Mon Desir.

Morris, Paula

EVE COULD SEE IT ALL from here. Slime-colored paint unfurled from each of the back steps, withering off the wood onto the cobblestones below. High above her head, obscuring the sun, a skimpy banner of washing (two tea towels, a floral housecoat) swelled in the breeze. And there, only inches away from her face, a spider's web bearded the drooping lower lip of the bottom stair.

There was so much to do--the linen cupboards, for example, or the silver--but, lying on the ground, Eve could only think of bigger things, like lawns and walls and floors. The whole house was buckling in the sea air, drying out. The grass needed cutting, and all those trees needed to be hacked back into shape. There was no point in having a house right on the best beach in Auckland if you could only see the water from the upstairs bedrooms.

But it wasn't her house. She just looked after it each January while the MacPhersons sailed up to the Barrier. Eve had known Tim MacPherson's parents: she'd been a bridesmaid at their wedding forty-five years ago. They'd drowned when a terrible storm came up during the Auckland to Fiji race, when Tim was still a Grammar boy.

The way they died didn't put him off yachting. Nothing did. Even after his first wife, Jill, stepped off their boat one night and disappeared forever into the smooth, dark waters off Kawau Island, he hadn't given up sailing. She'd had a drink in her hand that night--the plastic cup was found bobbing nearby in the morning. They'd been arguing; she'd been depressed. It was in the news. Tim never said much to Eve about it, but after that he started asking her to stay in the house, to look after things, while he and the four children went away every January. He'd kept going out in the boat--bigger boats, newer boats--but since Jill died he seemed more wary, worried about things he'd never cared about before. The house grew shabby and Tim didn't seem to mind, but he didn't like it left unattended. Maybe he didn't want to lose anything else.

Today was the twelfth of January, 1976. Eve was sixty-two now, a widow. Tim was still sailing to the Barrier every summer, but the two older children did their own thing these days. The girl was at university now and had her own friends and plans; the boy, Lance, had fallen out with his father. He didn't like his new stepmother, or she didn't like him. He came and went, staying at the bach on the overgrown adjoining section, because he wasn't welcome in the house anymore. The new stepmother had left strict instructions.

Every year, Eve did a little something to thank the MacPhersons for having her, and this year it was tidying the linen cupboards and polishing the silver. Clearing away cobwebs. She'd make a start as soon as her head stopped hurting, and her hip, and her ankle. As soon as she could lift herself up on a scraped palm, dust off her dress, and climb those steep back stairs into the kitchen to find the broom.

"Your mum's fallen again," Linda told her husband when he arrived home from work. Michael frowned, tugging at his tie. He was Eve's only child, and sometimes he acted, Linda thought, as though it was a responsibility he hadn't wanted and would prefer to delegate. "When I rang her this afternoon, she told me. I think it happened a day or two ago."

"That's it," said Michael, and in response his shiny briefcase tumbled sideways off a chair, spilling the morning's newspaper and an empty plastic lunchbox onto the carpet. The carpet was brown, and the wallpaper was textured, cream and beige: they lived in a milkshake, Linda said once, and he'd told her to do something about it if she wasn't happy.

"What do you mean, that's it?" Linda reached a mitted hand into the oven. Sun seeped through the dandelion-patterned blind above the sink. She hated this time of day in the summer--the heat of the kitchen, the flies buzzing in every time someone opened the ranch sliders, the clamor of the television news. Michael was always in a mood, complaining about the long drive home, though it had been his idea to move out here.

"I mean, what'll happen next time if she can't get up?" He stood at the counter flicking through the Star rather than getting out of his work things. "She can't stay there by herself anymore."

"I thought that we could go. Carrie and I." Linda's face felt flushed: it was the heat of the oven, or nerves, perhaps. "We could stay with her until the MacPhersons get back. She's got less than two weeks left--you could come out at the weekends. I'll leave some meals in the freezer."

"He likes mince. Don't you, Dad?" Carrie had wandered in from the lounge. She wore toweling shorts and a pale blue T-shirt with a glitter palm tree motif. The word CALIFORNIA was spelled out in sparkling letters across the small bumps of her breasts.

