box – an unaddressed envelope. Absently I ripped it open. There was a single photograph. It was myself and Melanie, caught outside the Governor's Café. We were close – staring at each other. My hand was reaching out to her face, fingers outstretched. I turned it over. There was no message.

Eleanor was ironing when I got home. I flopped into the beanbag. The turmoil in my life – it all burned deep into my skull like a cavitating soft nose bullet. Eleanor was almost within touching distance, yet I felt totally alone. My gut seemed to involute, as if in intersusseption. My body felt tremulous, but my limbs were still. I looked up at Eleanor. I watched the hot iron race across the pleats. Hot air, bubbled through the distilled water. Steam under pressure, hissed into the room. The years of frustration rose and jammed in my throat. She glanced at me at that moment. What she saw was almost certainly startling. She would no doubt always remember that moment. The look I must have had - the physical declaration of resentment.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked.

I began to talk and by the end of that speech my marriage was over.

I met Melanie in a pull off area on Queens Road. It was 10pm and dark. We held each other but I knew immediately it too was over. She had been 'woken up' by the reality check our philosophical differences had produced. It wasn't great with Rikki and she'd gotten involved with me as a consequence, but that didn't make it right. When I told her about the photograph and the aggressive driving of a Volkswagen car she went pale.

"God, I'd better go home and do some fast talking," she said.

Before we parted she grabbed my lapels. "I know it's hard for you Gerry," she said. "But you're free now. There's nobody to hold you back now. Don't be tempted to try and go back to Eleanor – to seek comfort – just because your life is in turmoil. You must move on now that you've made the break. You can really live now."

My mood softened with her words. I could hear that she really cared about me. She asked me where I was going to stay. I intimated with Isobel – but I wasn't sure of a warm welcome from Junot.

We were both very emotional on parting. I stumbled to my car convulsed with grief and drove away fast. Soon I recollected her words. 'You can really live now.'

"Yes," I yelled, and thumped the wheel. "This is really living. I've lost the woman I love . . . but apparently . . . I'm really living!" The words died amongst the fabric of the car.

I lay in the spare room of Isobel's flat. My head spun with orbiting memories. A broken Isobel outside her flat with her arm around my waist - the angry figure of Melanie in my rear vision mirror striding off into the night - the Volkswagen of Rikki East, lining me up on a deserted street - the line of questioning of Nigel Green and his determination to bring me down - the excited voices of the successful examination candidates - the haunted look of Eleanor, as she assimilated the bombshell. I sweated – a dampness in my hair. It soaked down my neck and onto the pillow. With a single kick the duvet flew off. I ripped my T-shirt up over my head. I lay there panting, naked, my skin a swirl of goose-bumps in the sudden freshness.

Half past two, and at last Isobel came. The montage of failures rotated away, through foramena, into unknown recesses of the brain. I was upright in a flash.

"He's deeply asleep now." she whispered.

I dressed quickly, closed my case, picked it up and edged quietly out the door. Isobel's belongings (those that she was taking) were already pre-loaded into the boot of her car. We passed the partially open door behind which Junot lay sleeping. His breathing was slow and regular, aided by the drugs we had bandied around at the end of the evening. Isobel and I had pretended to take the drugs. Isobel placed an envelope on the hall table. It would be a shock for Junot in the morning, but we both knew he wouldn't have any trouble moving on.

Outside much of the cityscape was invisible. It was black as ink. Across the bay in Ravensbourne a car head-light stabbed at the night. A comrade was out there, cowering below the shrouded cosmos. We didn't start the motor but slid away down the slope of the street in neutral. At the corner Isobel switched on the headlights and glided around into the next street. The road fell away steeply down towards Andersons Bay. She crash started the motor and the car jerked into life.

BOOK 3

Chapter 1

Isobel was bent over a pot, stirring baked beans with a big wooden spatula. She lifted the pot off the element, carrying the steaming mixture across to a large wiped down table where a number of people sat dealing to the first meal of the day. There was an appearance of sluggishness about these other inhabitants of the kitchen, as though it was really far too early to drum up enthusiasm for such a day. In contrast there was an air of quiet desperation about my sister and myself. We were both starting a new life from the inauspicious base of the Windsor Youth Hostel. Today we were going job hunting – myself as an ICU resident and Isobel – well anything. She wasn't going back to nursing – too complicated with her recent history.

We left the hostel separately. I had an interview to go to whereas she had a clean slate. She was going to cruise around and see what the possibilities were. I walked out onto the street. The air was crisp – cool without being sharp. The streets were clean and metallic looking. Above me the castle probed the sky, limpid sunshine painting the upper turrets, much like the dawn awakening on a granite mountain range. I scarcely dwelt on the scene. I was worried. I had no job and we had nowhere to live yet. We could only stay at the youth hostel for 3 days. I had completely depleted my savings to get to Britain. I dreaded having to crawl to Graham on some long distance phone call, begging for money. I knew he would bail me out – Julia would insist on it. But I wouldn't consider such an indignity. I had quit his university, I had quit his country, and I had quit his beloved specialist training scheme.

The train rattled through carefully manicured fields and villages. My companions aboard the carriage sat stolidly, staring straight ahead in an unfocused way, but looking quickly away if I caught their eye. Opposite me was a girl in her twenties, all dressed up in high boots, a camel coloured skirt and designer jacket. The inner curves of her thighs disappeared seductively into the dark tunnel of the skirt. Her face was devoid of intimacy. I was nothing in her life – merely a presence on a train. The train slowed to a halt and I watched her get off onto the platform. She clipped away on her high boots, exiting from my life forever.

Ashford hospital was several blocks from the village railway station. The houses along the way were semi-detached, sombre greys and mottled browns. I strode along in my best clothes, my fingertips drained and cold, enduring the prospect of an interview. .After a while I came to an intersection. A four-lane highway hummed with speeding vehicles. It was the A3. I pressed the pedestrian button, bringing the entire mass of traffic to a shuddering stop. I could see the upper stories of hospital blocks sitting in behind a line of housing that bordered the highway.

I crossed the lanes and found the main gate. The hospital seemed to be an array of stand-alone buildings, like stationary icebergs on a green sea. Some were old and solid (brick or stone), others prefabricated (wooden and flimsy). There were plenty of open spaces, grassy patches and roadways. It took quite a bit of help to locate the administration block.

"You're the only white applicant," the young administrative official said. He had scrubbed pink cheeks and thick glasses. His lapel name badge said, 'Hi my name is Bernard.'

"Is that important?" I asked.

He gave me his wounded look. "Hounslow's just down the road," he said. gesturing over a shoulder.

I had to meet an intensive care specialist next. I was sent up to the theatre block to ask for a Dr Holdaway. She came bustling out in her blue theatre clothes, stethoscope hanging from her neck. She looked like Margaret Thatcher. "We like New Zealanders," she said, looking me up and down. "You'll learn the ropes here very quickly." she said, the statement indicating I had the job.

Back at the administration block, Bernard absorbed the good news without surprise. He had more good news for me. I could live on site, in the hospital grounds.

I got accommodation in the 'married' quarters, after indicating to Bernhard I had a partner. I was relieved to have something sorted out so easily, avoiding the stress of having to hustle for a place to live in the outside world. Jubilantly I went back to Windsor to give the good news to Isobel, We gathered up our gear and took the train back to Ashford. Later after settling in we ventured out into the grounds in search of the hospital bar. Bernard had told me about it. We made our entrance, walking over mud coloured carpet to the bar, a six by four hole in the faraway wall. We stood at the counter gulping down beer, and surveyed the other patrons. At one table a group of young woman, some in chequered blue uniforms, chattered and laughed. At another table three men in white coats conversed in a more salubrious manner. And further away, two older men, one balding, one fully thatched, stood beside a tall circular table. Isobel had been into London but thought she'd rather work a bit out of the main CBD. She figured she'd go to job centres in the surrounding districts, Hounslow, Putney and Slough. We strolled back to the flat while overhead a jet climbed out of Heathrow with an accompanying roar. I stood and watched the graceful flight path, the riding lights flashing in the black sky. Businessmen going home to European capitals – home to a warm European kitchen – home to their nice European wives. Someone like Melanie . . .

Dr Holdaway was like a surrogate mother, nursing me through the early days, I did a bit of anaesthesia as well as intensive care. It was quite an adjustment to witness the carnage of the operating theatres – to see blood oozing out beneath slashing scalpel blades – sometimes squirting out like a geyser, spraying the linoleum with an arc of red dots.

In the weekend I made a dash to the big city, emerging at Charing Cross, my ultimate goal the record stores on Oxford Street. I had waited five years to see them, those unseen album covers, but it took me only five minutes to fill the gaps in my Byrd's collection. On fire, I unearthed Younger than Yesterday, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, and Sweetheart of the Rodeo. I bought a record player and a cheap guitar as well. Quite a good day's work. Engorged with anticipation, I clutched the square package to my chest, as the return train rattled along through Clapham Junction, Putney, Hounslow . . .

Back in Ashford, I unveiled the fresh black vinyl, playing them chronologically, so as to experience the releases just as a sixties' listener would have done. Notorious was the revelation. The atmosphere poignant, resonant and ethereal, resigned, angry and hopeful. Temporarily, I was taken over again, as if a pilgrim seeing at last the route to a higher place. It was a feeling of extrasensory power – a subliminal absorption of energy and meaning. It reinforced for me again, the elusive purpose of my existence – to be a disciple of the Byrdsian atmospheric, to create something that would carry other people into the magical realm of my own experience.

Accordingly, I laboured over my guitar, late into the evenings, searching for the exquisite chord change, waiting for the magic phrase, a few words that might transform a soul. When we settled down to sleep, Isobel took the bedroom and I stayed out in the lounge and slept on a couch.

In the summer evenings we walked along the straight concrete paths that bordered local reservoir lakes and tenement gardens. Isobel liked the country feel of the district, the sparrows flirting in the hedgerows, and beyond, the puffs of cumulus on a soft English horizon. We had plenty to talk about, things we hadn't broached on the journey from NZ. Then we had felt like fugitives and our discourse was mainly pragmatic

Isobel became employed, preparing food in a vegetarian restaurant near Notting Hill Gate. I pictured her there, imagining her curvaceous frame bent over a sink in the restaurant, peeling potatoes, washing zucchinis, slicing up mushrooms. Before long I started going in on a train and eating there. One evening as we walked back to the tube station, buoyed by the vibrant pulse of the city, Isobel announced it was time for her to give me some space and that she was moving out into a flat she'd found in Putney. She felt the best she had for years – she was over her fall from grace in Dunedin and she didn't feel tempted to use hard drugs again. We celebrated at a bar in the railway station, running over all of the tumultuous year in Dunedin. I too professed to be working free of the Melanie heart-brake and the marriage break up with Eleanor. We left the bar and under the plimsoll sign that indicated the Underground, Isobel hugged me to death, the force of which reawakened the memory of a previous encounter, the one in the Travers valley so many years before. For a moment we were children again, as close as brother and sister could be.

With Isobel off the hospital scene, I started to spend some evenings in the hospital bar. This time, amid the low lighting and soft background funk, there were groups of people into which I could fold myself, almost anonymously, without fear. And as my infiltration prospered, I began to find a new voice inside of me, one that was able to speak independently. The foreign country was the key. There was no fear of being prejudged by ones trailing history, remembered so easily by those at home. That shadow was twelve thousand miles away,

Amongst the crowd of student nurses, my developing irony (cynicism perhaps) was becoming a feature. And ironic it was, that I should be attractive to the brashest nurse of them all, her surname transformed by her peers into 'Flesh.' With wild blonde hair, the shortest skirts and chunky curving thighs, she was well used to the roving eye.

Came a drunken night, I deviated to her room, a tiny box on the second floor of the nurse's home. She placed her beside lamp on the floor, unhitched her white blouse from the regulation chequered skirt and lay back on the bunk. Feeling a little foolish, I took off my shoes and lay down beside her, half sprawled over her waiting body. Her eyes were unfocused as I kissed her swollen lips, her gin soaked breath bitter in my mouth. She undid the remaining buttons of her blouse and yanked up the bra, allowing her well formed breasts to drop out like two ripe pears. She looked at me as if to say, 'So . . . What do you think of these?'

The tumultuous year in Dunedin and the fresh stimulus of living in a foreign country, meant I had plenty of raw material for composition. I bombarded publishing companies with songs andone called You're Easy was picked up after many a failure. I read and reread that letter time after time. It was my first break through and my whole being throbbed with the good feeling. I waited expectantly to hear if it was recorded.

You're Easy

Here I am living in clover

With the best of everything I need

My lady and I

Riding it high

Nothing going to rock us over

You enter my life (with the hint of a smile)

You got the body language

You know where I stand

And yet you come on

The mistress of suggestion

You're easy, You know that you are

It hurts me, When you show your hand

I phoned Isobel one Sunday evening to see how she was going, It had been 2 months since she'd moved and I'd been surprised how little she had contacted me in that time. Her voice sounded very matter of fact, as though the gap in communication was quite normal and to be expected. I invited myself over to her flat in the forthcoming weekend. Her lack of enthusiasm in response had me worried.

I took Flesh with me and after we left the train we crossed over the Putney Bridge, following a map I had made on the back of an envelope. It didn't take long to find the flat, located in the ground floor and basement of a terraced building. I rapped on the door and waited. Isobel appeared and I was jolted - she could have been Julia.

Isobel had gotten so thin in such a short time. The insipid daylight on her anaemic face, highlighted all the tiny lines and creases. Yes, she looked like her mother. She was dressed in faded jeans and a ragged wool jersey. Her hair was matted and unbrushed – a mass of loose split ends. She hugged me, and Flesh too, a loose clasp with her face half turned away - there was a detachment that I perceived straight-away, as though she was now of a different persuasion, a different faith.

She took us down some steps to her room. There were no windows. A bedside lamp was the only illumination. A battered mattress lay on the wooden floor. The scrim on the walls was a sickly green, with much of it flaking and peeling, loose ends to tempt a ripping hand. "It's not exactly luxury," she said with a hollow laugh. As she turned away from the scene, her face was caught in lamplight, and I saw her lips and mouth were caked in a white substance - milk-shake perhaps? Did she not look in a mirror?

