Speed of Light, The Read online

  Speed of Light

  Joy Cowley

  GECKO PRESS

  To Patti Gauch who is a fine author,

  good friend and superb editor:

  thank you for this trinity of gift.

  – Joy

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  A Note from the Author

  Copyright

  1

  WIND VELOCITY: Wind speed is accurately measured by an anemometer; but there is an older way of estimating wind force by observing its effect on the environment. The 13-grade Beaufort Scale measures wind from 0 (“Calm”, at 2 km/h) to 12 (“Hurricane”, at over 119 km/h). Number 10 on the Beaufort Scale is “Storm”, with 100 km/h winds and 9-metre waves. In a storm, trees can be uprooted and damage to buildings is likely.

  The house had been built on the highest point, its snout over the sea, sniffing every change in the weather. If you stood against the low front wall, you had no awareness of the earth beneath, only sky and, far below, a blue bathtub of harbour floating toy boats. Like a space station, Jeff thought, like a glass and concrete laboratory, not a house, no, nothing house-like except the furniture that came from their old place. They had moved nine plus four months ago but he still felt he needed permission to open the smooth black cupboards in the kitchen. No catches. A magic touch with a finger and they sprang open, surprising you with ordinary things like orange juice and cans of tomato soup.

  At this height, he could see weather from any direction long before it arrived, high clouds shredded by wind, or fat cumulus rolling in from the Hutt Valley, pencil lines of rain scribbling their way over the eastern hills. Today, though, brought something new. Jeff had never seen anything like it, this army of cloud, as dark as an oil slick, coming up from the South Island, blackening land and sea. The harbour was still calm, sunlit water offering no kind of warning, but out in the strait the shadow was dense and picking up water in white patches.

  Eddie the new gardener was preparing for the change in the weather, putting the barbecue table and chairs in the shed. Jeff liked the way Eddie walked, rolling from side to side without a sound. Elephants walked like that because they had soft pads on their feet. Eddie had red canvas shoes without ties.

  “Will it be a bad storm?” Jeff asked.

  “Little beauty,” said Eddie, folding a wooden chair. “Sea will be across the road high tide tonight. You going anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Just as well. Road might be closed. If you like you can tie that cover down over the barbecue. Good and tight, mind you.”

  “Sure.” Jeff tugged at the padded canvas cover. “Hey, I want to ask you something: is your real name Eddie?”

  “About as real as it gets. Why?”

  He laughed. “Our names are the same! We’re both nines!”

  “What?”

  “Jeff and Eddie add up to nine and nine is the perfect number!”

  Eddie stood still, hugging the chair, his mouth open under a thin moustache. “Huh?”

  “Nine is my number,” Jeff explained. “It’s yours, too. Look, E is the fifth letter in the alphabet, D is four, I is nine. Add those up. Eddie. Five, four, four, nine and five make twenty-seven. Then you add the two and the seven together. What have you got? Nine.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Eddie, it’s about numerology. My brother told me. Numbers tell us who we are. Seven is the spiritual number. I forget what eight is, but nine, powerful nine means perfection.”

  “You got me there, kid.” Eddie shifted the chair to scratch behind his ear. “I’m not what you’d call a number nerd.”

  “It’s really very simple. The letters for Jeff are ten and five and six and six. Twenty-seven for Jeff. Two and seven make –”

  “Isn’t your name Jeffrey?”

  He shook his head. “I prefer Jeff because Jeff is nine and nine is my number.” But he knew from the blank stare that Eddie was not taking it in. There was a stirring in the air, like the movement of a propeller.

  The big gardener shifted sideways to look at the sky. “Gotta get these chairs in the shed. Reckon your old man’ll be back any time soon. Don’t forget the barbecue cover.”