"Well," said Michael. His tie hung from his hand like a dead eel. When a fly landed on one of his wiry sideburns, he didn't seem to notice. Linda resisted the urge to whack at it with the newspaper. "I don't think the MacPhersons would like all of us staying there, having a free holiday at their place."

"It's not all of us," said Carrie. "It's just me and Mum. And we're looking after Gran, not having a holiday."

"I suppose you could stay in the bach next door." Michael didn't like going to the house on the Shore, not even for a day--Linda knew that. His mother had been friends with Tim MacPherson's parents, but he hadn't known Tim. Tim was older, and they'd gone to different sorts of schools, led different sorts of lives. Tim had inherited the house on Takapuna Beach. The only thing Michael had inherited from his father, as he'd pointed out more than once, was a bill for the funeral home.

"It's really just a week and a half," Linda said again, her breath tight in her chest. She decided not to mention the other thing Eve said, about the MacPhersons' oldest son returning all of a sudden, camping out in the bach, coming up to the house to scrounge food and pick through the booze cupboard and sweet-talk Eve into washing his clothes.

"House is probably falling down by now," said Michael. "It gets worse every year. You'd think that the new wife would want to fix things up a bit. I don't want you doing housework over there. We're not their servants."

"Course not." Linda shook off her oven glove, pushed hair away from her sticky face. This was the longest conversation they'd had in weeks and it had gone well, she thought. She'd wanted something and asked for it; he'd agreed. This was what normal families did, what she and Michael used to do. "Carrie can go swimming and sunbathe. I'll make sure Eve is OK."

"We can leave first thing in the morning," said Carrie, hopping from foot to foot. She had just turned fourteen. She couldn't wait to go.

They called it "the bach next door" but really it was a shed by the garden wall with a toilet and sink in the lean-to.

Eve waved down to Lance MacPherson from her kitchen window. He'd propped the surfboard he never used against the bleached wall of the bach, stroking it with wax from time to time.

Lance's shirt was unbuttoned to his waist. His shorts were tied with a white cord, and he wore a necklace made from small pale shells. Eve remembered him as a sandy-haired little boy, running helter-skelter down the hill to the sea, laughing with his mouth wide open. He was tall and lean now, and his shoulders were broad. She didn't see him run much anymore. He seemed in no hurry to do anything at all.

He'd been over on the Gold Coast, apparently, and Eve wasn't sure why he'd come home. She often saw him sitting on his doorstep, staring out across the beach. Nothing to do, it appeared, but watch the tide wash in and out, and wait for his friends to visit.

She waved again, and he flicked his head up in a half-nod. That meant he'd seen her. The seagulls had seen her too. They landed on the lawn a few feet away, cawing for crusts. Eve bent over the counter and threw the rest of the bread out the open window. The pain in her ankle was still there, dull and persistent.

Eve was glad that Linda and Carrie were coming; she was surprised when Linda suggested it. Her daughter-in-law was a remote kind of girl, too thin these days, her prettiness drawn tight. Linda used to smile more, say more, but nowadays she seemed unhappy. It was Eve's fault. She hadn't done a good job with Michael. He was souring into an early middle age, too aware of what he didn't have, what he couldn't get. Too young to be this disappointed, she thought, starting the long walk to the end of the driveway. The girls would be arriving soon, and the gate was locked. They thought they were coming to look after her, but Eve thought the opposite was true. Linda, Carrie, Lance MacPherson--in the absence of fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, she'd look after them all.

The house on the beach was Linda's kind of place, rustic and creaking and secret, surrounded by a thick wall of trees. Not rising stark and surprised like their new house, which looked half naked, picketed by saplings and spindly shrubs. This was the kind of house you could disappear in. It felt as lonely and secure as a castle, mounted on a steep garden strewn with prickles, overlooking the sea. The day surrounded it, still and hot. The sounds were quiet, regular: water rubbing against the sand and, inside, the ticking of a clock. Linda wandered the hallways, thin rugs bunching under her feet.