She took us back up to street level, to a small living room that overlooked the street. Floorboards creaked and moved underfoot. Down one side of the room, floorboards were absent. I could see framework of the ceiling below. There were copper coloured insulated cables tacked to some of the beams and a rank smell, perhaps of a smouldering wire or a dead rodent. Loose threads of a rug tripped Eleanor and she stumbled into the centre of the room. When we sat down in the two armchairs, Flesh looked across at me with gesturing eyes, her top lip askew.

Isobel sat down in the bay-window, pulling out a cigarette and lighter. "Don't mind if I smoke?" she said. It was more a statement than a question.

We conducted a stuttering conversation, Isobel and I inhibited by the effect of our long estrangement. "Do you work?" Flesh asked, pulling the free ends of her coat together in the frigid atmosphere.

Isobel's mouth twisted into an ironic smile. "Yeah," she said. "I'm a part time cleaner at the health clinic, just around the corner here." She got up off the window seat and came across towards me, wordlessly offering the cigarette. It occured to me for the first time that she was smoking marijuana. I took it from her, feeling it would be churlish to refuse. I puffed away and then passed it on to Flesh who was a bit of a wild child in her own way.

The drug loosened our tongues, Isobel and I. We laughed - an infectious giggle that ran with its own momentum. Flesh looked bemused in this new atmosphere, before getting caught up in it herself. We had latched onto our common denominator - Graham. I was describing the day I had left home, sitting aboard the idling Newman's bus, trying to catch the eye of the 'caring' father.

"He's so old fashioned," Isobel said, wiping tears from her cheeks. "I couldn't wait to be shot of him."

"What about him and the Greek!" I said, sitting forward in my chair.

"Oh God, don't remind me."

We went over the stories, lampooning the distant father, laughing and smoking. Isobel continued to roll joints, tipping the dried leaves from an opaque plastic container onto filter paper, . "Yeah," she said. "I'll not be going back to see him in a hurry."

From Flesh's corner, I heard the clearing of throat. "What about your mother?" she asked, her arms extending into her jacket pockets.

Isobel's face coloured, a slow wave of red that burned at her neck. She swivelled in her chair. "What do you mean," she asked.

"Your mother sounds like a good sort. You must be missing her," Flesh said.

Isobel slumped in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. "Well of course I do," she said. She sounded irritable.

I realised that the bringing up of Julia had destabilised Isobel. Maybe she felt guilty about having scarpered away overseas again without saying goodbye in person. We had not notified our parents of the move until it had been completed.

I got to my feet unsteadily, alarmed by the turn of events. "We better make tracks soon," I said.

"Maybe you should," Isobel said, rising herself and heading back into the main part of the flat.

We were left to the filth of the room, the sombre grey sky at the window, and a ticking clock on the mantelpiece. I suggested to Flesh that she wait out on the footpath while I sought my angry sister. I went down a dark corridor, locating a kitchen at the back. Isobel was seated side on to a table, an arm extended across the table's surface. She had a tourniquet around the upper arm, the opposite hand controlling a syringe and needle. The needle was inserted into a vein on the front-side of her elbow joint. "What on earth are you doing?" I asked, coming to a halt.

"What does it look like," she said, her eyes fixed on the needle tip.

I said nothing, my gaze transfixed by the events at her elbow crease. She aspirated with the plunger, blood shooting into the barrel of the syringe. Then she drove the blood stained contents inward, into her streaming blood.

"I'll come back another day, alone" I said, breaking the silence.

"If you like," she said. She leaned back on her chair, holding a handkerchief to the puncture site, the spent needle and syringe discarded on the table-top. Her eyes were diverging and she almost began to smile. "She's a bit young for you Gerry." She said and immediately she was laughing, doubled up with cathartic humour. And I too, succumbed to this fresh wave of hilarity, chortling and grabbing her shoulders, my head hanging down beside hers. "You can't go on like this," I said, indicating the syringe. "You need help."

"Oh . . . I'm on a methadone maintenance programme – at the drug clinic where I clean. They gave me the job as a cleaner."

I looked again at the white dust, dried into a corner of her mouth. That was the methadone. "Well it doesn't seem to be working ," I said, indicating the discarded syringe.

"It was just some diazepam I stole from the clinic," she said. "It's not an opiate."

I went back to see her, one afternoon in the middle of the week.

"Come and share a smoke with me," she said, steering me down the short staircase that led to her basement bedroom. The poverty of her circumstance was as shocking the second time, as it had been the first. Flakes of scrim hung listlessly from the walls, like timeless stalactites in an underground grotto.

She flopped across the bed, gathering up a cigarette lighter and the hash container from between her mattress and the wall. I noticed her quilt had numerous black rimmed holes near the pillows. Cigarette embers had fallen unnoticed from the grasp of a half drugged woman.

"Put some music on," she said, gesticulating towards the dark end of the room.

In this dim recess sat a cassette player. I hadn't noticed it before. I sorted through her music collection - a pile of plastic cases, torn slicks and loose cassette tapes heaped around the player. From the glut of metal and acid rock, I found Can't buy a thrill, a synthesis of beguiling harmony and jazz phrasing.

"It's got a nice groove this," she said, sitting cross-legged on the quilt, kneading the filter-paper and marijuana leaves into the shape of a torpedo. Soon we were reeling from the potency of her creation. I lay back on a cane wicker chair positioned at the end of her mattress, my naked feet warming in the forlorn rumpled quilt. Again we were overtaken by infectious laughter. Firstly it was the image of the unfortunate Flesh that we succumbed to. Isobel saw her as youthful and naive, her hair a Farah Fawcett copy and her breasts pert and partially revealed by her low cut tops. Wracked with laughter, my toes entwining with those of Isobel's on the bed, I had a flush of intense well-being, like a low amplitude orgasm. We began dissecting the family again. Graham, Julia, Richard – and associates such as Margo, Francis, Junot, Eleanor, Melanie . . .I exhaled a long stream of smoke into the gloomy interior.

"It must have been an amazing scene when Margo arrived back at the bach, trailing after the other three."

Isobel gave a grunt, her teeth clamped over the end of a butt she was attempting to light. She too made a temporal shift back to the late 1950s, back to a story that was of great relevance for her and myself. And in my mind (almost adrift from its moorings), I discerned a new maturity within myself. It was as if at that moment, I could dissociate my current self from my former self.

"Oh yeah . . . Margo . . ." She sat up, pulling her feet into the lotus position, a movement of hers that was totally familiar to me.

"When Margo arrived at the bach, Graham would have already confronted Julia," I said. "Francis would still be there as well. They must have all been in a hell of a state."

"Yeah that's right. Margo was the last to arrive. She saw Francis' life jacket, stained with blood, hanging from the veranda fence. She entered the bach through a side door, one that opened straight into the lounge. Graham was standing in the middle of the room, arms folded, his face red . . . menacing. Margo realised he had stationed himself between the two bedrooms, both of which also opened directly into the lounge. He was acting as a barrier between the two lovers, keeping them apart. Graham gestured to Margo with his head, the direction of the bedroom where Francis was. Margo went in, finding Francis kneeling on the floor, his face bandaged, packing his belongings away into a case. She told him she was leaving him, that their marriage was over. And she too began to pack a case."

"Hell, imagine the atmosphere in that room."

Isobel laughed, throwing her head back, her eyes heavily lidded. "Oh yeah, well years later when I was talking to her even Margo saw the humour in it. She was laughing when she told me. As for Francis, he was dumbstruck. He didn't know what to think, or say I guess . . I mean he was hardly in a position of strength."

"He was losing both his wife and lover on the same day."

"Mm . . . bad scenario . . . Margo was firing her things into a case and all the while shouting insults at him. The next thing was, she took off in their car. The keys had been hanging on a nail in the kitchen. So Francis was left to walk off with his heavy suitcase, all the way to the main road. Presumably he hitched or caught a bus to Picton."

The room was beginning to circle gently around me and I felt a rush of nausea. "I'll have to lie down," I said, getting off the chair and crawling onto her mattress. I lay on my front, my head turned away from her, my brain apparently doing a long slow somersault. I felt her come to lie in behind me, her uppermost arm draped across my shoulders.

Her voice carried on with the story, in my head a pleasant cadence, phasing in and out with my own changing state of awareness. I don't remember any detail, only that Julia had stayed with Graham, and that after a month Margo went back to Francis. I must have slept for a while then, until I was disturbed by something. Still prone, I propped myself up on my elbows and looked across to Isobel's side of the bed. She wasn't there, however I knew she was in the room somewhere. I rolled onto my back to locate her. She was sitting in the wicker chair. The rubber tourniquet was knotted about her upper arm. She was pressing fingers into the elbow crease. She saw me watching. "It's hard to find a vein these days," she said. I don't remember whether I said anything. Probably I just rolled back over and went back to sleep.

When I awoke again, I was abruptly sober. I looked at my watch, shocked to find it was nine o'clock at night. I had arranged to meet Flesh at eight o'clock but I was not going to make it. I resolved to leave straight-away, scrambling into my jacket and shoes. Isobel was face down on the bed, her breathing slow and irregular. I folded part of the quilt over her legs and fled up the stairs.

Things deteriorated after the visit. Isobel began contacting me daily, sometimes several times a day. She wanted drugs -ketamine. diazepam, morphine, omnopon, pethidine, diamorphine – anything from the opiate cupboard. Her knowledge of the drugs and what was available in the hospitals was of course substantial. I said no to everything. And each time, after wheedling with me for half an hour, she would become vindictive. "We'll I just won't see you again - you can take a running jump," she said as she terminated the first call. The following day she was back talking again. "I'll ring your boss and tell her you indulge in drug taking," she announced in response to my further refusal.

"I don't," I said. "I only smoke a bit of weed."

On the Thursday she ranted down the line, 'I'm coming to the theatre, right now. You better have something for me, or I'll tell your manager you're supplying me ketamine. It's your choice."

I didn't know what she was capable of. I knew I would have to get help to deal with a force about which I knew little, but first I bought myself some time. "I'll bring you some temgesic," I found myself saying. I hadn't been supplying her with ketamine but I'd have to prove that and that would be very onerous.

I got to Putney in the middle of the Friday Afternoon. "I thought the methadone was supposed to be enough," I said as I was let in her front door. She laughed in a dismissive way, leading me up to the kitchen. She smelled clean and soapy. Her hair was wet, falling in long tangled clumps to her shoulders. "Don't be silly," she said. "Come and have a smoke with me." She pushed me onto a kitchen chair, pulling hers up close so that our knees were locked together. "Let's put the Dan on again," she said. She left me there, charging off to get her cassette player from the bedroom.

I glanced around the room. The sink was piled high with pots and plates, all coated with dried remnants of food. Above the sink, a window, barely transparent, curtained by thick hanging webs containing the purloined carcasses of captured insects. On the wall, a ripped poster advertised Led Zeppelin in concert. Below that, a gas hob, rusty and clogged with the remains of charred debris, A dusty refrigerator grumbled in a corner. I dared not look inside.

"Where are your flatmates?" I said as she came back into the room. She plugged the cassette player into the stove and wound back the tape.

"Jocelyn is in France," she said. She pressed the play button so that we had 'Can't buy a thrill' again.

"What about the guy," I shouted above the music, watching her construct the joint. She shook her head.

"Don't know," she said.

We shared the smoke, both drawing heavily when it was our turn, sucking the solace into our lungs - two refugees from a recently troubled past. I felt myself sinking into a soft metaphysical pillow, and our conversation became the trigger of more infectious laughter.

"Have you got the temmies?" she said, her bony legs resting on my knees.

I laughed uncontrollably, putting the packet up on the table. "Here they are, have one," I said. I felt reckless and free. "Have half a dozen."

She didn't take any. She slipped the packet away into her layers of clothing,. So . . . she was going to sell the drug. Temgesic was quite a weak opiate and wouldn't touch her. But its street value was immense. I'd been fooled again. I'd been weak again with Isobel. Weak because she'd been my buddy when we were children. Weak because she'd cuddled me in a grassy hollow up the Travers Valley. I could see it now – a few months after Melanie had seen it.

"If Graham could see us now," she said.

I thought about his plethoric face, the eyes blazing like a bird of prey. "Imagine if Mum had left him, there and then – when the affair blew out into the open. Mind you, I wouldn't have been born if that was the case."

"Margo reckoned Mum and Francis were in shock after the Marlborough Sound's incident. It was probably the first time that they had really considered the consequences of their relationship - that knowledge of the affair could leak into the community. And she said Mum probably stayed in the marriage for our sakes, Richard and I –so that we wouldn't grow up in a broken home."

"And Margo went back with Francis after the Sounds?"

"Yeah, she decided to give him one more chance. They'd sold the house in Kelburn – obviously the two couples could no longer live next to each other –and Francis had bought a new place in Khandallah, several kilometres away. Margo had been staying with her mother. She moved into the Khandallah house for another try. But after only a few weeks something happened, and Francis moved yet again - into a rented house with Mum, Richard and I. I was too young to remember any of it, but Richard would have had memory . . . Of course Mum and Francis must have met up . . . By chance or by design, I don't know. To be together must have become imperative, in spite of all the negatives." The joint was spent. I watched as Isobel stubbed it out on the wooden table top. "Margo went ballistic then, telling all and sundry about the affair. And she was happy to act as the emissary for Graham, bringing to Francis and Mum a legal document from Graham's lawyer, seeking custody of Richard and myself - citing Mum and Francis as inadequate parents. Only two days after delivery of the document, out of the blue, Mum turned up at Graham's door, with Richard and I in tow – she wanted to come back – for our sakes. Within days Francis disappeared with all his belongings. He'd gotten on a flight to Sydney. Margo reckoned it all must have become too much for him - not just the loss of Mum, but also the dent to his reputation in the legal fraternity. Apparently his practice was drying up as news of the affair ripped through the Wellington law community. This was the 1950s you see. Attitudes were rather Victorian towards marriage breakdown. Perhaps he felt he could start afresh in another country. Margo paints a fairly bad picture of him - as a character. She made out that he was of restless disposition and was not likely to stay in any relationship long-term. Margo never heard from him again. Nobody did. Where he settled, nobody knew . . . Aussie . . . the UK? If Mum knew, she never revealed anything to Margo."

