All The Voices Cry Part 3

"Sheep sorrel," she said.

"Look beside your car at le parking. Small flower, red. Next?"

"Some kind of rhubarb."

"So is it the Indian rhubarb (Rheum officinale) or the Turkish rhubarb (Rheum palmatum)?"

"I don't know," said Isabella.

"Listen to me, mademoiselle: order it off the internet," said Pascal.

"I just thought it would be more natural to make it. It's supposed to be a miracle cure, and I don't want to buy a miracle mail order."

"So you think a miracle is naturel? Let her die. This is naturel. What do you do for a living?" he asked.

"I'm an actor."

"Tabernouche," he muttered.

"What difference does that make?" said Isabella. "Are you this nasty to everyone who asks you for help? I'm doing this for my mother, you know." She opened her eyes as wide as she could, looked up at him from under the heavy burden of her dark green hair.

"Excuse me," he said finally. "I am very busy today. I have to check some permit of fis.h.i.+ng at Lac Parker. Come with me. I will show you some plant."

Pascal took the track up the hill in short quick strides, pus.h.i.+ng his mountain bike in front of him. Isabella picked up her skirts and hurried behind, keeping her eyes on his calf muscles. My cherub, she might call him, if he were to become her lover, if he were to leave the forest, come get a job waiting tables in the big city. She wanted him for his youth, for the hard thin torso beneath the skin. His skin would be satiny. There would be a line where the tan stopped.

She began to perspire. Now she was having a real experience, surging onwards in the wake of Pascal making his way up the hill. Why, there were even berries beside the track, three on a narrow stem; globes of bright dark blue like the sky in a storybook. They were pa.s.sing a spot where the rocks hung over the river and you could slide in under the ledge where the water foamed alongside. You could scrub it down, get rid of any slime that might grow in the shadows.

"Look," he said, pointing to the base of a birch tree where a white plant was growing out of the leaf litter.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Indian pipe plant."

"Is it in the Elcarim recipe?"

"No. Look. It is a plant without chlorophyll."

The pipe plant grew singly and in clumps, not tall, its head drooping over in a bell. The whole plant was white, not clean white like paper, not translucent like cooked fish, but ghastly white. It had thin waxy stems, frilled about like a toadstool, and at the opening of the bell, where a bee might land, there was a black rosette, puckered like a tiny dark mouth.

Pascal was looking hard at her.

"Now ask me why I'm showing you this," he said.

Isabella asked. She was good at taking directions.

"Why are you showing me this?"

"Because it looks dead, but it is alive," he said. "We call it Corpse Weed. The living dead of nature. You see? Death grows, it lives with you. Go to your mother, sit with her, and listen to her."

"But I can't stand it," said Isabella.

Once, long before theatre school, before high school even, at the age of 11, she took up her mother's guitar and began to play, thinking to please Moira with a song that she had made up herself. Moira came into the room, drink in hand. She sat down to listen. Part way through the second verse, Moira stood up and carefully placed her drink down on the coffee table.

"You have made a mistake," she said in a quiet, cold voice. Before Isabella could ask how Moira knew that when she had written the song herself, Moira grabbed the guitar out of Isabella's hands, and swung it, smas.h.i.+ng its back against the stone wall of the living room.

"I said you have made a mistake," she said again, without raising her voice. "I am the singer, not you."

The corpse plant was stupid and ugly and the colour of an old dog t.u.r.d. Isabella wanted to crush it under her heel. Hopelessness crept through her skull like mist, hung like a damp aura about the bright vision of her mother, once Moira Delacourt the lounge singer, now spread out upon the couch at the motel, aggressively eating donuts to show the world that she could still do something. Isabella did not especially want her mother to live or die, what she wanted was a different mother.

"How come you know so much, Mr Pascal Park Warden?" she said.

"Excuse me?"

"I said how come you know so much?"

"Mother, sister, breast cancer. Okay?"