"Each of you, choose a bedroom," Eve told them, "but remember, it's quieter on this side. The music at that place next door starts up around six. It goes on late at the weekends--I should have warned you."

"I don't mind," said Linda. "Maybe you and I can pop in for a drink one night. Sit by the swimming pool, watch the sun go down. I've never been to the Mon Desir."

"It's famous, Gran," said Carrie, peering into a shady bedroom.

"Famous for making a racket, "said Eve. "Maybe your Mum and Dad can go on Saturday."

But when Michael arrived at the weekend, he was tired. He had his Christmas book, the new Peter Benchley, and he wanted to watch the cricket. He shut the curtains to stop the sun reflecting on the television set and spent most of Saturday asleep on the sofa. He told Linda that the drinks at the Mon Desir were too expensive, that the crowd there was a bit rough, but she thought he'd just taken against the place. He wanted the weekend he would have had at home, away from beaches and bars. He even complained about the noise of people's jet boats.

"Better than mowers," Linda said. They were lying in bed, listening to the faint pumping of a bass, a sprinkling of applause. A woman somewhere in the night shrieked with laughter and Michael turned over, his back to the Mon Desir, to Linda. The night was warm; the cotton sheets felt sticky the way her skin did after she'd been swimming in the sea. In just a few days she'd grown used to having the whole bed to herself.

She pressed a finger against his arm, feeling the bristles of hair, the skin that was always a little dry. Michael's breathing was even and he didn't stir; perhaps he was already asleep. That afternoon Linda had seen Lance MacPherson, lying in the sand on the other side of the stone wall. She'd passed close enough to touch him--she'd almost hit him, in fact, when she swung open the wooden gate leading to the beach. He was asleep too, or pretending to be. His skin was freckled, and the hair on his forearms and legs was a delicate blond. His trunks were untied, the white cords bright and stringy against the gold sheen of his belly. Linda spent longer than she needed to, standing on the stone step, fiddling with the gate latch. Part of her wished he would wake up and say something; she'd caught him looking at her several times this week, though they'd exchanged nothing more than nods. But she didn't want him to open his eyes and find her staring at his stomach, staring at his groin. Wondering if those blond hairs were silky or coarse. Thinking that if she were twenty rather than thirty-five he would have already opened his eyes.

Carrie saw him several times the first week. Glimpsed him, anyway: he was spunky, she decided, and just the right age, twenty-one. She'd met him once before (Gran swore she had) when she was a little girl, but Carrie couldn't remember.

Most summers they just came here for short visits, lunch and a swim on a Saturday. Her father didn't like this beach, or he didn't like this house, or he didn't like the guy who owned this house--it was something like that. But he was wrong: this was a fantastic beach. Ran-gitoto looked close enough to swim to, and the beach was swarmed, after work and at the weekend, with young people. This was the first summer she'd been allowed to stay overnight, kept awake by the waves--which always sounded like wind to her, never the sea--and sometimes, especially this weekend, by the muffled throb of music from the hotel next door.

Lance. Lance MacPherson. Hi, Lance. How's it going? That morning, Sunday, Carrie had planned to walk down to the beach, to amble right past the windows of the bach. She wore her off-the-shoulder broderie anglaise top and a pair of denim shorts. Just going for a walk to look for shells, she'd told her mother, but then, all of a sudden, she'd lost her nerve. She felt self-conscious and decided to change the top; the fabric scratched her skin.

Instead she'd sat on the couch in the dark, paneled lounge, picking at loose threads in the cushion fringe. The trees blocked all the sun from the room, and the heavy old-fashioned furniture faced away from the windows. She could hear her grandmother talking to her mother outside in the garden. They'd been stretched out under a sun umbrella since breakfast. Her father had gone out for a walk, to get more milk and the Sunday News. There was a dairy down by the jetty, but when Carrie was changing upstairs she'd seen him stalking up the driveway, headed in the wrong direction. Once upon a time she would have chased after him, to tag along or tell him to go through the garden and cut across the beach. It wasn't that she was too lazy--that was only a small part of it, anyway. Maybe he wanted to take his time. Maybe he wanted to take the long way. She understood these things now: they all wanted to be left alone.