I thought immediately of Julia. She must have really held a candle for Francis. To go through all that - especially in the fifties. "I guess the pressure - moral and legal was all too much."

"Yeah. She went with Graham . . . whether for us or for herself or because of the risk of losing us, I don't know."

We decided to go out for a drink. Outside, night had fallen. We walked to the nearest underground station, ambling along with a swelling tide of office workers leaving the business district for the weekend. At the station, we hopped onto a down escalator, standing passively on the left side to allow the dashing flow of commuters to proceed past unimpeded. Standing on the step below me, Isobel turned her head to look back up at me. "You know, Richard must have known all about the affair. He would have been old enough to retain memory of the few weeks we spent in Francis' flat. But I don't recall him ever bringing up anything remotely related to it."

"I got to go see him again one day soon, I said"

"Yeah, me too. It's so remote where he lives. It's another world."

Isobel had her arms wrapped around my midriff and I had an arm laid across her shoulders. To the commuters we must have looked like a couple in love. The discussion about our family's past had diverted my attention away from the pressing problem of the present – Isobel and her drug dependence. I told myself to work on the problem over the coming weekend – to find a solution. A wind started to blow up the tunnel. The train was arriving and we quickly broke apart as if both remembering we were brother and sister,

Standing on the underground train, hurtling through a dark tunnel, I dwelt on the expression on Isobel's face when I had bid farewell to her. It was a mixture of resignation and melancholy. She had a rabid desire for drugs, but deep down she was very unhappy. I really had to find a solution.

On the Saturday afternoon I was grappling with a song called Heart of Stone but I was getting nowhere. In my mind I was castigating myself for my weakness in dealing with Isobel. I could see the history of pandering to her needs all to clearly. I needed to confront her – give her an ultimatum. I resolved to leave for Putney as soon as possible. I needed resolution. The train I caught rattled through along through weak afternoon sunshine, my pensive state interrupted by the abrupt roar of commuter trains racing by in the opposite direction, their carriages packed with workers returning to the suburbs.

The last of the light was retreating from the streets as I climbed the steps to the small balcony of Isobel's flat. In the West, an orange hue was germinating, spreading through the sky like a dye diffuses into water. I knocked on the door, gently at first, then forcefully when no response was attained. Disappointed, I got down on my knees and hollered through the mail slot. Defeated, I stood up, stepping back to the edge of the balcony, hanging onto the balustrade while I surveyed the street. There was no sign of Isobel amongst the sporadic pedestrians moving up and down the street. I determined to wait a while, in the hope of her return.

I rested there for half an hour, the chill of the evening infiltrating my clothing. Thinking I might go back and try to locate where Flesh was, I hopped down from my perch intent on returning to the train-station. On impulse I went across and tried the door handle. To my surprise it was unlocked. I stood there for a moment, holding the door ajar, the murky interior of the hallway seeming to reach out and envelop me in its musty odour. It was just what I might have expected of Isobel - to leave the house unlocked in one of her inebriated states. I considered flicking the catch and pulling the door shut, locking out unwanted intrusion. I reconsidered though - maybe there was someone inside. Isobel or a never seen flat-mate, watching TV or listening to music, oblivious to the shouts of the visitor. I walked through to the kitchen, calling out as I did so. The room was in darkness. I found the switch, blinking in the flood of illumination. There was nothing to see of note - merely the expected pile of unwashed dishes beside the sink. I walked back along the hallway. There was no light coming up from Isobel's room, but even so, I flicked on the foyer light and descended her steps into the shadows.

I could see her, the form of her figure, lying on the mattress. Gingerly I edged into the room, not wishing to scare her or awaken her. In the darkness, a stain beside her, like a spill from an overturned ink pot, appeared black against the pallor of the sheets, Something flashed, an angular reflection of some obscure light source. A needle had fallen out of an antecubital vein and the puncture wound had bled. There had been no ability to staunch the flow by the unconscious fingers of my sister. Her breathing was slow and noisy – partially obstructed. I knelt down beside her and shook her by the shoulders, calling her name. Her limbs extended but her eyes didn't open and she attempted to roll on to her side. I placed fingers under her jaw angles and executed a resuscitation jaw thrust manoeuvre. I knew it was very stimulating and her eyes popped open. I yelled at her. "What have you taken?" Her reply was incomprehensible but a search of her side of the mattress revealed a 10mg diazepam ampoule. She had lapsed back to noisy breathing so I rolled her onto her side and adjusted her head and neck so that her breathing was easy and unobstructed. I went to the bathroom and found a towel to clean up the blood. In my mind I was weighing up the options. I could phone for an ambulance and have her admitted to hospital for observation. However the follow on from that would be investigations and trouble with the local authorities. Perhaps even deportation. Of course all of that was probably what she needed. But Isobel would be gutted if I did that to her. So once again I turned away from the logical solution. I resolved to stay with her all night until she woke up. I also decided I had to get her out of the flat and back to my hospital flat.

She woke at 4 a.m and as we lay staring at the flaky ceiling, she rolled into me and I comforted her with my extended arm, pulling her in close so that her breath warmed the side of my neck. Transiently she moved away to her edge of the mattress, to find and light a cigarette. Then we resumed our study of the ceiling, as if peering at the distant cosmos. "It's a fucked up world," she said, emitting a plume of smoke into the low lit atmosphere.

I nodded slowly. "Well you certainly are," I said.

She laughed, a hoarse croaking sound and she tapped me on a shoulder with her cigarette hand. Ash spilt over the front of my sweater. "You've still got some hope," she said.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Well, haven't you?" I asked.

She looked at me for a second, but said nothing. After a few minutes of silence she spoke again. "The only guy I kind of settled with was basically a drug dealer. I think I'm doomed like Mum . . . I'm married to a life with drugs and she's been married to . . . well to quite a difficult person. Things were so stifling back in her day. People got stuck in ridiculous marriages. At least our generation has rejected those constraints of society."

"Yeah but look at us. We're free to do as we please - yet we're still fucked up."

"Not as fucked up as they were."

You're not exactly in great shape, I thought. Had one dysfunctional generation infected the children of the next. I lay on my right side, facing her. "When you're a child, the blueprint for adulthood is laid down. How the hell else do you become what you are? It can't be good when your parents are such a mismatch."

She laughed uproariously then, rolling about the mattress, trying to hold the cigarette aloft, but spilling plenty of ash nevertheless. When she'd stopped her cavorting about, she sat upright, her legs bent into the lotus position. "I'm free of it now," she said, nodding vigorously in self-agreement. "All that stuff is on the other side of the world."

I felt like saying – hello – yes you're free of all that, but you're a bloody drug addict.

Moments later she came across and kissed a side of my face, her frail body half laid across mine. "You're my Rock of Gibraltar, aren't you," she said.

"I wish I was," I said. "But the truth is I've been taking the wrong option with you for the best part of a year. I keep assisting you to run from what you really need – expert help."

She stayed silent and I thought about my next moves. If I couldn't bring myself to hand her over to the authorities I'd have to get her off the drugs myself.

Chapter 2

Her set list was quite refined, each song instantly recognisable – a clever tactic in a foreign country if you wanted to be re-employed. So far there had been Harvest, It's all over now Baby Blue, Free man in Paris, You've got a Friend, Fire and Rain, Tracks of my tears, Love one another, Bird on a wire ,and A Horse with no Name. It helped her cause that the audience was partly English speaking There were a few British (the closest such country to Le Havre), Americans of course, and a few each of Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. Occasionally I'd hear a phrase of French, an exclamation in German, or some other language of which I had no knowledge.

Clearly not all the patrons of Cafe de la Mer were staying in the associated Pension Le Havre, for there was a steady movement of people to and from the street. There was a certain similarity about these mobile patrons. They were all young (mostly in their twenties), mostly wearing stone-washed jeans and in the main sporting long straggly hair.

I kept my eyes on the singer. She was dressed in the prescribed uniform plus jean-jacket, and there were dozens of bangles swinging on her arms, clattering as she strummed the guitar. Her hair was a tawny colour underneath, with an overlay of sun-bleached strands falling about her face and neck. She began to sing Goin back, a Goffin-King song that the Byrds had covered on Notorious.

"This is a Byrds song, isn't it?" Isobel said, humouring my fixation. She held her chin in the cupped palms of her hands, elbows on the table-top.

I nodded. In my mind, I was recalling the times I too had sung in noisy bars. The hum of the amplifiers, the curtains of cigarette smoke, the crumpled set list at my feet – the thrill of the moment, as my strummed chords rang out through the room.

The singer paused for a break. She was sitting on a high stool at the bar, toying with a glass of wine, conversing with a barman. I turned to Isobel. "I'm just going to ask her something," I said, gesturing towards the bar.

I came up beside the singer, complementing her on the music, following up with questions about her gig – how she got it, why France –that sort of thing. I was anxious to avoid giving the impression of being some drunken suitor. She turned to face me, with a smile of flashing pearly teeth. Her face exuded warmth and self confidence and I felt a tightening in my belly –a symptom of envy perhaps.

"Do you play?" she asked

"Well, yeah, I have done," I said. "I'm more into trying to write songs at the moment."

Her eyes sparkled. "Wow I'd love to be able to do that," she said.

I went into a mode of self-deprecation, making it clear I wasn't getting anywhere in the industry.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "As long as you're having a go - that's the main thing.. I'd love to hear some of your stuff."

She was saying all the right things to leave me with a good feeling.

"I reckon your choice of material is so good," I said. "It's just right for this place."

"Can you play lead?" she asked. "I've got a Telecaster as well as my Ovation. You can join me if you like."

I went back to tell Isobel the good news. She looked pleased for me. The trip to France meant I could be with her day and night for 2 weeks and help wean her off the addictive drugs – eventually all drugs. I knew I was possibly foolish trying to handle it myself but once again I couldn't bring myself to shop her in to the authorities against her wishes. I could imagine Melanie's raised eyes if she knew of my actions –or rather my lack of action.

"I'll go up to the room soon," she said. She was tired – and this tiredness was aided by a liberal inhalation of dope. This was all part of my plan to slowly get her off drugs. I felt continuing to use cannabis, which was relatively non addictive, would keep her calm as the more addictive dugs like the opiates and valium were weaned. The methadone maintenance program we just carried on with – as prescribed by the drug clinic. It was a weaning program as well.

I touched her on a shoulder and walked away towards the small stage.

"I'm Joanna, by the way," the singer said, as I climbed up beside her.

I strapped on the Telecaster, my musical companion announcing the new guitarist, all the way from Nouvelle Zelande. She launched into Help me, the Joni Mitchell staple, and I came in behind her, picking away Clarence White style, a technique fashionable during the Californian country-rock experiment. She gave me that look of approval, a nod with the eyebrows raised. Next she did Ticket to Ride and I sang a harmony line on the chorus, unamplified, but enough to catch her ear. She gestured that I should go over to share her microphone, to stand beside her, she on a high stool, our voices blending in third and fifth intervals. Later she said, "Why don't you do a song?" and I did Mr Tambourine Man, ecstatic as she sang the high harmony over the top.

When it was over, we retreated to the bar, myself flushed with well being, Joanna perhaps untouched, just another night in the cafes of Europe. She pushed her hair back off her face and spoke. "When my berry picking job is over at the end of the month, I'll move on – probably to Zurich. I've got a friend who lives there – her partner lectures at the University." It sounded more interesting than my imminent return to Ashford. I felt another surge of envy. I admired her self-assurance, And immediately I envied anybody who would be with her. "Why don't you play me some of your tunes?" she said. "We can take a guitar to my room. I've rolled a couple of joints."

Isobel had disappeared up to our room so the invitation was easy to accept. It was a small room, painted with loose brush-strokes in a creamy-apricot colour. There was a print of The Room on one wall. And cut into the other wall, was a window with dilapidated joinery. Outside on a broad sill there was a potted flower plant.

She sat on the single bed, unearthing two joints from a pencil case. "OK, you gotta play now," she said, holding a flaming match to the first cigarette. I took up the Ovation, hugging the rounded body to my belly. I strummed an E-minor chord and sang . . .

A love hate affair

Without a hand to hold

Dressed with desire

You read me like a novel

Bemused by your ego

And careful sense of poise

You are legendary

And should be carved in stone

You've got the best of both worlds

And you know it baby

You got the best of both worlds

And you know it baby

The seeds of rebellion

Fuel an empty climax

Got to have two passports

To bust the border guards

My life and I

A small conspiracy

Like your co-respondent

I'm waiting up all night

"That's great," she said, blowing out a plume of smoke.

Best of both worlds had been inspired by my relationship with Flesh whom I had eventually found to be two-timing me – just as I had been deceiving Eleanor.

"I love hearing something creative like that," Joanna said. "It says so much about the person."

I ploughed on through my songs; War of words, You're Easy, Heart of Stone . . ."They all seem to be about deceit," she said. She was sitting across the bed, her back resting against the wall. "Are you the deceiver – or have you been deceived?"

I flicked the guitar strap over my head, placing the instrument into its case. "Well, both I guess. It's hard to get it right, isn't it." The joint had permeated my system and I began to laugh.

She too began to laugh, and she grappled with the duvet in an effort to lever herself across to the edge of the bed. "Come and do some deceiving with me then," she said.

I was ready of course for this advance, even though I'd been consumed by the presentation of my oeuvre. Here I was with this beautiful seductive woman – of course I'd thought about being with her. The pit of my belly fell away with visceral contraction. She was young and free, alone in Europe; nobody in the background poised to make judgement. Perhaps she merely wanted someone to hold her, to rock her like a baby for the night. But I didn't have to think it over. I was free myself now. I didn't even hesitate. I was across to the bedside, kneeling before the long legged Canadian, her hair falling all around my face, as my lips found hers. The unexpected scent of her skin, the musky scent of her breath, jolted me in the short transition to intimacy.