Her mouth refused to work. She could not think what to say.

"Okay," he said, looking off up the hill. "So now I am going to check the permit of fis.h.i.+ng. You know where to go? Down the hill, along the lake."

Her mouth unfroze long enough to twitch out the words of thanks for his time.

"No problem. Bonne chance with that miracle." He disappeared up the hill on his bike.

Isabella took off her skirt, suddenly sick of it, and bunched it up in front of her. Barelegged she started down the path, kicking at the brown stones as she went, reciting Ophelia's lines in a sulky voice. He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone.

She was surprised by the tinging of bells ahead. Two men on mountain bikes were making their way up the track, ringing as they went. They looked at Isabella's legs and with some enthusiasm announced that they had seen a bear, so she ought to make noise as she went. Show tunes, they suggested. Show tunes? Isabella could do show tunes.

She knew it looked out of the ordinary: a woman with dark green hair emerging from among the trees, her legs scratched by briars and thorns, belting out that the sun would come out tomorrow; singing to keep the bears at bay.

The Frog.

CARL COULD NOT HAVE been out of sight for more than seconds before Robyn could no longer hear the sticks cracking under his sandals. The sound of the boy's movements had blended into the overhead rush of the leaves and the rustling of the river water around the rocks. Robyn sat very still on the riverbank. A lone maple leaf spooled past in the current. It was silly to panic on a Sunday morning.

"Let's cut through the trees here. The portage trail must be over the hill."

Robyn's older sister Sandrine had made the suggestion not five minutes ago. They were supposed to be rock-hopping down the river to the next lake. Robyn knew that the river would arrive at the lake and so would the portage trail, but that did not mean that the portage trail would follow the river. She didn't want to cut through the trees.

There was already a woman missing in the national park. Yesterday they had seen her picture on a poster at the gate. She was older than Robyn, 33, 5'6," 140 pounds, with pale curly hair. She was last seen wearing a green polar fleece. Her mountain bike was silver with yellow panniers. The woman did not have the appearance of someone who wanted to leave life behind. She looked happy enough to stay with the person who had taken her photograph. There must have been an accident.

The water flowing beside Robyn made a hollow gollop as it fell from a pitcher-shaped scoop of stone. Perhaps the photograph was old. Perhaps the woman did want to be lost. Robyn could not remember her name.

The day had begun well enough, fresh and bright, with only the slightest hint of fall coolness in the wind that blew the hair back from their foreheads while they ate their oatmeal. They had camped the previous night at the head of the lake, and now they hoisted the cooler up high beyond the reach of animals, stowed their gear in the tent and set off.

Where the river left the lake the rocks were large and encrusted with algae. The morning sun winked off the tepid pools between them. Carl walked along the riverbank, startling a large green frog back into the water. They all crouched down to admire its strong kick.

"A frog knows where it wants to go," said Carl. It took ten minutes of effort, but he caught the frog in a net and put it in his collecting jar where it scrabbled at the plastic sides, its scythe-like swimming toes still kicking.

Robyn wanted to return the frog to its habitat, but Carl was determined to let the frog go at the next lake.

"It will start a new colony there," he said.

Sandrine went first, leaping from rock to rock down the middle of the river. Her boots had a good grip. She did not care if she got wet. Robyn and Carl idled along the river's edge, stooping under branches, swinging around the up-thrust ruddy trunks of the cedars, and squatting to examine fat caterpillars that had fallen off the maple trees into the pools. Under an overhanging bank Robyn found four toadstools arranged like orange candles on a cupcake of moss. To Robyn the day felt as special as a birthday. She was showing the toadstools to Carl when Sandrine turned around and shouted back up the river at her.

"Robyn, come on." Sandrine lengthened the syllables in a flat sing-song way.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, Sardine," said Robyn under her breath. Carl looked at his mother, surprised.

"Sardine?" he said.