Carrie leaned back, and something hard poked her. She pulled out her father's book, Jaws, an empty envelope marking his place. Her eyes skimmed the first page and flicked to the second: ... pulling the woman down with him. They fumbled with each other's clothing, twined limbs around limbs, and thrashed with urgent ardor on the cold sand.

Someone was calling her: Linda, shouting for more suntan lotion. Carrie stuffed the book under a cushion and stomped down the hall to the bathroom. She dropped the bottle out the back window with a bad grace, the only grace she'd been able to master so far, and it slithered out of her mother's hands.

She wondered if Lance MacPherson ever went to the Mon Desir.

Linda preferred the beach during the week when it wasn't crowded. She tried to keep Eve off her feet, but it wasn't easy. After dinner, she ran water in the kitchen sink for the dishes, taking turns with Carrie to wash and dry.

"Don't forget the birds," said Eve. "They're used to regular mealtimes too."

Carrie raised her eyebrows and tossed a slice of bread onto the grass. "I don't think you're supposed to give them bread, Gran. It's not good for them, you know."

Before she dipped her hands into the hot water, Linda took off her engagement ring and lay it on the flaking sill of the open window. The diamonds were small and sharp, winking in the light. The emeralds looked as lurid as Palmolive against the dense green of the garden.

Michael had left early on Sunday afternoon, saying he'd had too much sun and that he needed to iron some shirts for work. This wasn't true--Linda had ironed ten days' worth before she left--but she said nothing. He was playing the martyr for his mother, not noticing that his mother didn't seem to mind whether he stayed or left. Eve was busy that afternoon, teaching Carrie how to make proper coleslaw.

Even though he'd said very little all weekend, the house felt quiet after he was gone. It was the same when they were at home, in the new house in Pakuranga. Michael brought noise with him she'd always thought, even though she knew that was unfair. The noise was in her own head, buzzing like an out-of-tune radio station, whenever he was near. Every small sound associated with him--the rustle of a newspaper, the mumble of a cricket commentator--scratched at her nerves.

Only when they were in bed, in the dark, in the quiet, could she bring herself to be close to him, and then it was always tentative, a furtive touch, as though she were petting a bad-tempered cat. Linda turned her back to him during the day; he turned his back to her at night. This was their stalemate, and she didn't know a way out of it without talking in some new and intimate way. She was afraid of what she would say, of what she would hear. That's why staying on Takapuna Beach was a relief. During the week their conversations were limited to clipped nightly phone calls, and at the weekend the house and the garden and the harbor were big. They could keep their distance, get lost. There were plenty of places to hide.

In the neat square of lawn beneath the kitchen windows, Eve sat under the shade of a striped beach umbrella, the still-aching ankle propped on a footstool. In her lap, she cradled three pieces of silver, a bottle of polish, and a yellow cloth.

"Wouldn't you rather have the paper," Linda asked. "Or a book?"

But Eve was happy with the radio--Carrie's transistor tuned, for the first time in its short life, to the concert program--and the silver. Linda and Carrie wandered off down the beach for a languid trip to the dairy.

Eve hadn't spotted Lance much over the weekend. She hoped he might stroll up to the house this afternoon, because she'd like to talk to him about the old days. Tell him about his father, about his mother, Jill. He'd still remember her clearly, even if the younger ones didn't. Nobody mentioned Jill anymore. You'd think she'd done something wrong, something much worse than dying.

Eve imagined him walking up, flopping down on the grass next to her chair. You're like your mother around the eyes, she'd tell him. Jill's eyes always narrowed and crinkled when she smiled. Just like you, she'd say. Eve pictured him grinning at this, though he didn't seem to smile much anymore. His face was blank and set, as though it was held in place by clothes pegs, and there was a hardness to his eyes that she didn't remember from before.

She could hear voices coming up the slope from the beach, but it wasn't Lance, of course. Lance never came up unless he wanted something. It was Linda and Carrie back from their walk, their lips stained Popsicle-orange, complaining about prickles in their feet. Beverly was about to arrive, they reminded her, Linda's new friend from their new street. She and Linda had met at a Tupperware party, where Linda had won all the games--they were silly quizzes, she'd told Eve, a child could have won them--and had followed Beverly's lead when she refused to buy a single piece of Tupperware, even though that meant the hostess wouldn't get her free gift.