"You want me don't you," she teased, falling onto her back, so that I came to lie on top of her. Her face was framed by the two currents of hair, glistening upper teeth half bared beneath a soft curve of upper lip. She was watching my eyes, her gaze unflinching - all the while freeing herself of clothes, in serpent like movements. By mutual consent, or rather an unspoken understanding; the initial vicious rate of climb was soon circumscribed, a slackening of rhythm and pressure. There were hours to go until morning - no hurry to return to our given lives - we both wanted to float, to ride this unexpected sea of pleasure, buoyed by the gentle thrust of waves, the swirling grip of current. I was in rhythm with the rise of the sun, the pull of the moon, the flow of the tides. Through the small window, the heart of Le Havre pulsed, and I was its epicentre - the axis about which all revolved. I knew all too well I was reaching a rare state of Nirvana – a complete symbiosis of spirit, philosophy and loving. I began to watch the clock. I didn't want it all to finish and neither it appeared did she. Isobel and I had a Ferry to catch in the morning – our two weeks of rehab were over. Through the window, the metallic sky was softened by a watery hue of pink, evidence that the grim reality of the new day would soon have to be swallowed, gulped down through a dry constricted oesophagus. We moved apart slightly - still touching in a loose kind of way, but no longer clinging – as if preparing for the coming departure.

"I love the freedom of travelling alone," she said, propping up onto an elbow. "But it can be so sad. You are touched by people . . . And then, they are gone. You may never see them again." She sat up, using both hands to scoop her hair behind her shoulders. "You must keep writing music," she said. "You're lucky you can do that . . . I know it's almost impossible to get a break, but who knows . . . One day it might happen for you."

As the arms of the clock-face slid around towards 7 a.m, I buried my face into her neck, taking bleak comfort in the delightful blend of scents – skin, perfume and sweat – and absorbing the rise and fall of her chest; the pulse wave in her neck – the palpable signs of a beautiful life. And when it was time, I reluctantly backed out of the room, my talk abruptly monosyllabic, matter of fact. Joanna looked at me quizzically, warily – whether out of awareness of my affected state, or by dint of an embryonic emotion of her own, I could not tell. She scribbled down her Vancouver address, a last minute gesture – untidy handwriting on a ripped off corner of an envelope.

Thereafter the day remained stillborn; an overcast sky, not thick or menacing, but enough to trap the penetrating light and create a landscape without shadows – an inflammatory fluorescence that gets in and burns behind the eyes. Isobel and I were quiet as we waited in the queue of cars, looking for the signal to drive aboard the channel-ferry. Isobel hadn't questioned me much about my whereabouts in the night. She had awoken briefly at three, noticing my absence. I'm sure she guessed what had happened.

"I suppose you're in love with that blonde girl," she eventually said, bestowing an impressionable character upon me (and unknowingly enunciating the truth.

I nodded my head, looking out the window to the horizon of flat grey sea. Inside, my whole visceral being seemed to be in a vortex. The empty horizon, the dark grey seascape, the light grey sky . . . That type of view, destined forever to trigger within me a searing nostalgia – one of almost nauseating quality. The face of Joanna, the curves of her unclothed body – lying open – and her voice, soft and mischievous; 'You're desperate, aren't you?' Isobel slipped an arm around my shoulders and we leaned into each other, able to take comfort from each other so easily.

Yes I was desperate. Alone later, up on the top deck, taking in again the bleak horizon, I was slipping into the nightmare with ease. Behind me, the receding coastline of France, and one woman, her guitar case laid down beside her at the ticket office - perhaps a glassed off facade with a circular hole for shouting through. Deux billet par Zurich. Oui madame, oui madame, oui madame . . . How I envied that ticket seller his sixty seconds with Joanna. Would he stop for a half minute, after his encounter; to mourn the tragedy of her transient presence in his life?

To think that I might never see her again – the curves of her body, the scent of the skin, perfume and sweat, the glistening upper teeth beneath the soft curve of a lip, and yes, the soft and mischievous voice saying 'you're desperate aren't you.'

I walked along the starboard rail of the ship, mesmerised by the foaming bow wave and its trailing wake. I recalled one thing she had said, that one day she might hear one of my songs on the radio. Wherever she was, I could reach out to her again with melody. I imagined such a song, played repeatedly on the radio stations of the Western world. And out there, somewhere in the North American night, a tall open faced woman (with intelligent teeth!) stops to listen, triggered by the melody, the harmony . . . The words provoke the memory of a long forgotten moment, in a French cafe. I liked the idea of those radio waves, transmitted around a suspended earth; half the globe in light, half in darkness . . . The melody played, all around the world.

As the ship began to rise and fall over a gentle swell, I had a hook for a song. Take this melody and play it around the world. I took out pen and paper from my top pocket and wrote it down. The arrival of these lines buoyed me a little – as though I had a part of Joanna to take away with me. That night, back in our hospital flat, with Isobel asleep in the bedroom, I took up my guitar and completed the song.

I once met a girl in a French Cafe

She sang with my guitar, sweet harmonies

We shared the moves till dawn, enchanted night

And together we wrote these words in song

So take this melody

And play it around the world, tonight

Take this melody and play it around the world

'Cause the feeling inside

Is the one between the lines

Take this melody, and play it all around the workl

Introspective lines they cut no ice

Harmony is the trigger of the song

Somewhere in the night there's a radio

Somewhere in the night there's a love of mine

As was the case whenever I completed a new song, I became flushed with excitement about its prospects. I committed it to tape immediately, imbuing its production with my usual Byrdsian touches of high harmonies, droning guitars and counterpoint bass. However in 1987, this type of production was anachronistic. The fashions were ever changing from disco to west-coast to punk . . .

I sent it away, listening to its gentle impact inside countless letter boxes. And back it came, its homing instinct stronger than any racing pigeon. Take this melody had received short shift from the London music publishers. I was well used to this boomerang effect of my tapes. I'd sent out a steady stream of packages over my time in London and I was well accustomed to failure. Each defeat exacted a toll, perhaps even more so with the passage of time. Even my sole success, the uptake by a publisher of Best of both worlds had come to naught. In the end they hadn't managed to place the song. Whenever the mailbox revealed its unwanted content, my heart would sink - the day would be wrecked, a black cloud enveloping and settling upon my tormented mind. The size and shape of the returned package would give the game away – the dreaded form of a packaged reel to reel tape. I would try to talk myself up, dreaming up a make-believe circumstance whereby, yes, a tape was returned; but accompanied by an acceptance letter – perhaps accompanied by a big wad of documents - a contract to take to my lawyer. But that scenario was illogical - why would they send the tape as well? Surely, if they loved it, they would want to keep it, to reproduce it, and thrust it upon some burgeoning singer. Always, my supposition was correct. The tape would be accompanied by a rejection letter.

"What are you looking so depressed about?" Isobel asked, closing the door behind her.

I explained the sense of failure I was feeling after the return of my song.

"You would choose the hardest market to crack." We went through to the kitchen, scraping back two chairs to sit on.

Later, wreathed in the smoke of successive joints, she came across to me, lying her forearms across my shoulders, a cheek abutted against my forehead. "You can take me out," she said. "I want to hear some music."

It was good to get out of the nagging wind and into a tube station. She clung to my arm like the truelove of lost John Riley. "I'll get a Time Out," I slurred, swinging her around towards a news-stand. We hovered under a fluorescent bulb, laughing uncontrollably as we leafed through the magazine.

"Lemme have a look," she demanded, grappling with the loose pages. At last we found something suitable; The Rain Parade playing the Hammersmith Odeon.

There was a shout – the news-stand operator wanting money for the magazine. Isobel thrust it back into his grasp. "We don't want it now," she said.

On the tube-train, we carried on the frivolity. Isobel opened up to the silent audience caged in the flying carriage. I was watching the faces. Some were amused, others turned away in disgust. Most looked wary or bemused. I was happy to get out of the underground without an incident. Isobel in this mood was a liability. Up on the street it was cosmopolitan – groups of youths skylarking along the streets. There were plenty of New Zealand and Australian accents. Hammersmith was an Antipodean collection point.

In the Odeon, the front half of the floor was already packed with youths with their uniform of faded jeans, leather jackets and long straggly hair. We hung about at the back, smoking the joints and loosely dancing to the music blaring from the speaker stacks. As usual the roadies took an age to set up. Eventually the lights went down and a voice boomed out. 'Would you welcome from Los Angeles California . . . The Rain Parade.' We screamed and shrieked with the rest of them, Isobel pumping a fist to the sky. We didn't know many of the songs, but the compositions were adventurous, and the sound was Byrdsian – garnering a huge tick from me. Isobel was far away. Her eyes were closed and her body swayed – as happy as I'd ever seen her. It made me realise that total distraction gave her some sense of equilibrium - by drugs, by music, by sex? On the way back I suggested she get into playing music herself. "It's so therapeutic," I said. Singing with a guitar – it always feels good. And you might get obsessed with it – take your mind off other things." She agreed it was worth a try. She loved music. Perhaps the forced piano lessons of her youth had put her off.

One day we travelled to Kew, Isobel was looking better. We'd scaled the dope back to every second day and her methadone was similarly reducing. She was learning some chords with my guitar. She seemed pleased with these achievements. She was more like the childhood Isobel with the impish smile in the slightly plump face. I flashed back to the burnt sienna hair, the dash of freckles - preferable to the blonded straw and pallor of today.

We wandered off into the gardens, along winding pathways surrounded by splashes of bright colour. Presently Isobel led me to a patch of vibrant green mossy grass. We lay on our backs and gazed at the uncommonly blue sky.

"The weather Gods have been kind to us today," I said.

I felt fingers digging into my proximal bicep. "I love coming here, to this patch of grass. Do you know why? It reminds me of the Travers valley, the meadow where we often camped and played together as kids. It's the smell of this grass I think, there's something familiar about the smell."

I inhaled deeply, drawing the fragrance deep into my lungs. "That's amazing, "I said. "I thought only I remembered that . . . It's the moss in the grass," I said.. "It's got that peaty smell." We lay in companionable silence for quite some time. The sun was warm. For a moment I felt I was back there in the valley, lying with the sister, the promise of life and love ahead, while around us a summer wind gently stroked the longer tussocks.

As if reading my thoughts, she produced her own summation of things. "You only get one chance at life. I haven't made a very good fist of it really. I don't know why, but I rebelled against everything when I was a teenager. It tends to happen anyway at that age but I just seemed to need to take it to its fullest extent. Maybe it was having a father like Graham. He was so over-bearing and seemed to represent all that was wrong with his generation." She had rolled onto a side to face me, her head resting on a cupped hand, the supporting elbow buried in grass. Her face was relaxed, almost benevolent looking, as though she was quite at ease with herself. "It was so cool to be involved with drugs. We thought it was going to be a new way of living – drugs, peace, music . . . I was easy pickings for Junot. He just fed me the stuff and even though he was consuming as much or more than I was, I was the one who got addicted. How do you explain that?"

"I guess you were born that way. Ripe for physical and psychological addiction."

We got up and walked hand in hand back to the train, through the hordes of tourists and Londoners, who like us, had enjoyed a sunny day in the park. "You got to never touch the stuff again – once you've had your last puff," I said.

"It's gonna be tough," she said.

"You need a consuming interest," I said. "Something to get out of bed for . . . maybe the music - or to be consumed by someone perhaps."

"You're lucky you have the music," she said. "I hope I get hooked as well."

"And I've got to give the music everything I've got for a while," I announced. "And that means ditching this hospital job and living like a bohemian."

Isobel laughed. "My God, what will Graham Davenport think of that?"

Chapter 3

I searched the horizons for land but it remained elusive. Around me there was focused activity as passengers began to ready themselves for arrival. I allowed my mind to drift back. There was this triumphant recent past. It had all happened in Vancouver. Rembrandt and Gunn were the catalysts. This duo, perennial middle of the road specialists, had propelled my song to the top of the Canadian charts. And subsequently to number eight in the U.S. Their new album, Between the lines, was a slow starter that had grown into a colossus – a big, big earner. It had hung around the upper reaches of the charts for months, bit by bit accumulating sales and garnering me welcome royalty fees for my two contributions Take this melody and Force of nature..

"You don't need a regular job anymore man," my agent had said. And when an invitation came from Rembrandt and Gunn's producer to go to Vancouver and discuss possible song contributions to their next album, I booked to go without hesitation. And I searched for and found that bit of scrap paper with Joanna's address on it.

The Eastern Seaboard emerged from the haze, its appearance a jolt, even though I had been expecting to see it any minute. I shouldn't have been so effected - the pilot had only a few minutes earlier announced we were fifteen minutes from landing. The plane was tipped forward in sluggish descent. I conjured the image of it hanging in the sky, flaps down - an ungainly colossus gliding downward. I altered the hands of my watch, dispensing with London's time. I twisted the knob, rotating the hands to show 9:15 a.m, the 11th of July 1987.

In the city, each time I saw a flash of blonde hair. I startled . . . Each woman was Joanna . . . for just a few milliseconds. I entered the lobby of the Hotel Granville. The reception staff were arguing. They were young males, thin, mobile, irreverent. One was Asian, thick glasses and inscrutable – another lanky with a ponytail. They helped me find her address on the map. It was a long shot. I didn't know if she was back from Europe yet, or whether she'd be staying with her parents if she was back, or whether she might already have a job and be at work. But at a minimum I wanted to see where she lived.

The mid-morning air was crisp, the white sky indistinguishable from the snows of Grous Mountain across the bay. The ferry churned through the sea, the throb of its diesel motor pulsing up my legs – up the axis of my body. Throbbing into an already throbbing bowel, an organ in aggravation. Once on the other side I began the long climb into the suburbs, up a long straight avenue, house after opulent house - all designer homes - log cabins, adobe bricks or modern aluminium.

She opened the door and we barely looked at each other. We were enclosing arms and fragrant perfume. Then I stood back and there she was, the long blonde hair, the stone washed jeans and bangles jangling on her fret-board arm. She jerked me away from my jaw dropped paralysis. She gave a firm tug on my closest arm. "Come on Gerry, you must have lots to tell me."

The trouble was \- I didn't have much new to tell. The last eight months . . . a myopia . . . Byrdmania! However it was easy to explain it to this woman of music. That each day had been much the same, a dream state from which I expectantly awaited release. When I had walked onto the streets, I was McGuinn, rectangular sunglasses, skin tight jeans and winkle-pickers. I was the creator of songs and a production man to boot. I produced a jingle-jangle sound, with melancholic layers of vocal harmony. Counterpoint was my thing; in the notes of the bass guitar, in the structure of the vocal harmonies and in the wandering guitar lines. I was 1966 in 1987. If only the people would come back and join me. The demo-tapes kept coming back - the same rectangular brown paper packages. Sorry sir, not this time. Not any time.