  Jeff watched him lumber around the side of the house, pants hanging low, a map of sweat stains on the back of his T-shirt. Another air movement rustled some dry leaves near the swimming pool. The gum tree beside the bronze gates shivered and a blob of wetness burst into a star shape on the concrete. Another. Then another. Rain was arriving ahead of the cloud, water drops from a blue sky, and with it came the sound of the Lexus, the hush of tyre tread in the gravel and a groan as the electronic gate released itself, swinging inwards.

  His father Winston was home. Winston was a six.

  As Jeff ran through the southern wing of the house, he realised how dark the sky had become, a summer afternoon suddenly evening. He felt the wind; saw Eddie outside, struggling with the shed door; heard the rattle of large raindrops; then he was skidding the hall mat along the marble floor and tumbling, arms outspread, into his bedroom. He wrenched open his backpack.

  His father didn’t like him talking to the gardener.

  “Jeffrey?” The front door opened. “You there, Jeffrey?”

  “Doing homework, Dad,” he called.

  Winston Lorimer stepped into the room. “Good lad. Where’s your mother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And your sister? Andrea?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Eddie said Mum went to pick up Andrea from college. That was ages ago.” He glanced at his father.

  “Shopping, no doubt,” said Winston. “Women, huh? They know every shoe shop in the city. She’s not answering her phone.” His smile disappeared. “I said she’s not answering her phone!”

  “Andrea can’t take her phone to school. There’s a rule about –”

  “Your mother! I’m talking about your mother’s phone! There’s a helluva storm coming up, eighty knot wind gusts, they reckon. It’s going to be dangerous out there and –” He stopped and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. He’d had a haircut. It was grey stubble, close to his scalp.

  “Mum phoned Eddie and asked him to put away the garden furniture.” Jeff put down his pen. “Do you think it’ll be that bad?”

  “So she talked to the blimp, did she? What else did she say?”

  “His name is Eddie,” Jeff murmured.

  Winston gave a short laugh. “Eddie, blimp, tinkerbell – take your pick.” Then he shook his head. “There was a warning on the car radio. Stay away from coastal roads at full tide! Don’t go over the Rimutaka hill. Make sure boats are securely moored. God help us! Women can be so impractical! I’m worried about her! You know tonight’s ferry sailings are cancelled.”

  “Dad, they’ll be okay. They’ll be home before dark.” But it was already dark, not night dark but an angry day dark that threw rain like handfuls of nails against the window. He switched on the desk lamp. “Mum’s a good driver.”

  His father took another step into the room and looked at his desk. “What’s the assignment?”

  “Fractions.”

  “You and your precious numbers.” He scrubbed Jeff’s hair with his knuckles. “What’s it to be? Stephen Hawking the second? Lorimer and Son, Chartered Accountants?”

  “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “You must have given the future some thought.”

  Jeff wi
shed he would go away. “Well, no, I haven’t.”

  “When I was your age, I absolutely knew what I wanted to be. A diver. Did I tell you that?”

  Of course he’d told him that. Many times.

  “It was those Jacques Cousteau films. Before your time. One minute they were on the sea, plain old waves. The next minute, gliding above another world. I wanted to do that. I wanted to discover underwater volcanoes and new species of fish. I bought a snorkel and mask –” He was interrupted by a gust of wind that slapped the window, rattling it in its frame. After a pause, he gathered words again. “Fortunately, my old man sorted me out.”

  It seemed odd that his father should think that fortunate. “Mum says Grandpa Lorimer used to beat you with his belt doubled over.”

  Winston actually laughed. “Kids don’t always know what is best for them,” he said. His expression changed. “Why doesn’t she answer her phone!”

  “Honestly, Dad. They’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He turned in the room as though uncertain of direction. “Where’s the blimp? Gone home early?”

  “He’s probably gone by now.” Jeff drew a large nine on his paper and filled its loop with dots. “He put all the outdoor furniture in the shed – and the pot plants. He said it’s going to last three days.” He looked up. “What about the plane tomorrow? Your Mr Jones?”