Beverly was a tall blonde, her hair teased high, her eyebrows plucked into startled arches. Within ten minutes of clicking into the front hall in high-heeled sandals, she'd stripped down to a bikini and a skimpy sarong, and was rummaging through the kitchen cupboards for a tin opener.

"So this is how the other half lives," she said, peering out the kitchen window. "Oh, my god, Linda. We're not in Pakuranga anymore, darling. You never told me you had family money."

"It's not our family." Linda poured a tin of coconut cream into a plastic jug. "And this looks like Tupperware, I'm afraid."

"God! We're the only women of taste in Auckland. Add the rum, and then the pineapple juice."

"I look after the house every January," Eve told her. "The owners are away on their boat."

"How very Upstairs, Downstairs." Beverly mixed the drinks with a spoon and glugged equal amounts into four tumblers. Carrie looked warily at her mother. "Go on, let her have a glass--it won't kill her. And you too, Eve. They're tropical. Who's that spunk wandering in the garden? The pool boy?"

"The young master of the house," said Linda, scratching at a mosquito bite on her arm. "He's not supposed to be here."

"I'll hide him for you," said Beverly. "Right under my sarong."

They sat in the garden, the sun frying their ear lobes and elbows and toes, and after two drinks Linda and Beverly and Carrie set off to walk the length of the beach before the tide came in. Shaded by the brim of her hat, Eve felt her eyes closing, the milky dregs of her drink still sloshing in the glass nestled in her lap. She dozed off into a fitful sleep and woke to find Lance standing in front of her, a golden, smiling mirage. When she blinked he'd disappeared, and Eve chided herself for fancying things, but the glass she'd been holding was set on the ground. Something about this creeping around unsettled her, though she wanted to talk to him, wanted him to seek her out. Getting down to the bach was difficult; Eve didn't want to intrude. She just wanted to sit down with him face-to-face for a while. When he was a boy, Lance had been easy to read, easy to love. The person he'd become--watchful, lurking, unfathomable--was a stranger.

Eve struggled out of her chair and stood, hands on hips, looking for the girls. They were on the sand, opening the garden gate, about to climb up the prickly lawn. But that brazen Beverly was walking in another direction, sashaying over to the bach next door. And suddenly there was Lance, standing talking to her. Eve squinted: his T-shirt was a dirty brown, streaked with white paint marks, and he wore the frayed jeans she'd washed for him the day before. Linda and Carrie seemed to be hanging back, not joining in the conversation.

She felt an intense surge of irritation, a twisting in her stomach. Lance's mouth was moving; he was talking away to that Beverly, someone who'd just breezed in for the afternoon, when all Eve could get out of him were grunts and nods and muttered requests. For a moment she considered waddling down the hill to join them, but it was too steep and bumpy a descent for her unsteady legs. Her eyes pricked with tears, foolish tears she thought, annoyed with herself now. Until today she'd told herself that tending Lance with small, quiet services--folding his clean T-shirts, preparing a plate of sandwiches--was enough, but perhaps it was enough only for him. Eve was hungry for the sound of his voice.

The conversation was over. The three girls clambered up the hill, a red-cheeked Linda leading the way.

"He's a cheeky young monkey, that one," Beverly said, bending over and exhaling: all three were out of breath. "I don't think you should let him stay down there, Eve. He's a bad influence."

"What was he saying?" Eve asked, almost breathless herself. The words rushed out, half-swallowed.

"That we could come for a moonlight stroll with him," said Beverly.

"That he'd be waiting tonight on the beach. Can you believe it? Young enough to be my ..." She shook her head.

"He was probably joking," Eve said.

"Didn't smile once," Beverly told her. "Even when he winked!"

Carrie giggled, tugging on her shorts. Beverly turned around to give a mock-glare in the direction of the bach. Lance had disappeared. Eve had seen him wander off already down the beach without a backward glance.