We had to get accommodation once I quit the hospital – for both of us. Isobel got work in a bar and we were able to share a tiny room in the back of the hotel's second floor. The Governor thought we were a couple and we didn't disabuse him. Our lair, was only slightly better than Isobel's room in Putney. After breakfast, I ascended the stairway, and in that barren room I would sit, hunched, bent over a curvaceous polished body – my guitar, my fingers making intricate patterns between buried metal frets, the plucked strings ringing - resonating. Harmonically I was a master of the unexpected minor, carefully placed to bridle with hurt. And when the tape machine was whirring, its red light glowing upon a black aluminium facade, I rejoiced in my own expressionism, carried into a trance of rapture by my own harmonic effects.

Joanna smiled, a happy for me sort of smile. Behind her, beyond the large double glazed window, the harbour and Vancouver peninsular looked dull and cold beneath a grey sky. "So," she said. "You've made it. What a fantastic story." She shifted on the long beige window seat. "Are you in a relationship?" she asked - "or just beholden to your sister?

It was my turn to smile in a knowing way. I looked at the floor. "Well yes . . . but nothing of any substance. I'm going out with my guitar!"

She laughed, showing those pearly white teeth. "Me too." she said.

She had only just gotten back from Europe the week before, her musical tour on hold as she took a break in her parent's home. And her boyfriend, a consort of the last few years (when she was home), had taken umbrage when Joanna had told him the truth. Yes she had had a relationship in Europe.

She took me on a tour of the house, more to look at the different views of the city form each room than to marvel at the architecture. In a downstairs bedroom, the haunt of some unwitting visitor, my reaching hand strayed onto her beckoning shoulder and she was turned in a flash, her face raised, her pressing hip bones enclosing my lower body - leaving no doubt that the eight months of dreaming was over. My eyes focused on the bright colours of the duvet. It was a montage of primary colours, a warm contrast to the greyness outside and an appropriate underlay to the carnal pleasure being taken above. Casting my gaze down the length of our bodies, I fixed upon Joanna's flesh colour - the small part that was exposed between her slipped down jeans and her woolly jersey. Over the eight preceding months I couldn't bring myself to contemplate such a moment. Its arrival lifted off layers of defensive exterior, garnered month upon month - ever since one night, many moons ago, above a French cafe.

A while later she made me sing the song that had brought us together again. Not in the way I had envisaged – her hearing it on the radio. That would have been too much of a fairy tale. But it had brought me to Vancouver.

'I once loved a girl in a French cafe

She sang with my guitar sweet harmonies'

I sang the words hesitantly, my voice cracking and seeming to sound absurdly nasal and adolescent. I carried on - my song to commemorate that really great moment of my life when music and love had blended into a balmy French night. I could feel her watching me, and when I chose to look up from my head down performance, her face was beatific. Some of my crippling self consciousness vanished and my voice evolved into something more potent, the origin of the words now lying deep inside my chest.

'Somewhere in the night there's a radio

Somewhere in the night, there's a love of mine.'

"I love it," she said. There were tears forming in her eyes.

"I wanted you to hear it . . . To hear it from some crackling transistor radio . . . and for you to recognise it, to understand it . . . To know it was for you." I was drunk in an artistic fervour. At last – recognition! The art of love!

There was no turning back from that moment. We had found our Utopia. Ourselves! And settling back into restful bliss, our coffees aromatic on a table, I filled her in on Isobel's struggle – the half won struggle. "She's off everything now. But, I wouldn't say she was happy . . . It makes me worry there'll be a relapse."

"Well," she said. "Why don't you both come out here? To VC. This is where your music scene is now. And Isobel might get a new lease of life . . ."

I stood up and walked to the bay window. The city, the mountains, the Canadians, Joanna . . . I could see all of those things – that they could all do something good for Isobel. It seemed all to clear to me what to do.

.

The next morning I went and met Levi who had produced Rembrandt and Gunn's album. I first met him at the CBS studios, deep inside a network of corridors and rooms that constituted the basement floor. He peered at me over sawn off spectacles, his long grey hair pulled back into a ponytail.

He took out the reel to reel tape of my demo songs that had found its way to him and spliced it onto his machine. We listened as my rendition of Take this melody permeated the room. My voice sounded absurdly basic. I longed for the first overlay of harmony to come, to swamp the highly personal vocal. It came and he smiled and said, "David Crosby harmonies eh?" The track began to replay, but slower this time, my voice now a low rumble. "Great song," he said. "But you got the genre wrong on your demo. Your production was a bit left-field man. Lucky for you I recognised in the bare bones a great adult contemporary song."

I smiled too. I couldn't have cared less which genre was mooted. It was the crowning moment - an industry man had listened to my track and had said 'great song.'

He relaxed back, putting his feet up on the mixing consol and rolling a joint. "We got Rembrandt and Gunn recording that straight away because they were right here doing sessions for the album. I just went in ran the song past them." A match flared and for a moment his face was coloured by a flickering orange light.

Rembrandt and Gunn? I had never heard of them before I got the good news but North America was a huge market with lots of players.

He blew out a decelerating plume of smoke and offered me the joint. "Course we had to change the harmony – to one-three. Your harmonies are way to clever for the average punter. I gotta think that you're some kinda Byrd's freak huh? With harmonies like that!"

I nodded and grinned, wallowing in the pleasure of recognition. "So a one-five interval is left field, and a one-three interval is right field?

"Yeah," he said. "Right field makes the money."

"So REM for example? That's left-field harmonies," I said.

"Left field production too," he said.

"Indiscernible left-field words."

"And left-field sales," he said - "practically zero." But in that example, he was proved to be wrong.

Chapter 4

It was the smell that really got to me. I have found that of all the five senses, the sense of smell is the most potent stimulus of nostalgia. Of course there is music. Certainly music can be very evocative, perhaps the equal of smell. But this time, there was no music. Rather, it was the reek of decaying beech leaves strewn upon the pathway. It was the odour of spongy deep green moss, the stuff that clung to the trackside boulders in the shadows. The potency varied. Sometimes it was soft and fragrant, while at other times it was pungent, almost nauseating, like an outdoor latrine on a hot day.

I let Graham drift ahead, allowing myself to dwell inside my memory-bank. I imagined the straight back of Richard, a few paces behind his father. And some distance behind him, just ahead of me, Isobel, the burnt sienna hair bouncing off her shoulders, her fertile mind probably racing ahead in time to the time when she would be free. Thus, I let the returning memory flood right through me. I didn't try to suppress it at all. I let it consume me - burn a hole through me, right to the core. I wanted to plumb the very depths of nostalgia, and then as a result, perhaps move on quickly - like a double bottom in the stock market. The innocence of her youth, the curvature of her profile, the unblemished skin, the bounce in her step. Once upon a summer's day, she was really here, moving dreamily along this very segment of track. Now she was only a strand of thought, randomly evoked by the smell of some rotting leaves and a pungent bank of moss.

I came out onto an open grassland. Years before, freehold ranchers had run sheep there until the environmental lobby had risen up and sent them packing. The years of grazing had forever changed this tract of valley floor. Instead of Beech forest, the track upon which I walked was like a baked clay ditch, bisecting tinder dry grass-flats. Pockets of flax, wind seeded thistle plants and old burnt out tree stumps dotted the landscape. Unprotected from the heat of the sun, I hung my head and pulled the brim of my sunhat down over my forehead. A familiar warm wet area was developing where the backpack rode against my shirt. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of Graham's orange sunhat, far ahead, rising and falling with his gait. He was a good three or four minutes ahead of me. Although crossing the grass flats was tedious and uncomfortably hot, I had my memories to help pass the time. I was thinking of Julia in the arms of a dashing young lawyer - the ripped away man in the photograph wearing the white suit. The vision pleased me so much that I found myself smiling.

"What are you grinning about?" The voice shattered my daydream. Graham was sitting on a fallen tree-stump. Behind him, the track entered the forest, a dark hole in a wall of shimmering green. The trek across the flats was over. The promise of a cooling umbrella of leaves, lay ahead of us.

"Nothing much," I said, perching onto the same log, but some metres distant from Graham. Nowadays we both seemed to need a large personal space when in the company of each other. We snacked on milk-chocolate and raisons. Graham rested against a walking-stick he had fashioned out of a fallen branch. I watched the swollen red face discreetly, the ruddy jaws working slowly on a slab of chocolate. I wondered if he ever thought much about Julia's ex-lover, somewhere out there in the world. I imagined that he almost certainly did, and that those kind of thoughts made him grumpy. I was momentarily tempted to say, 'I know about the philandering bastard old-boy.' Naturally I didn't, or rather I could not. All those years of avoiding controversy! Graham had trained me well. His hand in my upbringing, was now providing him protection from an embarrassing airing of my run-away thoughts.

The break over Graham rose to his feet, staggering under the weight of his camel coloured backpack. "Ïnto the woods," he said and he lumbered on towards the dark opening, his boots squeaking on the sun baked clay. I sat for a few moments, allowing him to draw well ahead. I wanted to wallow on in nostalgia uninterrupted. I wanted to conjure up my picture of Julia, young and happy, her eyes alive in the company of the handsome suitor. For a whole year, 1953 – the year of the Coronation, the year Hillary stood upon Everest – that was the time of the secret love affair.

I burst out into sunlight. A corrugated meadow lay before me. The lime green tussocks shimmered under a fanning wind gust. A bumblebee hovered. The river sparkled. I left the track and crossed to a shallow gully, stopping above it to gaze into the hollow. I could almost convince myself that the grass was still flattened - that our bodies had only just arisen - that Graham had only just appeared above us and we had broken from our clasp, to run, me to the riverbank, Isobel to the woods. I turned to look at the stand of forest into which she had entered. Of course, even after fifteen years, it was indistinguishable from its former self. Native forests don't change much over fifteen years. But people do. For a moment I imagined the youthful Isobel re-emerging, her shiny hair catching the last rays of a setting sun. But of course it was now 1985 and Isobel was quite different now.

Graham was waiting at our old campsite. He was sitting on a log, the same old gnarly log he'd sat on preparing sausages all those years before. He was munching on Julia's sandwiches. And as he proffered one in my direction, his face unturned from its navel gaze, all I could think of was how little Graham had changed as a person. Still there was the bluster – the reverence of medical science – the astonishment at the ways of the younger generation. The enigma of Francis Urquhart and Julia's love for him was on the tip of my tongue. But when I looked at him again, he was smiling. He was smiling at me and my words jammed in my throat.

"This is the life," he said.

I nodded dumbly and returned a weak grin. I was feeling humbled. This was my father, apparently enjoying himself in my company – despite my unwanted career move. I coughed and stood up, walking away a few metres, as if noticing for the first time some sub-alpine plant. I castigated myself for succumbing to feeling grateful for a few seconds of paternal warmth. But here it was again – all these years later – an example of how the remote outdoors seemed to bring Graham off his lofty perch.

An hour later we were crossing the Travers River, a hundred metres downstream from the John Tait Hut. The river was running low, not much more than knee height. We crossed independently, barefooted, our boots held aloft above the freezing water. It was a stark contrast to the river conditions we would encounter twenty-four hours later.

On the other bank there was a grassy ledge – beyond that, a wall of native bush, rising abruptly into the eastern sky. I sat on the damp grass of the ledge, sand-flies attaching onto my skin, as I rubbed life back into my freezing toes. I felt a stirring of resolve. The next few hours would be tough. There was no track up the mountain, just an energy sapping slog up through loose earth, fallen branches and seeded undergrowth. For every step forward, there was going to be a compensatory manoeuvre backward, as a foot smashed through a brittle branch, or slipped on the friable ground.

We had to climb in sight of each other, in case one of us should slip and become injured. And there was always a possibility of the lone climber becoming disorientated and lost. Everywhere there were ribbed trunks of beech-trees, becoming more stunted with altitude, but useful to grab hold to maintain balance. Such was its density, there w as little to see beyond the bush canopy. Occasionally, if there was a small breech in the greenery, I would catch a glimpse of the craggy tops across on the west side of the valley. Overhead, gaps with hazy afternoon sky, were like scattered marks of paint, under an over-painting of multilayered greens.

It wasn't long before Graham's chest was heaving with oxygen debt, the rush of air an audible oscillation as he ascended up behind me. If I halted in my climb and listened, I would hear the sounds of his tortuous ascent – the breathing, the snapping sound of breaking wood, the crumping sound of breaking earth.

Surreptitiously I studied the crimson face, blanched by the rigors of endurance. This was the very man, who had set the trap . . . to catch out Julia - to get a measure of revenge.

We breached the bush line at five o'clock. My spirit soared, like an eagle on a rising thermal. My view abruptly unobstructed, I scrambled up a pelt of snow grass, seeking a few more metres of height. Stopping, I turned to face the western skyline, the stunted beech trees now a ragged line, well below me. And there they were, a triumvirate of soaring peaks – Travers, Cupola, Hopeless. As a child I had idolised them, the big three of the valley. Our valley! My valley. Now of course I had them in perspective. Hadn't I seen the mighty Himalaya? But the dreams of youth have a permanence that cannot be suppressed.

A nostalgia that was buried for years, now had come to life again. Below me, way way below, the river was snake like, broken up in places by slashes of sparkling white rapids. And from the steep hanging wooded slopes opposite, there came a muffled roar of falling water – the sound of a concealed waterfall, the noise phasing in and out like a short wave radio signal.

From below came the crashing sound of someone struggling up through loose undergrowth. Graham had reached the bush-line. We found a small plateau and set about pitching the tent and lighting a fire to. I had some trouble getting the fire started. Momentarily the initial flame would flicker and die before popping back into life. This flickering happened in machine-gun like bursts, until a more solid fire took hold, folding itself around the larger pieces of wood. Blue smoke poured forth into the crisp night air, the colour indistinguishable from the fading hue of the sky behind. I was concentrating on the flame, an avenue of escape from the bombast emanating from my companion. Graham was tired after the climb. It had been at the limit of his endurance and consequently he was irritable. He fumbled about amongst the cooking utensils, unearthing the frying pan and billy. Someone would have to go and find water, he announced. I volunteered immediately. He was quite clearly anergic and I was eager for some solitary time away from him.