  “Mr Staunton-Jones,” his father replied. “No problem. It’s an international flight, big aircraft. He’ll be here, rain or shine.” His smile came back, broad this time. “Good news, Jeffrey, bloody good news, pardon my French, all thanks to our friend Mr Staunton hyphenated Jones. Mark my words! This is the big one! A man can sit counting beans day in, day out, or he can get off his chuff and use a little initiative, do something with his life. How would you like your own island in Fiji?”

  “No.” Jeff frowned. “I wouldn’t.”

  His father laughed. “Dumbo! It was a rhetorical question about choice. Fiji, a villa in Tuscany, a condominium in Hawaii! This is what Warren Staunton-Jones is offering us. The plain truth, son, is that you can sit here adding up your numbers, or you can make them work for you. Remember that, Jeffrey. The world can be your oyster.”

  The words formed a hard shell around a memory, and Jeff saw himself aged eight, and his older brother Beckett with a laugh full of sunshine, saying, “The world’s my oyster, kid!” The old pain came back, slicing through his stomach so intensely that he thought he might cry.

  He missed Beckett. He missed his brother more than anything in the world. He tried to swallow back the tears but they came anyway.

  “How do you think I got this house?” his father said. “Counting beans? One and one make two? How did I –” He stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  There was another burst of rain against the window. Jeff shook his head.

  “What is it, son? Tell me!”

  “Nothing, Dad. Nothing. I was – thinking of Beck.”

  For a moment, rain was the only sound, then his father said those words again. “Beckett is dead.”

  Jeff thought there might be a replay of the old anger, on and on about the disgrace, the shame, the damage to the Lorimer family’s reputation. It didn’t happen because at that moment, Winston’s cellphone sounded its jazz piano ring, and it was out of his pocket to his face, and he was bellowing with relief, “Where the hell have you been?”

  Jeff’s mother Helen and his sister Andrea were on their way home.

  * * *

  Jeff knew he could rely on numbers. They were the only things in the universe that did not change. Multiply any number by an even number and the answer for all eternity was another even number. One million years ago. Two million years in the future. The same. Divide any number by nought and the answer was nothing. Multiply any number by nought and the answer was nothing. But it was in addition and subtraction that a round fat zero showed its muscle. Add a nought to a number and abracadabra, it increased by a factor of ten. Subtract a nought from a number with noughts, and you cut the number down to one-tenth its original size.

  He had been six when he’d discovered the power of zero and he still saw it as magic. Not Paul. Paul Fitzgibbon, who sat next to him in school, was a mathematical acrobat who could add up columns of figures upside down on a shop counter and come to a total faster than a machine. Yet Jeff didn’t talk to Paul about the magic. Numbers were just numbers, said Paul, who did not see past black marks on paper to the great mystery that kept the universe in order.

  Mystery was how Beckett described it that day at the Carter Observatory. It was Jeff’s ninth birthday, and he and his brother were lying on their backs in the dark, looking at stars projected on the ceiling, and Beck talked in his laughing voice. Was he laughing? Maybe not. Maybe Jeff just remembered him as always laughing. Beck was telling him how special nine was, how nine was seen as the number of perfection in many religions. Multiply any set of digits by nine, add the numbers in your answer, and they will always come out as nine, he said. They tried it, lying there under the constellation of Orion: two nines are eighteen, one and eight is nine. Thirty-seven times nine make three hundred and thirty-three. Three and three and three are nine. The excitement of discovery made Jeff’s heart beat in his ears, blood tapping like fingers against his mind. This is what he was, nine the perfect number, and then Beckett, already more than two nines older, had whispered, “If you love numbers, they will take you to God.”

  After the tragedy, Jeff had told his mother about that. She had looked past him into some far-off distance. “He loved drugs, more like it,” she said, not allowing her voice to sound sad.

  The name Helen was eight, and Andrea was seven, in a family of six, seven, eight and nine.