"He winked at you?" Eve repeated. The sun drilled into her eyes.

"Winked at Linda here, I do believe."

"Don't be silly," said Linda. Her voice was sharp. "You were the one doing all the talking."

"I don't think he's interested in talking."

This conversation, Eve decided, wasn't suitable for Carrie. She asked her granddaughter to help her inside, blinking as they stepped through the back door, adjusting her eyes to the dim light of the kitchen. Beverly said she had to go because Grant, her husband, liked his tea on the table at six. Eve was relieved. Sometimes the summer days were too long, the beach and garden too exposed. She'd be glad to get back to the peace and order of her own small home, where few visitors disrupted her routine. The only men's voices she ever expected to hear were on the radio, reading the news, or Michael's when he rang to tell her they were just going through the motions, he and Linda, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could stand it.

After Beverly was gone, nobody felt like doing much of anything.

"We've got heat stroke," said Eve, and Carrie complained that her arms and legs felt heavy. Linda scrambled some eggs: they ate their meals off trays in front of the television.

It was still light outside when Linda stacked the plates and pan in the sink, but she didn't wash up until later, after Michael had rung to check on them, and Eve had decided to have an early night. She and Carrie sat around watching police shows--one English, one American--on television until Carrie was half asleep and needed to be prodded to go to bed.

Through the kitchen window small slices of beach, the color of brown sugar, were visible between the trees. The sea drew in and out in slow breaths. Linda turned on the taps and burped the bottle of Palmolive into the water. The plastic jug was still awash with Pina Colada: the ants hadn't got to it yet. Linda poured in more rum until the creamy mixture separated, whizzing it together with her finger. Then she drained it in surreptitious gulps, drinking straight from the jug and wincing at the taste. She wiped away the creamy residue on her mouth with the back of her hand. Michael would be appalled at all this--the swilling from the jug, the dirty finger, the extra rum. Beverly's influence, he'd say.

When the sink was full, she took off her engagement ring and placed it on the sill. And then, irritable with the routine of cooking, dishes, tides, she slipped off her wedding ring as well. It always felt heavy on her finger, but in her hand it seemed as insubstantial as the shells Lance wore strung around his neck. She held it in the air like an unusual specimen and then set it back on the sill. The white tan mark on her ring finger looked drawn-on, a shaky Pina Colada-colored line.

The lapping water was silky and insinuating, an invitation to slip away. She couldn't see Rangitoto from here and, even if she was on the beach, it would be disappearing into the darkness by now. She wondered how long it would take to get there. She could kneel on Lance's surfboard and slide through the waves, paddling it like a canoe. Linda had never been on a surfboard. It didn't interest her usually; surfing was a child's game--all that waiting around just to come back. Striking out beyond the breaking surf: that was far more appealing. Passing the lumpy gray of Rangitoto, humming with its night noises, and heading out through the Gulf.

Was that what Lance was thinking about, day after day, sitting on the steps of the bach, running away to sea? He didn't have a home anymore, after all. He was free of things and places, free of chores and bills and appointments. Untethered. He could drift wherever he liked.

"I was waiting for you." The voice startled Linda: she yelped like a puppy who'd been stood on and dropped the plastic jug. Lance MacPherson was standing below the kitchen window, gazing up at her. He kept his voice low, and there was no break in it, nothing to suggest nerves, uncertainty. Michael was this age, twenty-one, when he first asked Linda out: he'd sounded as though he was in pain.

"Come on," said Lance, almost whispering. His hair was pale, and his narrowed eyes looked sea-green. The rest of him she couldn't see clearly. "It's just a walk."

"I ... I can't."

"They're all asleep," he said, and Linda wondered how he knew.

"Waste of a nice night, stuck inside doing the dishes."

She hesitated, drying her hands on a tea towel.

"Just five minutes then," she heard herself say, and then she was opening the back door and taking quick, quiet steps down the back stairs before there was time to think. They walked down the slope together, but not really together Linda thought, aware of the distance between them, of the silence. She didn't trust herself to speak, anyway; she was burning inside, as though the rum had gone down the wrong way. There was nothing wrong in this she told herself, trying to ignore the prickling threads of tension pulled taut beneath her skin. There was nothing wrong in a grown woman going for a walk on the beach in the evening. If she lived here, she'd do it all the time.