I travelled north along the bush-line. Because our campsite was on a promontory, I had to traverse quite a distance to find a gully that carried any fresh water. The light was fading fast. The air was remarkably free of the flying beetles and sand-flies that dominated dusk in the valley. It was too high for them - too cold. I scrambled down into the gully. It took an age for the billy to fill – the water flow in the creek not much more than a trickle. Two paradise ducks flew overhead, crying out as they ascended the valley. I raced up the side of the ravine in order to follow their progress. Soon the diminishing dots were lost amongst the background of silent rocky peaks.

The return journey was slow, for fear of spilling water. As I got close to the campsite, Graham was not discernible in the low light. "You make Geoffrey Boycott look like a greyhound." his voice greeted me. Ah, that was him, the familiar voice at the door of the tent. I ignored the comment and set about dividing the water into separate containers - some for vegetables, some for dessert, some for coffee. I ripped open a packet of freeze dried vegetables and tipped the contents into the designated container. Graham switched on a torch, illuminating the frying-pan containing half a dozen sausages. I felt pleased to see them there. I was getting pretty damned hungry. He squatted down by the fire, the light from the flames dancing across his face. Soon the oil in the pan was sizzling and popping. I went over and placed the pot containing the vegetable mix onto a glowing patch of embers beside the sausage pan.

"So it's been a good year for you," he said, his eyes fixed on the pan.

I was taken aback. I wasn't expecting much interest in my affairs. Perhaps Julia was right. The mountains were going to be good for him. I did nothing more than acknowledge his statement. I didn't want to provoke him into some judgemental rant.

"Have you a contract with a record company?" he asked.

"No, but the door's open, so to speak. Once you've published successfully, then they're more likely to be interested in your work."

He said no more for a couple of minutes. I stirred the vegetable mix. Bits of ash and bark were floating on the surface. I heard him clear his throat. "Mind you," he said, "It can't be hard to write those pop tunes. There's nothing to them. Three minutes of noise."

Once again, words hung between us, this time like an unexploded fire-cracker. I could have let the taunt slip by without a response. I could have let it disintegrate amongst the crackling and hissing of the night fire. But I didn't.

"No that's not right," I said. "Getting a song published is extremely difficult. There are hundreds of talented composers all competing in the marketplace . . . And the reality is . . . a classical piece is merely a whole lot of three minute songs run together. There's enough melody and harmony packed onto an album like Sergeant Pepper to put many a classical score to shame." I used Sergeant Pepper as an example because I knew he had been exposed to it.

He laughed and reached behind to pick up a piece of wood - a long dead branch. He snapped it across a knee, the abrupt retort sounding across the promontory like a gunshot. "That's an insult to all the great composers," he said feeding the two halves of his anger into the fire. "If you think the Beatles or any of those other hairy fellows compare with Beethoven, Bach or Mozart, then you are completely deluded."

"Actually all the classical composers were hairy fellows to," I said. I don't think he'd ever thought about that because he seemed unable to respond. I knew all about his monocular view of music. I pressed on, seeming to have the advantage. "No, I'm not deluded," I said. "These composers are merely living in different times, with different fashions and a different marketplace. Obviously with ten times the population, there must be much more talent around now than there was in Beethoven's time. It's ludicrous to think that all the great music was composed two hundred years ago."

"Utter baloney!" he announced. "Where is all this great music? I haven't heard any."

"It's the production you don't like. You don't like the rhythm, the electric guitars,

the heavy bass. Those things aren't the composition. The composition is the melody and the harmony."

"I know what the composition is," he said, sounding annoyed.

"Those sausages are burning," I said, my voice plump with antagonism.

He looked at me for a few loaded seconds before whipping the hot pan away, poking at the resisting sausages with a spatula. When they were all unstuck, he ladled them onto the two plastic plates. I went over with the vegetable mix. I had little idea whether it was ready or not, but I felt we needed a diversion - to be occupied with eating. His face was getting a really petulant look. I tipped some of the steaming mix onto each plate, his torch beam angled through the steam cloud like a searchlight. "So," he said at last. "What was your song worth?"

I sensed a trace of amusement in his voice. What he meant was, 'how much do they pay you for a piece of garbage, this thing that one could knock up in half an hour.' I was careful with my answer. I explained how the royalty was a percentage of each unit sold. Therefore my income was related to the total number of units sold. "It could take years before sales dry up – especially since the song is included on an album."

He had lowered himself onto a round boulder near the fire and was spooning the mixture into his mouth. The fire flared up momentarily and I could clearly see his facial expression. There was sanctimony written all over him as he spoke. "So meanwhile you can just sit on your bottom and do nothing. Well it's an easy life, I'll grant you that."

What a man I thought. I'll play your game. "Yeah it is easy, it's great," I said. I knew that casual affirmation of an easy life would annoy him.

He paused in his eating, his fork stopping halfway between plate and mouth. "Well, fabulous if you're happy with a life based around creating frivolous entertainment," he said. "You could have had a career in a hallowed profession saving peoples' lives. But no, you walked away from that. Good God, you were almost there – one exam away." The fork moved upward, depositing food into a satisfied mouth. He munched away seemingly anxious to swallow the food so that he could continue the sermon. "At least Richard stayed with the game. He didn't specialise, but he's still in the game. But you were on a specialist program, almost there, and you through it away." He waved his knife and fork in the air to emphasise his incredulity.

The resurrection of Richard was unexpected – the exposure of the son who had become an enigma for Graham. To go into that area would be interesting. Richard had almost certainly not fulfilled the promise Graham had seen in him. Richard had been earmarked as the surgeon in waiting – the one to follow directly in his surgical footsteps. Richard, when I had visited him in Australia, was so much at peace with himself and the past. In the outback he had acres of land. His backdrop was very much scattered eucalyptus and dusty fields. We had swum then fished for cat-fish in a languid river that bisected his property. Richard looked much the same as he did in the sixties and was of similar disposition. But he'd drawn a line in the sand. He'd rejected Graham's world and was now a different person with a mind of his own.

I tipped the remnants of my meal into the fire. The residue hissed amongst the glowing embers. "So, Dr Davenport has spoken," I said. I turned my face away to hide burgeoning laughter

"It's Mister Davenport actually."

"Oh of course! Mister Davenport! What a basic mistake. Surgeons are not mere doctors are they. They're much more holy than that."

He laughed uproariously at that and stood up to tidy up. At least he wasn't malignantly ramming his beliefs down my throat. He did seem determined nevertheless to make out that I was a failure. To him, his specialist medical degree was everything. And it was quite an achievement. Yes he could claim that. But as a human being? He was still at elementary school. Where was his humility? Patience? Tolerance? Empathy? You name it, he didn't have it. I looked back into the soft glow of the fire. I could sense him moving about, tidying up the campsite before bed.

When he came back to the fire his mood had changed. He was suddenly magnanimous. He was sorry he had run down my achievement. He was pleased I had picked myself up off the canvas and achieved something at last. It couldn't be easy living in the shadow of a medical family. All he wanted was for me to appreciate was the greatness of medical science. We were all dwarfed by its magnificence. It was an absolute privilege to be a small cog in the great wheel. Sure, I had missed the boat somewhat. The opportunity to climb aboard had been there. But not everything goes to plan. I wasn't to feel belittled. He merely wanted me to see what was possible. Medicine! It was the past, present and future.

I listened to his monologue with growing incredulity. How could one person be so narrow? I wanted to grab him by the lapels of his oilskin and shake him. Wake up man! The thought of doing it, almost had me laughing out loud. I couldn't help but to bait him some more. He was sitting back down on his rock, a smattering of dying embers all that remained of the fire's former glory.

"It's good that people are trained up to look after the health of the community," I said. "But the actual job itself – surgeon – anyone with moderate intelligence and dexterity could do it."

I watched his face transform – he was speechless, incredulous. I carried on.

"That's the difference between what I've done and what you've done. Only a small percentage of the population have the talent to write music whereas just about anyone could do the work of a surgeon."

My words untapped a speech that he'd been dying to unveil all evening. It was myself and my generation who copped it. The sixties' youth were blasted for diverting a whole generation away from self discipline, and from service to the country. The failure of the Vietnam War was our fault. Then I was roasted for lacking spine - for giving up competitive sport at an early age - for following a music culture that revered idleness, sex and drug taking - for failing to carry forward the family medical tradition, after getting into a position to nail a specialist qualification. Finally, I had failed to keep Isobel away from the tentacles of the drug culture despite living in the same city as her when she succumbed to temptation. This last assertion was astonishing and also ludicrous. So absurd it was, that he finally succeeded in getting under my skin.

"How the hell has Mum put up with you all these years? All those years of putting up with your big surgeon's ego. Mind you, she took a bit of time out didn't she."

He began a strange movement about the lips. They were pouted, but pulsing in and out like the gills of a goldfish. His decorum was completely gone. He picked up a flaming log and hurled it down the slope. It was completely dark by now and the impact of the missile with the tussock slope produced a spectacular eruption of flaming sparks.

"I won't have that brought up," he shouted. "How in hell do you know about that?"

"You're a nut case," I said getting up. I began to walk away from him around the slope to the north. Behind me he seemed to go berserk, hurling the half burnt timber from the fireplace down the hill. I stopped to watch. The rush of air across the flying debris set some of them flaming, bathing the promontory with orange light. When the timber had run out I carried on. I could hear him ranting away in the dark but the words were indistinct. I figured we were going to have to spend the night apart. There was no way either of us would tolerate the other's presence that night.

I walked for ten minutes or so, eventually coming upon the gully where I had obtained water earlier. I crossed this creek and kept going. When the light from the camp fire was hidden behind the crest of the ridge, I dropped down into the depth of the forest. The forest floor was pitch black and uninviting, with a plethora of tree roots making for an uneven surface. Eventually I found a small knoll that had a flattish surface. I began collecting dry moss and lichen, the latter obtained from the bark of trees. When there was sufficient for a comfortable mattress, I lay down to sleep. Fortunately it was a reasonably warm night otherwise I would have had to go back to the tent. Even so, it wasn't a totally peaceful sleep. I was annoyed with myself for getting into the row with Graham. He wasn't going to change so what was the point? I awoke many times and I gave up trying to get back to sleep at five o'clock. I unwound from my foetal position and climbed out of the forest. The eastern sky was already awash with a pink glow. I climbed straight up the grassy slope above me. After gaining some two hundred feet in altitude, I sidled around to the south eventually coming to a point directly above the campsite. I settled down there for a while, watching the morning sun paint the mountain tops across the valley. I would have to go down and face him eventually.

Chapter 5

He emerged from his tent at ten to six, stumbling about the campsite, yawning and stretching. At first he was preoccupied tidying up the plates and utensils left lying about from the evening meal. He stacked them all near the fire place. After that he went to the edge of the campsite and stood there, peering down the slope in the direction I had fled the previous evening. He looked north and south along the range, perhaps looking for movement in the tussocks. He didn't look upward. If he had of done so, he might have seen me, a dark silhouette, silent and still against a brightening sky. Eventually he walked off northward, along a contour not far above the bush-line. He didn't call out or make any attempts to locate me and I soon realised he was gathering wood for a fire.

I clambered down the grassy slope, moving carefully so as to not dislodge any boulders or stones. I came down behind the tent and stopped. I could hear his heavy breathing as he broke up sticks and bracken to feed the fire. He had his back to me so I stopped behind him and cleared my throat. At first I thought he hadn't heard me, but then slowly his head rotated my way. He scrutinised the dishevelled, red-eyed individual wordlessly. Then he smiled. He gestured up to the ridge line overhead. "We'd better get started," he said, "While the weather is still good." His face was impassive, his voice neutral, not rising or falling in pitch or volume. Despite the silence of the mountain arena, my head was buzzing noisily with its own traffic jam. He stood and pointed across to the western skyline. "It will pack up later by the look of it," he said. I followed the direction of his arm. The sky there had taken on a hazy appearance, like ground glass. There were streaks of pink and a background of menacing grey. He was right, before the day was through, it was going to turn dirty. After all that had happened, it felt ridiculous standing with him amongst knee high tussocks talking about the weather. To escape the awkward grip of the conversation, I turned back to the tent, scooping up things to put into my backpack. I needed to be active to deal with the madness. "You want porridge?" he asked, and I said yes, my mind dogged by images of the crazed man hurling flaming timber into the night sky.

We set off for the summit at seven, leaving a pile of gear under the limited protection of the skeletal trees at the bush-line. With the sullen sky as the backdrop, there was an eerie feel to the landscape as we moved higher. Graham, whistling an ancient jazz standard, settled in behind me, apparently content to allow the son to do the route finding. Firstly we needed to cross to the other side of the range, to attack the mountain from the east.

It took an hour and a half to get to the low point of the range above. To the north, a long jagged ridge rose toward the summit, guarding it from direct attack. We hadn't said a word on the climb, but Graham had continued to whistle and had moved along at good pace. As his breathing slowed, he spoke. "There's quite alot of altitude to lose before we can get below those bluffs." I nodded in agreement. We were going to have to descend below an enormous rock wall on the eastern flank of Cotterel. Beyond that, we knew there was a long scree slope ascending up the back of the mountain towards the summit.

In the summer of his first university year, Richard and I had found this route, too late on that particular day to have a tilt at the summit. We had stood at the base of the great rock wall, about five metres apart, the afternoon sun reflecting off the angular jumble of rocks that lay about us, gazing at the great length of scree slope that led towards a col on the east ridge of the mountain. Richard had turned towards me, a wan smile appearing on his face. "That's the way to the summit, no doubt. But it's too late for us." Behind me I had heard rocks turning over. Graham and Isobel were catching us up. I had fixed my gaze on that distant col, dreaming of the day that I would be up there, poised for success.

Graham and I started off down the slope, a shallow upper basin of shingle. Below us, two deep green lakes fed a dark creek. The water gathered speed before diving over a rocky ledge to fall unseen into the valley below. We traversed above these mini lakes, the slope steepening as we tracked below the great hanging east wall of the mountain. "Richard would love to be here today," I said, continuing my reminiscence aloud.