June and Jonathan Cleghorn had two daughters: Sandrine and Robyn. Sandrine was the athletic one and Robyn was the younger one.

Nothing deterred Sandrine. In March, all through high school, Sandrine was up before dawn, skiing out over the back field until the sky turned pink and Robyn appeared on the back porch, her windmilling arms the signal that breakfast was ready. Then Sandrine would jump and turn to halt, the hardened snow crystals skittering out behind her. No matter what the season, when you hugged Sandrine, you could feel the cold air in a cloud about her cheekbones.

For the last six years, Sandrine had spent the summer months of the Northern hemisphere working as a Nordic ski instructor in the South Island of New Zealand. Robyn had seen photos of the apricot sunset behind the mountain tops, but she still could not imagine Nordic skiing above the treeline. It was just like Sandrine to find a previously un-thought of way to perform a regular physical activity. All she had to do was go to the other side of the world to do it. This year, rain had ruined the southern ski season. Sandrine had not been home three days before she decided to take Robyn and Carl on a camping trip.

Robyn had no need to make grand trans-Pacific migrations. She lived what she thought of as a kitchen-centred life. She located clean gym shorts for Carl, she used up the rhubarb at the back of the fridge, she worked s.h.i.+fts at Clifton's Greek & Italian Restaurant and she ferried Carl and his cello to music lessons.

Robyn was always amazed by the way that people without children appeared to have no idea about the elastic skein of responsibility created by motherhood. Das.h.i.+ng about the globe, people without children just slid in and out of other people's kitchencentred lives like, and here Robyn could not think of a word that was not vaguely slippery. Whatever it was, it was frustrating. People without children even had time to find the words for things.

Occasionally, Robyn would remember that ten years ago she too was a person without children. Usually her next thought would be and that's how I got pregnant.

Robyn sat on the riverside in the wavering forest light.

"Come on Robyn," Carl called out from the other side of the river.

Robyn looked at Carl's strong knees and ankles. He was standing on one leg holding onto a cedar branch for balance, his collecting jar in the other hand. Whatever had happened to Come on Mom?

Sandrine started off into the forest. Carl, drawn by the charm of her energy, turned his back and bounded up the bank after his aunt, pus.h.i.+ng his way through the spindly lower branches of the firs until he disappeared over the top of the incline.

So, Carl had left her; Carl was nearly ten. Adolescence could not be far off. Earlier in the week Robyn had heard him practising his cello against her. He was in his bedroom with the door shut, playing minor scales, all the way up and over the extended penultimate interval, but stopping short of the top. He knew that she would be listening at the bottom of the stairs; he was not going to give her the satisfaction of the last note.

Robyn looked at a black spray of weed that floated in the current. She turned her mouth down. She did not move from her rock. All she could think was: I'm the mother. I should get to decide whether we cut across.

In order to tell them that she was not coming she would have to go far enough into the woods to be able to see them; it would be the same as following them. Sandrine might stop and call out, but she would not turn back. Robyn would be expected to follow because Robyn always did follow Sandrine, and because Carl was there.

"I don't want to," she said aloud, but there was no one to hear. She stood up and began picking her way downstream over the rocks.

Carl's father had been a guitarist in a band called The Chokers. He had been Robyn's chiaroscuro lover for one week only; appearing golden out of the darkness of a bas.e.m.e.nt bar. The unexpected pregnancy had terminated Robyn's studies in art history. She had returned home to her parents' brick house at Stonehaven where she took on the life that was expected of her.

In Stonehaven there was not much room for words like chiaroscuro. Clifton's Greek and Italian Restaurant served pizza for the boys and salads for the girls, with the olives and feta on the side, since it was Stonehaven after all. Robyn was one of the girls, a group of women who plated the house salads, served the meals and scrubbed off the tomato splatters that the chef baked onto the stovetop.