But when they reached the garden gate it was darker and emptier on the sand than Linda had anticipated. The sounds of Lance lifting the latch and of the gate squeaking open were louder than the sea. He reached out to help her down the stone steps, and when her palm brushed his it felt as though she was holding her hand above a flame.

Even her legs couldn't be trusted: she stumbled on the steps, her feet sinking into the cool sand on the other side of the wall.

"Steady," said Lance, no laughter in his voice, and his hands were on her, holding her up, turning her away from the sea. His face, cold as the sand, pressed into hers and Linda closed her eyes, dizzy with all the sensations--the scrape of his lips, the damp intrusion of his tongue, the unfamiliar planes of his face knocking against hers. Even when she opened her eyes, she couldn't see him or anything else. He'd kept his distance since they arrived, but now Lance seemed to surround her, one hand holding back her hair, the other pressed into the small of her back. She didn't know how he had the idea, the courage, for any of this, or why she had allowed herself to be led down the lawn to the shadows of the wall. Beverly was the one who talked to him. He'd winked at Beverly.

"Mmm," Linda said, trying to wriggle away. She'd meant to say no, but she felt incapable of coherence. Again she was misread: Lance seemed to think she wanted to lie down. He lowered her to the ground, dipping her like a ballroom dancer, and then he was clamped on top, pinning her hands above her head. Sand was in her eyes, in her mouth, scratching like stubble. The more she twisted to get away, the harder Lance pressed himself into her. One of his hands gripped her wrists; with the other he was tugging at her clothes, pushing up her sundress.

She thrashed her legs, trying to buck him off, but every turn pushed her into his hardness. His free hand chiseled a path between her thighs and his mouth sucked at hers like a vacuum. It was hard to breathe, let alone speak. He jabbed between her legs. The crotch of her underwear was wrenched aside, and when he plunged one finger into her, it felt as rough as a stick.

Lance moved to one side, and Linda was able to pull her head free.

"Stop," she said. Her voice, choked and deep, didn't sound like her own. "You're hurting me!"

The grip on her wrists relaxed. Linda pushed at his shoulders as hard as she could, trying to shove him away. It was easier now, as though her strange, mangled voice had broken a spell. Lance pulled his hand from between her thighs and rolled off her; Linda clutched at her clothes, pulling everything back into place. Her ears felt clogged with sand. She was shivering with cold.

"I didn't want this," she said, trying not to cry. They were sitting side by side now, facing the water. The grin of the moon disappeared behind a drift of cloud.

"That's exactly what she said." Lance sounded amused, and Linda turned to him, enraged at his mockery. He raised his finger to his mouth and sucked it, drawing it slowly from his mouth as though it were an ice block. "And she was lying as well."

A searing panic seized her.

"Who?" she demanded, her voice cracking. Either she was going to cry or be sick: she felt like doing both.

Lance didn't even turn his head.

"You taste the same, too," he said. Linda clambered to her feet, swallowing back a wave of rum-flavored bile. Not Carrie, she thought. Please, not Carrie.

"Who are you talking about?" The clouds peeled away from the moon, and she could see Lance's face again. He was staring out towards the invisible sea, the offending fingertip resting against his thin bottom lip. Linda wanted to smack his hand away from his face, but when he stood up, she flinched.

"My stepmother," he said. He looked at her for one long, frozen moment, and then ambled off towards the water. Linda backed away, stubbing her heels on the stone wall. The gate hung open, and she hurried through without closing it, striding up the hill. Back in the house she moved from room to room, turning off every light downstairs, feeling her way to the stairs. In bed, with her eyes closed, her face stinging with shame, she could see that look on Lance's face. There was no happiness in it, no triumph, no satisfaction. But it was the first time, Linda realized, that she'd ever seen him smile.

This wasn't really a surprise, not to Eve. Lance had to disappear sooner or later, before his father and stepmother got home and threw him off the premises.