Graham's eyebrows abutted together across the bridge of his nose. He halted momentarily, poised on top of a large boulder looking across at me. "Yes I suppose he would," he said. "But you try and extract him from the outback."

We carried on downward, the surface becoming increasingly unstable as our boots slipped and sank into the loose rubble. The mobile surface seemed to drift down with us, filling the air with dust and our boots with stones. Graham was having trouble keeping his balance. His hooting laugh suddenly rang out, echoing off the overhang above. "Whoa there boy," he said, putting a hand out to arrest his fall.

"What about Mum?' I said," hell bent on making Graham feel uncomfortable.

Again, his eyebrows knitted, his breathing halted. He looked as though he was about to be shot. Of course he wasn't used to questions of a personal nature like these ones. I expected him to fob off the inquiry, to dismiss the intrusion with a another non-committal answer. Instead to my surprise, he engaged me. Perhaps his fireside tantrum of the previous evening had been cathartic in some way - unlocking the demons inside.

"She couldn't bear the isolation of it," he said, taking off a boot and emptying out a collection of stones. "Your mother has to be surrounded by people . . . cities . . . shops." He had his boot back on and was bent over lacing it up. "It hasn't been easy you know . . ."

We moved onward, coursing around the base of the bluff. We were hard up against this great buttress, able if necessary to reach out and touch the vertical rock for support. Graham was leading for the first time on the mountain. He seemed to have found an abundance of energy. I followed along, a good twenty metres behind, mulling over his comments. 'It hadn't been easy,' was his euphemism for years of accommodation. Of course he could only speculate on the amount of information I had on the Urquhart affair. I recalled the day he had overheard Isobel retelling Margo's story in her room all those years before. How long had he hung outside the door listening, filling up with unease before charging in? That was the day Isobel had decided to quit the family home for good. And why wouldn't she, after he had come in and acted out his Victorian patriarchal role.

We had almost turned the bluff by now. The steep scree that led up to the summit col was opening out before me. I caught up with Graham.

"This is where we got to last time," he said, his face a flaming red colour.

Momentarily I revisited my memory of Richard, his face breaking into that wan smile of defeat. But my mind was dwelling on other things. Margo's story. The affair. The flight of Francis Urquhart. And this man, standing just a few metres away from me, could tell me everything I needed to know. If only I could get into his head and find the answers.

"Well here we go," he said," into uncharted territory."

His face was a patchwork of crimson and yellow. He didn't look in very good shape all of a sudden, and yet, there was a softness to his expression, a face I had seldom seen before. It carried the suggestion of benevolence. And as we set off on the ascent, negotiating a slope of giant boulders, I began to probe him in a way I would never have dared before. I had to broach it in a round about way, so as not to enrage him and close him down. I went back to the question I'd thrown at him the week before, when in stony silence we'd sat in the Nile Street sunroom, waiting for Julia to bring tea. "So you're still doing some operating in private," I said, as if continuing the thread of that aborted conversation.

"Yes," he said sharply, seemingly irritated at having to answer the same question twice.

I carried on, asking about some of his colleagues, about the viability of the private operating facility, patient throughput - that sort of thing. He answered my questions in a guarded manner. After a while though, his tension eased a little. His answers became more animated, if somewhat pompous. I recalled the man I'd heard as a child, consulting over the telephone - the overbearing surgeon. He and I had rarely had an adult conversation like this before. It seemed almost surreal, as we walked up this narrowing canyon of rock walls and scree - Graham talking with me using his best professional voice. It couldn't last for long. Soon, surely he would become aware that I was humouring him. I had to strike quickly.

"Was Margo's husband a surgeon?" I asked, my words coming with a rush. At the time he was scrambling above me, over a particularly large and slippery boulder. I saw him lose his footing, one boot sliding off into the air above my head. He got down on his hands and knees, crabbing his way over the top. I followed him up in a rapid fluid movement.

"Of course not," he said, his brow again furrowed. "He was a lawyer."

"Where does he live now?" I continued, following right behind him, step for step, along an easy gravel bridge.

"No idea," he said curtly. "Timbuktu? Nobody knows . . . Last thought to be in Australia."

"You don't like him then?" I said, exploiting his flippant tone.

He stopped dead. The gravel bridge was giving way to a steeper pitch of loose rock. "Of course I don't like the man," he said. His brow was hooded like an eagle. Then he took a deep breath, letting his features relax slightly.

"Cause he was a friend of Mums?"

He laughed - a ferocious bark that reverberated off the enclosing walls of the slope. "A friend of Mums! How is that for understatement - friend indeed!" He was struggling for breath on the steeper incline. We seemed to be down to a snail's pace. "The man was very slippery. I don't know what she saw in him."

I moved up alongside him, scaling a large rock. Utilising the firmer position under my feet it only took a couple of steps and I was past him. "So how did you win her back? She left you for a while didn't she - to be with him."

"How the hell . . . ? Isobel! Is she the source of all this? . . . Isobel?" He said her name as if she were just living down the road. "Yes, they lived together for two months. Two whole months. And as I predicted - it wrecked his career. His clients left in droves. So the next thing was - he disappeared. He just didn't come home one night. Years later I heard he was in Australia.. . . Yes, he was as slippery as an eel that one. So your mother arrived back to my door."

We had stopped walking. We were both looking back down the slope, it being easier to talk to each other without eye contact. "Francis Urquhart dumped your mother, just as he'd dumped his wife. Don't bother trying to romanticise the guy. There were conditions on which I took Julia back. One was that she would give up on any notion of future contact with Urquhart. His name was never to be mentioned again. I was damned if I was going to live in his shadow for the rest of my life."

"I see," I said. I didn't know how to respond. He obviously considered himself the injured party. But it was Julia that I thought about. What kind of adjustment had she had to make to go back to Graham. Had she become happy again? Was she happy now? Had she sacrificed real happiness to give her children a conventional upbringing?

I began to climb furiously, scrambling up the remainder of the slope. Soon I had left Graham well behind. He became a slow moving dot, far below my feet. I didn't stop to wait for him. I drove on until my lungs were screaming – until a sharp pleuritic pain lanced across my chest wall. It wasn't news to me, all this. I'd heard it all before from Isobel in London. But there was infinite depth to the topic and I was eager to probe.

The scree slope terminated at a small col in the east ridge. I arrived there, indulging momentarily in the mini-triumph – to be so close to the summit. I could see the sandy-mount of the top, beyond the short reach of summit ridge. However an immediate problem was evident. The summit ridge appeared to be impassable

I put all this to the back of my mind as I returned to the near edge of the col and peered down the length of the scree. I could see him coming. He was still some twenty minutes away. I could imagine the heave in his chest, the temporal arteries pounding in his scalp, the pain in his calves. He was vulnerable below me. I could easily set a rock slide going - to make up for his fireworks of the previous evening. I imagined shouting out. 'Sorry old boy, I'm just emulating your tanty from last night.' But of course I didn't. It was at that moment the light weakened. The cloud was palpably thicker, lower, darker - closing in on the serrated ridges and peaks. It looked ominous.

When Graham arrived he was smiling. He seemed to have put aside the anger over Francis Urquhart. "We've almost beaten it," he said. He stopped just below me, hands on hips, breathing heavily. "Can you see a clear route to the summit? Can we make it." His voice was unusually high, betraying excitement. Just then a wind gust arrived. It tore up the gully from below, lifting Graham's jacket up so that it flogged like a collapsing spinnaker. There was an eerie whine as it roared across the col. In a second it was gone and the air was still.

"The actual ridge is impassable," I said, as he arrived up beside me. "But there's a possible route up that rock scramble to the right." Preoccupied with the vagaries of the route and the menace of the weather, I too was able to postpone the discussion on Francis Urquhart. We decided the rock scramble was the correct way up. The sandy-mount of the summit was so close, I felt I could spit up to it.

I set off over the col, traversing northward to the base of the rock scramble. The blood was running fast now. I sensed the dilated pupils and the acuity of my vision, the power of my limbs and the efficiency of my lungs. I set off up the face, scrambling up like a spider escapes rising bath-water. It was quite steep and much of the rock was loose.

I heard a wheezy voice behind me. "Steady on, I'm not so agile as I used to be." I stopped and waited, looking out to the east, across the vista of parallel mountain ranges filling the land between where I stood and the Kaikoura Coast. I noticed a very fine drizzle was beginning to fall. When Graham reached my position we surveyed what lay ahead Immediately above us, a small bluff impeded our path. There was a narrow chimney through the middle of it, the only option for a successful climb. It looked safe enough to me but Graham announced that he'd reached his limit and that he would return to the col and wait for me there. He turned away and begun to descend the mountain. The sound of loose rock dislodging under his feet mingled with the hiss of the thickening drizzle and the slow deceleration of my breathing. I turned my back on his diminishing figure and tried to ignore the inclement weather above. Mechanically I returned to the problem of the climb. I went at it with speed, wedging my way up, keeping my weight well into the slope. My lungs were stretching and contracting, the cool air burning in the upper reaches of my airways. Soon I was out of the chimney and an easy shingle slope lead to the summit. I whooped and hollered as I ran on to the sandy-mount, feeling a perverse guilt that Graham had missed out - although I knew he'd never have made it through the chimney. I thought of Joanna and Isobel, getting to know each other again in Vancouver, and how pleased they would be for me. I felt lucky.

The Travers valley would normally have been visible from the summit, but it was now obscured by mist. On a clear day, I would have been able to see our meadow, thousands of feet below.

There came a gust of wind and a heavy shower of rain drops. It flayed the exposed side of my face. I untied my rain jacket from around my waist, hauling it on, aware now of our precarious position. I raced off the summit, down the slight shingle slope to the top of the chimney. It looked much steeper from above and I was forced to lower myself into it backwards. My feet scrambled to find footholds, much of the weight of my body being taken by my arms. Once passed this obstacle I raced off down-hill, an angling traverse down and across to the col where Graham was waiting.

Gusting winds were testing the col also, it being a natural vent from south to north. We stood there, looking down the length of the scree slope, noting the looming curtains of rain, the scudding shards of mist that hurried and died in length of the gulley. It was a relief to leave the col, to drop onto the descending expanse of scree slope. Although the periodic wind gusts came to tear at our loose clothing, our limbs, and our hair - overall, within the confines of the falling canyon, the savagery of the weather was more remote. These spasms of weather did serve to remind me, there was a long way to go and I still had to help get a seventy year old man off a stormy mountain.

At first we both moved quite quickly, encouraged by the relative shelter of our enclosure and the feeling of safety it induced. After fifteen minutes of stepping and slipping down the multitude of boulders, I became aware of a leaching of drive, and I stopped, turning to check on Graham. I was alarmed to find that he had covered only half my distance. I watched his progress with consternation. He was gingerly negotiating each step one at a time, checking his slide by assuming a crouch position, one leg extended, the other tucked underneath. Sometimes, on steeper parts, he was turning 180 degrees to slip down backwards. As I stood there a squall came, splattering my back with heavy drops - a soaking and demoralizing rain. I ducked down beside an overhanging rock, an illusory shelter, no more than a metre high. The water cascaded off the tip of my nose as I twisted my face away from the onslaught. I waited in miserable meditation, my visual field bounded by the surfaces of interlocking rocks and a descending spout of water - a link between nose and earth.

I watched his slow progress and thought about his life and the philosophies that he lived by and how different they were from his children – even Richard. He'd never really adapted to life in the smaller city. He still had the air of a big city surgeon who placed himself high on a pedestal. I thought about our town – the sound of cicadas in its exotic trees, distant blue mountains across an expansive bay, and the sparkling blue sea lapping against the golden sandy beaches. Yes it was small; some 35,000 inhabitants, and there perhaps lay the problem. Graham; a Wellingtonian; had been forced to escape the bigger city – the hidden face of his marriage a private humiliation – and in doing so, had perhaps left behind the fruits of the major centre – the chance of an academic position, a place in the surgical college hierarchy, and the revenue of a metropolitan private practice.

He arrived at my position and I spoke. "I was just thinking . . . You've disliked having to work in Nelson, haven't you." His face was incredulity itself, but I pressed on anyway. "You wanted a career in the big smoke . . . But the Francis and Julia episode – they forced you out and sidelined you to the provinces." I carried on, battering him with my provincial theory, before trailing off as I watched his face become the colour of ivory and drawn, his two day stubble erect and soaked in dew.

"What on earth is bothering you at the moment," he said, shuffling up beside me. His hair was plastered flat, hanging off an oval skull in soaking adherent strands, rivulets of water streaming off each clump. "You seem hell bent on digging up all the families skeletons." he said. 'Why don't we talk about this later when we're off the mountain. Right now I've only got enough energy for putting one foot in front of the other."

I had to admit he didn't look too energetic. I could motor off the mountain in quick time, despite my aches and pains. I was prime of life material; a fizzing frame of aerobic muscle. "You go first then" I said. "So we don't get too far apart."

We negotiated our way past the bluffs of Cotterel's east wall and began the climb to the low point of the range above, from where we could descend to the Travers Valley below. Graham's progress was laborious but resolute. I guessed he would be glad when it was all over - although he did seem more animated out in the hills than he'd been back at home. I had done the trip for Julia more than anything else. What she had hoped to achieve, I didn't know. To help get Graham out of his depression? For the father and son to do some bonding? To give herself a break?

The top of the range was palpable now. A roar of wind signalled its proximity. I visualised our descent, down through steep snow-grass to find the protective cover of bush. And then the river crossing to the meadow.

Thinking of the meadow brought to mind Isobel. Yes, she too had remembered the meadow. There was nostalgia in the peaty smell of mossy emerald grass for both of us as I'd found out at Kew gardens. Who was responsible for her descent into drug addiction? Was it him up ahead, a figure going over the ridge top, his first encounter with the wind partially turning him, grabbing at his jacket, extracting the collar and flying it skyward. I followed him into this icy blast, my thoughts about Isobel not distracted by the physical assault. I paused on the ridge line, one foot on the east side, the other on the west side. The subject of my conjecture was dropping away below me, gingerly lowering into a swirling mist. I let him get a distance ahead. I wanted to have the illusion of being alone. I kept his shadowy figure just in view. With visibility poor, it would have been crazy to allow a separation to occur. As I dropped altitude, the drenching rains returned. I was now below the stratum of scudding clouds from which diagonal curtains of rain squalls hung, filling the river and its tributaries. I came over a knoll of grass and rubble to see below me the position of our campsite. And beyond that, the very depth of the valley filled with cloud – its anatomy concealed. Even so, my gaze was centred on the meadow, where I imagined it might be. I visualised once again the brother and sister, lying upon flattened grass, engulfed by a peaty fragrance, the brother watching the rise and fall of the sister's chest.