Clifton Smith, who owned the restaurant, was the son of a former mayor of Stonehaven. He was built like a pyramid with a good solid base. In the winter he wore big mittens and a thick charcoal peacoat zipped against the cold. He paid attention to the quality of the vinaigrette and he disliked salt stains on the carpet at the door.

"I'll leave it to you girls to divvy up the tasks," he would say if there was a special event to cater for. Divvy, savvy, nifty; these were Clifton's words. Robyn had been seeing Clifton for two years now. Their most recent date had been to the outlook at the meteor crater. He had brought leftover stuffed vine leaves and a thermos of coffee. Together they looked out at the trees, which was all that could be seen of the remnants of the cosmic event, unless you went up in a plane. Clifton had his hand high up on her thigh and Robyn was holding her travel mug up to her aching wisdom teeth. Perhaps I could make a nifty wife after all, she had thought, looking out the window.

Last night, after Carl had rolled himself up, grub-like, in his sleeping bag with a book and a flashlight, Sandrine washed the dishes while Robyn dried them, trying to make a stack without having them all topple over in the dust.

"How's Cliff?" asked Sandrine.

"He's fine," Robyn spoke without looking up. "Business is good."

Sandrine said nothing for a moment.

"Look at me," she said finally.

"What?" said Robyn. "There's nothing with Cliff."

"Oh I know there's nothing really wrong with Cliff. We all know Cliff."

Robyn thought of the former mayor's son moving through his restaurant, resting his large hands on the shoulders of men who as primary-school boys had dropped his raincoat in the urinal and p.i.s.sed on it. There was nothing wrong with Clifton, but Sandrine had a knack for making everything that Robyn did seem wrong.

When Sandrine wasn't in town, Robyn was content with her life in Stonehaven. Only the shape of the main street bothered her. Whenever she left the restaurant, she could not suppress a rise in her spirits in response to the uphill turn in the road. Over the bridge the road went, before curving to the right and starting upwards, past city hall with its silver pepper shaker top, then onwards, and out of sight. The road promised so much, and yet by the time Robyn had crossed the bridge and glanced at the discarded white ware dumped under the willows, she could see as well as know that there was nothing beyond city hall except Zeebe's Auto Parts, Lula's x.x.x Videos and a handful of drafty brick houses with short concrete paths. She was annoyed that she still fell for the lure of the road.

If you got lost in a national park in August you would have to be disciplined to catch and dry enough frogs, berries and snails for the winter months. Carl and Robyn had discussed eating frogs earlier in the day. A frog might be best served marinated and wrapped in a leaf, or swimming in b.u.t.ter like the snails on the menu at the restaurant. Robyn suggested that Carl ask Clifton when he came to dinner on Wednesday. Carl said nothing. He tended to slide off to his room when Clifton was around.

The river narrowed into a high rocky gulley where the sides had been hollowed out by spring floods. Robyn was glad that it was late summer and the water level was low. The sound of voices drifted down through the foliage high over her head. Two people were singing the chorus to the Gypsy Rover. He whistled and he sang and the green woods rang, for he won the heart of a lady. She recognized Carl's voice. He would be a musician like his father. Robyn had avoided telling him about The Chokers. She had never wanted Carl to think of his father as an itinerant player.

So her sister had been right, the trail was just through the woods and at that point it did run parallel with the river. Perhaps Robyn ought to have followed them along the portage trail after all. It would be easier going than the river. Portage was a comforting word, close to potage, the thick vegetable soup that Clifton served at the restaurant in the winter months. She wondered if she would ever find herself following Clifton along a portage trail, Coleman lamp in one hand, cooler in the other, two paddles under her arms, with her husband turned toucan under the fibregla.s.s hull of a canoe.

Ahead there was a bridge. Robyn slipped into the ferny shadows beneath it. She had thought she might call out to surprise them, but she found herself unwilling to give up her temporary camouflage. She wondered why they could not see her. Perhaps they did not expect to see her. Once confirmed in her hunch, Sandrine would have forgotten Robyn's reluctance to leave the river. They had not even thought to look back.