  Beckett was not part of the sequence. As Beck or Beckett he was a three, and three was a prime number that was always a part of nine. Jeff drew a row of nines on his paper and put a three in each of the loops.

  * * *

  Jeff’s side of the house caught the southerly winds. The building was solid, so there was no movement, merely noise and plenty of it, rages of rain hurled at the blackened windows, backed by sounds further out, wind roared in trees, creaks, the crash of someone’s dustbin or wheelbarrow. Inside the house, all rooms lit with a peaceful glow. It was like being in a strong lighthouse in a tsunami, quiet walls with chaos outside.

  The other wing of the house, facing north, was parent country where Helen and Winston had their bedroom, the gym, their offices set up with swivel chairs and broadband, the TV room they called The Theatre. No exaggeration. It was a theatre, huge screen, surround sound and leather chairs. In a reckless moment, Jeff had told kids at school that their new house had its own movie cinema. Some believed him. The others just laughed. A locked gate meant there weren’t any unplanned visits, so his friends had no factual evidence. Winston had promised he could get a couple of DVDs and bring the whole class up for a movie night, but it hadn’t happened and now Jeff got tired thinking about it.

  Andrea’s bedroom was opposite his, but at this moment she was in the kitchen with their mother, their voices coming through with the storm noise so it all sounded like an orchestra tuning up, making no sense at all. Every now and then, Jeff heard his father’s belly laugh. Dad would be having his whisky – his family was safe and he was looking forward to tomorrow’s visit from his Australian friend, that old Mr Warren Staunton-Jones. They were going to be business partners. Jeff didn’t know what the investment was. While Winston said a lot of things like “Pot of gold!” and “Opportunity of a lifetime!” he kept all the details to himself; but he’d flown to Sydney twice, and last month Mr Staunton-Jones had come to Wellington to have dinner at the house, food cooked by a chef from Vérité Restaurant. Jeff remembered two things about that evening: the chef complaining because their knives were blunt, and Mr Staunton-Jones saying he wished Jeff was his grandson, smart nipper like that. Jeff thought the visitor’s remark meant he would be included in the after-dinner discussions; but he was wrong. He a
nd Andrea did the dishes.

  * * *

  The wall TV in the dining room brought the storm inside, with images of wet lights and drenched reporters. A road was closed with a van turned over in the wind. Sheets of iron peeled off houses. Jeff couldn’t hear what was being said, but the pictures connected with the noise outside, especially the scene at the marina where the masts of yachts waved like conductors’ batons.

  “Poor devils.” Winston raised his glass. “Makes you thankful for a solid haven.”

  It was pizza again tonight, but Jeff liked pizza and Andrea, who was still in her college uniform, had made a salad for the table. Andrea was seventeen and she looked older, more like Helen’s sister than daughter. That’s how they acted together, too, sharing thoughts in looks and smiles that sometimes made Jeff feel lonely because he couldn’t do that with Winston.

  “Hi, Squidgy!” Andrea put a plate on the table. “How was school today?”

  “Don’t know,” Jeff said. “I didn’t ask it.”

  “Why not?” She tapped him on the nose. “It could have been your last opportunity to have a meaningful conversation. Goodbye, school, nice knowing you. Tomorrow, you could be whirled away to the land of Oz.”

  “Oz?” Winston picked up on the last word.

  “Not Oz across the Tasman, Dad. Oz as in wizard, as in Dorothy, as in red shoes.”

  Winston looked at Helen. “What’s she on about?”

  But Helen was watching the TV screen, a slice of pizza halfway to her mouth.

  A siren cut through the storm noise, only there was no way of knowing if it was from the TV or outside. It was an indecisive sound, frayed by the roar of the rain-soaked wind. Jeff felt Andrea move behind him and lean over, her hair against his neck, her breath warm at his ear. Her voice was so soft that it could not have gone anywhere else in the room. “I’ve had a letter from Beck,” she whispered. “I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

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