I came upon Graham at the bush-line, sheltering under the umbrella of leaves. "We're basically off the mountain now," I said.

He looked at me, a smile playing across his lips. He was probably thinking that I was going to start grilling him again. "Not quite," he said. "This is the soul destroying bit - all that banging and crashing through the bush."

He was right. A descent through steep bush was uncomfortable, a bone jarring exercise of weight transfer, with the added hazard of slippery ground underfoot - dead wood and loose earth. "OK let's get it over" he said. He shouldered the load and began to move off.

I got into step behind him, following down the undulating terrain, stepping on the same dead wood and earth broken by his footfalls. I spoke to the back of his neck

"Have you ever wondered why Isobel arrested in adolescence - why she changed from being a nice plump teenager to a cynical wastrel?" I stopped - an arm around a narrow beech trunk. Through a horizontal gash in the leaf canopy, I stared absently at a flight of mist.

H sighed "She was just impressionable that's all," he said. "She got caught up in your generations love affair with drugs."

We recommenced our descent without haste. We began descending a spur with steep drop offs on each side. "You don't think it was because of emotional trauma when she was very young – when your marriage was in disarray?"

He groaned. "What's all this psychology clap-trap you are pushing?" he said. "I know many perfectly stable families where one of the children has gone off the rails."

The rains came roaring down again, saving Graham from further inquisition. The bush hummed in the rain, it almost seemed to sing. The deluge roared on the canopy, while below, the filtered droplets played a backbeat, a hypnotic percussion - a multitude of rhythms coming in and out of focus as we carried on our way. And there it was again, that peaty, mossy smell. We were closing in on it again - the riverside meadow. I was closing in on her, Isobel and her adolescent charm. I stopped again to take her in. To close my eyes and see the face, a dash of freckles and an impish smile.

Chapter 6

I began to hear it, the roar of a river in flood, long before its milky surface emerged between the trees. The rain had eased to a monotonous drone, a continuous percussion on the overhead cover. Graham and I hadn't spoken again during the last of the descent.

There was that smell again - a dense peaty smell. I looked down between my legs. An outgrowth of moss filled a damp nook between two fallen trunks. And I had her there again, in my arms, plump, fourteen; the restless beat of her heart decelerating in the mossy grove. For a moment, the filling of the cup, almost to the rim. The rise and fall of her breasts - the sweetness of her breath. The gentle rush of a summer breeze, the transient flight of a beetle - the sharpness of the mountain range against the sky. And sisterly love \- her random kisses and enclosing body – laid all over me. But back at the fireside there was a contrast. My father and brother were cut from a different piece of cloth.

We were there now. I could see the tumble-down of water between the last lines of trees. There were fountains of spray leaping over slate grey rocks, twigs and beech leaves trapped in back eddies, and deeper smoother and altogether more menacing currents, relentlessly pouring downstream.

I forged my way through the last barrier, a soaking obstruction of hanging branches, vaulted over a decaying log, and emerged onto the ledge of riverside grass - a remnant of the river's eroding curve. Graham turned his head to look at me, his face displaying concern. "This is going to require a lot of care," he said, indicating the torrent that we had to cross with a wave of a hand.

I nodded and tried to turn my attentions to the river. But my mind was still in a ferment about Isobel and the part Graham might have played in her fall from grace.

I forced myself to deal with the crossing. Although swift and turbulent, it was not overly deep. I could see a route that was mostly not much more than knee deep. It was circuitous, involving a traverse of a ramp above the worst of the rapids, followed by a move directly upstream through a scramble of rocks. From there we would be in a position to take on a channel running beside the left bank. This channel was too far way to ascertain its depth, but I knew from previous experience that it would be at least waist deep. An errant branch off a young beech tree offered something to grip over the final couple of metres.

"How shall we do it?" I said, turning back to face him.

He continued to stare at the torrent. "We'd better link arms at the elbow," he said.

I bent down to tighten my gaiters, anticipating a cold flood of water into my boots. Straightening up, I gazed across the river to the meadow, It was dank and wet looking, the tussock grasses bent over under the weight of collected water. Puffs of mist hovered above the bordering forest, a blanket of foliage above an inscrutable darkness. I let my eyes linger on the elevated campsite, where many a time Graham had prepared the evening meal.

Graham was staggering to his feet as I refocused on the present. His feet, he planted wide apart for stability under his heavy backpack. We moved downstream a little, to gain a logical entry point to the riverbed. The bank had partly caved in there, allowing an easy passage. I led the way down onto the stones. The water was only centimetres deep at the edge and I splashed my way out. When the water tipped over the top of my boots, to flood the interiors with biting cold water, I stopped to wait for Graham to come and link arms. He thrust a hand inside the crook of my offered elbow, taking it back to enclose with his other hand. The water was quickly up to mid-thigh and tugged at us expectantly. I kept my feet apart, leaning into the current with my upstream leg. Whenever Graham staggered, a force came on to my elbow and I had to squeeze my interlocking fingers tightly together to prevent our linkage from springing apart. The river started getting shallower as we came up onto the ramp above the rapids relieving the pressure momentarily.

..We were now in about a foot of water. Below us, downstream of the ramp, the roar from the rapids was deafening. A fine cloud of spray hung above the maelstrom. I was walking directly upstream against the current, along the shallow under water island. There were frequent rocks and boulders to place a boot against for a measure of support. At the end of this immersed island, the final few metres to the bank didn't look far at all. However the volume of water running through this final conduit was formidable. We would have to link arms again.

The meadow was only metres away. Abruptly it was in my nostrils again - that peaty vegetable smell. I staggered under the weight of nostalgia - the young Isobel and a warm sparkling meadow. The summer wind and the promises it seemed to carry . . . of life . . . of love.

I barely noticed his arm had linked in with mine. Absently I plunged into the conduit, immediately having to brace against the thrust of the current. Despite the danger, my focus continued to be 1966. I took the penultimate step towards the bank and towed him after me. He stepped straight into a hole. His feet were whipped from under him and I felt myself going over. I lunged with my free hand at the overhanging branch above. As I had it in my grasp, Graham's hands blew apart and his arm flipped away from the crook of my elbow. My right hand groped and found contact, his fingers interlocking with mine. He was off his feet, the river tugging at the full weight of his body, trying to force our fingers apart.

And in an instant he was gone, submerging into the river, leaving a ripple that was quickly erased. He rolled slowly like a sleepy dolphin, his backpack the rectangular dorsal fin. Within seconds he was shooting the gap that led to the rapids. And over that edge he went, disappearing from my sight.

I stayed in the water, gripping onto the branch, gaping at the extent of the river. Then in a moment my paralysis resolved and I wrenched my way up onto the riverbank, jettisoning my pack at the old campsite, to race down the meadow towards an orange disc that indicated the track. I sprinted through the bush, propping right and left along the twisting track, hyperventilating, my mind held on the brink of astonishment. The track crossed a terminal spur of the western range before dropping to the river again. Here the river was in something of a canyon and accessibility to the water's edge was dicey. I stood there for half a minute, waiting for Graham to appear. Nothing came into view. I began to clamber along the bank, weaving in between narrow trunks where the bush closed in. At times the undergrowth forced me away from the precipitous edge, out of sight of the water. I came around a sharp bend, the terminus of the same spur I had crossed minutes before. To the south, I could see the dark flanks of Mt Travers disappearing up into the mists. I was almost back at the meadow. The river side was more benign now and I was able to get down to the water's edge. And there he was, clinging to some tree fall that was partially submerged in the torrent. He was in a pool fed by a back eddy. It was deep but with little current. A quick exchange of words and I ascertained he was able to hang on but unable to pull himself out. He'd run out of strength. I jumped into the river downstream of him where it looked shallower. It was waist deep and the current minimal. I told him to float down to me and I would get him out. He let go and drifted down, awkwardly sweeping his arms across the surface to aid floatation. I arrested him and shepherded him to the bank. I got his pack off and threw it up onto the bank. He wasn't strong enough to stand at that stage, weakened from the cold and the struggle against the river. I had to man handle him up on to the bank where he lay panting and shaking. He recovered reasonably quickly on the bank however and after half an hour we walked up valley along the track to the John Tait Hut in order for him to dry out for the night and re-gather strength. Once he was dry and a roaring fire was set, I went across the meadow to locate my pack where I had dumped it.

But first I slowed to a languid walk and diverted into the middle of the meadow, amid a renewed tumultuous downpour. I felt euphoric and I raised my face to the rain, stumbling drunkenly along to Isobel's gulley. And in my stomach, a tickle arose, an infectious symptom that was seeking to become an up-roar. The gulley was awash with rainwater. I lay down in it, supine, the heavy raindrops pounding my upturned face. And I laughed, splashing about the puddle with my hands. It felt like there had been a big change in the order of things. I didn't know what it was specifically. Then I cried, my throat engorged, my breast bone the weight of lead. I jumped up on my feet, again euphoric, but suddenly responsible. I struck out to the river bank then back to the hut.

Graham looked at my sodden clothes without comment. I'd been very wet from the river anyway. And later over plates of steaming pasta, he started to speak and for the first time in my life he was showing humility. He apologised for being a 'bit of an old fool' and for a past riddled with intolerance and bigotry. I didn't feel I needed to say anything. My anger over past deeds seemed to have evaporated. I found myself saying it hadn't been that bad. However he insisted that it had indeed been 'that bad.'

The next day it was the same. He was all consideration for me and mocking himself. He thanked me for saving his life, something which I denied. I felt he would have floated into shallows and climbed out himself once he was forced by exhaustion to release the windfall branches. But he insisted he wouldn't have had the strength to get out of the river by himself. I could have said that it was my fault he'd fallen in the first place. I knew I'd absently pulled him into the deepest part of the river without my mind being focused on the job. I didn't say any of that though and much of our return trip by boat and then car was conducted in silence. But it wasn't the pregnant silence of old, when you could be sure a judgemental comment was going to be forthcoming sooner than later. No this silence was companionable and peaceful. The near drowning in the river had changed him. For how long I wondered.

It was mid Monday afternoon when we pulled up outside the Nile St house. The weather had cleared and it felt quite humid as we got out of the car. There were left over puddles in the depressions of the footpath and the doormat was still quite wet. There was a rim of dampness showing underneath its front edge. School was still in so it was quiet in the street with the occasional car meandering past. The front door was locked so Graham had to go back to the car to get a key. Inside it was silent and dark. Graham went up the staircase and I went through to the kitchen. There was no sign of life in the kitchen – nothing left over from lunch, no signs of food undergoing preparation for the evening meal. I looked out the kitchen window. There were no clothes on the washing line either. Turning back to the kitchen table I saw it - an envelope standing up against a fruit bowl. I felt the blood drain from my face. The truth started to hit home. Julia had gone. I could hear Graham coming along the corridor. The door opened and he was there in the entrance.

"Her clothes have gone," he said. I nodded, dumbstruck by the development. I gestured to the letter on the table. He went and picked it up, ripping it open. I looked at my feet as he read. His voice was matter of fact when he spoke. He didn't display any emotion at all. "She's gone to Australia," he said. He stowed the letter into a pocket of his khaki shorts. "Well," he said. "I've got my just desserts."

I didn't have anything I could say. Nor could I go over and put a consoling arm around his shoulders. He'd never been party to that type of empathy before.

"Better unpack the car," he said. He went out of the room and I was left to marvel at the turn of events in the preceding 24 hours. Most of all I wrestled with the transformation in him since the immersion in the river. It seemed he'd instantly adapted to his new single status. He came back and said he was going to the supermarket to get food for tea. Graham at the supermarket? Graham never went to the supermarket in his former persona.

"She's gone to Francis you know," he said later. We were gnawing at lamb chops. He said the name without rancour. "She waited until you were going to be around." he continued.

"I guess," I said. But was her exit planned or was it spontaneous? Whichever the case, clearly she had been in contact with Francis. For how long I wondered. Weeks? Months? Years? But the remarkable thing was that Graham didn't seem to mind the rejection that had occurred. His ego seemed to have shrunk away to virtually nothing.

Chapter 7

"Time to go then," I said. They looked at me and nodded – two blonde girls who could easily be mistaken for sisters. Not so much because they looked alike. There were similarities . . . but also differences. It was more the way they interacted. They had bonded so well. They laughed at the same things and they sang together so well. The singing was a new thing for one of them. She was learning the guitar off the other one and it was happening very easily. She was a natural. And they were focused on a healthy future. They didn't smoke anymore. They didn't smoke anything. Who needed drugs anymore to get into a therapeutic window?

I opened the apartment door and we slipped out into a wall of heat. Sweating under the withering sun, we walked about a kilometre, the roadway flanked by row upon row of up market accommodation blocks. We were going to meet them at a restaurant where Francis worked – as a jazz pianist. This revelation of musicality had been quite a talking point amongst the three of us. We were almost at the bridge over Noosa Sound, the shopping precinct now only minutes away. My heart was racing – my mouth parched.

When we got to the river, I saw Julia, a slight fragile figure, standing on the other side of the bridge. They hadn't waited in the restaurant after all. In behind her was a tall man, with a shock of white hair. I stopped and pulled on Isobel's arm, pointing ahead. She looked up and she and Julia saw each other at the same moment. I walked on quietly, one hand travelling on the rail, watching Julia and Francis approach us. They walked haltingly, a tall erect man and an elegant waif of a woman, slowly closing the distance to the middle of the bridge. Preoccupied, I barely noticed the swirl and sparkle of the tide below.

"Mum," said Isobel, and she started running, flying into her mother's arms. They cried and laughed while Joanna and I shook hands with Francis and asked him how his day was.

The end

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