Sandrine and Carl crossed over the bridge. Through the slats and the chicken wire Robyn could see the soles of Sandrine's boots and beside them Carl's sandals. They were walking side by side. Sandrine wants a child. The thought had not occurred to Robyn before. Their song faded into the woods. If Robyn did not come back, Sandrine would make sure that Carl got his practice done. She would see to the gym gear.

Beyond the narrow straits, the river bed fanned out into a sunlit marsh of reeds and nests, of sedge and low growing myrtle. Robyn stepped from one clump of cotton bushes and pitcher plants to another, trying to avoid the down-sucking mud between. Mosquitoes swarmed about her face and arms. She crouched low, moving crabwise, grabbing at the rotten logs that lay on mossy mats of raspberry and green stars. Robyn felt like an escapee. She half-expected to hear dogs baying in pursuit.

Robyn had also been right. The portage trail and the river diverged tracks at the marsh. Sandrine and Carl stood on the sh.o.r.e almost three hundred metres further along the water's edge. They had their hands on their hips and were looking around. To get back to them Robyn would have to cross a cove of water lilies and pickerel weed.

She'd had enough of the marsh and she moved out into the shallow water eagerly, wading until she tripped on a submerged log and found herself lying in the water. After that she crawled along on her hands through the water lilies, surprised by how quickly she got used to the casual slimy brush of the underwater stems and the sharp p.r.i.c.king of submerged branches. Among the water lilies she stopped and looked around. The water was sun-warmed and clear, the bottom silted and silky. Some lily pads had flipped over, showing their scarlet undersides. Right side up, their tops were a hardened waxy green touched not just by dragonflies but also by a host of smaller insects. Every now and then she encountered the upraised golden fist of a water lily yet to flower.

Robyn kicked her legs out behind her and thought of the golden rims of the frog's eyes. Amphibian; that was the word she could not remember, that was the word that she wanted to describe the way a person without children moves through the world. I am an amphibian. Her jaws opened and closed over the words like a frog's. She could see her sister standing on the sandy beach ahead of her. Carl was bending over his empty collecting jar. Soon she would have to stand up and make herself visible once more. She did not want to, but she would.

Mrs Viebert's Prognostication.

LIKE A PLAYING CARD with twelve diamonds on it, Mrs Viebert possessed all the normal parts of ladies, but in greater quant.i.ties. From his hiding place behind the purple clematis, his pockets full of sandwich crusts, nine-year-old Norman spied her approaching his house on her piggy trotter heels, patting the back of her hair as she came, calling to her daughter, Baby Viebert, to come along. Mrs Viebert was as magnificent as the figurehead on the prow of a s.h.i.+p, and the rose-scented air of Palmerston North parted graciously before her.

While their mothers played canasta in the company of Mr and Mrs Goring from next door, Norman and Baby Viebert filled the birdbath with puddings made of bark and petals and leaves. After they had eaten their fill, they used their spittle to attach rose p.r.i.c.ks to their noses. Thus transformed, the two rhinoceroses stalked the shrubbery looking for Germans. Usually they rescued Baby's big brother Cyril from a snake-filled pit on the compost heap of North Africa, where the second New Zealand Division under General Freyberg had been holding out against Rommel for a week on a diet of grapefruit rinds and potato peelings.

Carrying wounded Cyril and weakened General Freyberg on their backs, the wild animals circled the house, occasionally pausing to listen at the open window. The murmuring voices of the card players did not concern them; the sound they antic.i.p.ated was the squeaking wheel on the tea trolley as Norman's mother pushed it towards the rosewood table in the front room. As Norman no longer had a father, there was no one to come with a can of oil to squirt away the squeak. Of course there was Uncle Stewart, but he was not to be trusted, being naturally the kind of man who drips oil on the carpet.