And it wasn't really a surprise that he'd taken the silver candlesticks and the box with the fish knives and the box with the cake forks and the punch bowl and his silver christening mug. What remained of the housekeeping money, forty dollars, that Tim had left for Eve in an envelope in the cutlery drawer. And, worst of all, Linda's engagement and wedding rings, forgotten on the kitchen windowsill the night before and only remembered in the morning, when Eve noticed that other things were missing. Linda had leaned over the sink, sobbing, distraught at losing her rings. She couldn't be consoled. Eve felt sorry for her, and relieved, as well, that Linda was so sentimental about them. Perhaps everything would be all right with her and Michael after all.

But by the time Michael arrived to rage and thunder through the house, Linda had recovered her usual cool. She told him to keep his voice down: she didn't want Carrie to hear, not yet.

"She should hear," he said. "I don't want her to grow up as bloody gullible as some other people around here."

"It's my fault," said Eve. "I shouldn't have let the boy hang around. I knew he wasn't allowed in the house, but I didn't think he would do this."

Linda stroked Eve's sleeve, shook her head.

"Nobody knew this would happen," she said. Her eyes were still red from all the crying. "Tim won't blame you."

Eve didn't know what Tim would say. She wondered if she'd be asked back next year, after all this. She didn't really mind the noise from the hotel, not really. It was noisy in Mt. Roskill too, where her unit faced the busy main road. None of the family liked visiting her there.

"Your rings," she said to Linda. "I'll tell Tim when he gets back. He'll put things right."

"You're not staying in this house another night," said Michael, and it wasn't clear to Eve, or to Linda, which of them he was addressing. "I'm serious. You're not staying here again."

And he was right, as it turned out: the next January was wet and cold, and the MacPhersons didn't go away, and then Eve had a stroke and couldn't get around so well anymore. Six years later, Linda saw someone who might have been Tim MacPherson at Eve's funeral, but she didn't approach him. She didn't talk to many people that day. She and Michael were recently divorced, and some things--former daughter-in-law, ex-wife--were still hard for her to say.

Once, driving along Hurstmere Road, Linda noticed the old gate across the driveway had been replaced with something more formidable that opened by remote control. And then one day it was all gone: the house, the garden, the bach, the wall, the Mon Desir. A big apartment complex, with balconies and below-ground garages, went up in its place. Every inch of the land looked concreted over, unrecognizable. When Linda visited Takapuna Beach again, she couldn't remember exactly where the section began and ended, or where the gate used to hang. It looked like an entirely different place, free of all its associations, all its histories.

That last day at the house, Carrie didn't hear about Lance and the silver and the rings until late in the afternoon. When her father arrived, she was at the bottom of the garden, lying prone on her beach towel as near the bach as she dared. All she could hear was the song on her transistor, the voice of a hovering seagull and an outboard motor humming in the shallows.

Rank with Coppertone, eyes shut against the sun, she pictured Lance walking over. She imagined him dropping onto the brown grass beside her and asking, in a cool, off-hand manner, if she'd go for a drink with him tonight at the Mon Desir.

They'd go right after dinner, she decided, and sit together by the pool listening to a band, watching the sun set. He'd order her a Tequila Sunrise. Afterwards, they'd dawdle back along the quiet beach, kicking the sand heaped against the stone wall at the bottom of the garden. They'd look out at the moon, low on the horizon and hazy through the clouds. There, under the drooping pohutukawas, he'd reach for her.

Her mouth would touch his thin, sandy lips. He'd taste of salt and beer, perhaps, or maybe he'd be sweet and soft, like jelly. His hand would skim her arm. They'd press together, gently at first, shoulders and knees.

Lance would whisper her name softly so it sounded like the trees rustling in the wind. Carrie, he'd say. The trees would whisper it back: Carrie, Carrie, Carrie, Lance would kiss her again and then, perhaps, they'd fumble with each other's clothing. She'd hear nothing but the breeze in the trees and the sound of his breath and the water lapping, soft and steady. The moon would disappear behind the blackness of Rangitoto. They'd drop to the ground and twine limbs around limbs and thrash with urgent ardor on the cold sand.