“When is it supposed to happen?” Skylark asked.
“Actually, Skylark, in two days’ time.”
Skylark became very cross. “Well don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m just here with my mother on holiday.”
That night, Skylark dreamt of the tree. It looked like the claw of a bird. When she looked again, the tree turned into Hoki’s withered left foot. Then the tree caught fire, and Hoki’s claw curled into itself, grabbing at the sky.
Chapter Five
With a start, Skylark awoke to a red sky.
The manu whenua were rising to the penultimate dawn. Their song was a brilliant, shining cantilena, soaring across Manu Valley. This morning, however, the song was sharp, uneasy, shrill, like stones being scraped together.
Skylark’s memory immediately turned to Hoki’s words. One day to go to the heliacal rising of Venus. She flung the blankets off her bed and stepped to the window. “Read my lips,” she shouted to nobody in particular. “Not my problem, okay?”
“Oh why did I ever agree to go back to show business?” Cora asked.
The landbirds weren’t the only ones feeling fractious that morning. So was Cora, having second thoughts about Bye Bye Birdie opening that very evening. She sat on a lounger in the sun drinking cup after cup of coffee, trying to learn her lines. She’d die of lung cancer or drowning one way or another.
“I’m never going to be ready in time. Really, Skylark honey, it’s all your fault. You should have stopped me from saying yes.”
“Can’t you just relax and enjoy the view?” Skylark said between gritted teeth. “Can’t you forget the show for a moment?” Skylark had decided that today she was going to be just a tourist.
But somebody had snapped Cora’s elastic. She reached for her sunglasses, though even they could not diminish the glare from her eyes, and had a hissy fit. “If I wanted to enjoy the view I’d watch television,” she answered. “At least I’d have a remote and a choice of channels. What have I got here? Just one view over a forest to a sea. And it’s not even framed.”
“What about all this fresh air —”
“Honey, you can buy fresh air in a can from the supermarket. ‘Country Glade’, ‘Meadow Fresh’ or ‘Spring Flowers’. It might be full of fluorocarbons but at least it doesn’t come mixed up with manure smells and bird dung.”
Skylark picked up one of her mother’s magazines and tried to bury her nose in it. “Oh no you don’t, Skylark,” Cora said, taking the magazine. “I’m not going to let a perfectly good tantrum go to waste. I need an audience and you’re it!”
In fact, if Cora had bothered to look around her, she would have noticed that her outburst had attracted a bevy of curious multi-coloured parrots. They sat on the terrace, watching Cora carefully, and then began to imitate everything she did. When she paced to the left, they paced to the left. When she muttered, they muttered.
Kita-kita-kita. Nag nag nag. Boring boring boring. Yeah yeah yeah.
Cora was deeply offended. “I may have had one or two bad notices,” she spluttered, “and some people might have switched channels to watch the other weather girl, but I have never been upstaged by birds of any colour or persuasion whatsoever. Go away, you awful things, go away.”
Instead, one of the parrots flew at Cora as if she was the interloper. “Save me!” Cora wailed, as she fended the parrot away. “And don’t you dare laugh, Skylark, don’t you dare —”
It was too late. Skylark began to snort — huge trumpeting sounds of hilarity.
“Oh no more, Skylark honey,” Cora said, seeing the funny side at last, “otherwise I’ll wet my knickers.”
That only set Skylark off on another round of laughter, and she collapsed into her mother’s arms. Surprised, momentarily, by how big Skylark was, Cora’s first reaction was to push her off. Then something was triggered in her memory — and she pulled her daughter closer to her instead.
“You’ve always been there for me, haven’t you Skylark?” Cora began. “You save me from parrots, from trouble, from all the men who come into my life. Who’s there to pick me up when they leave? You.” Skylark tried to move away but Cora only tightened her embrace. “You’re the only good thing to have come out of my marriage to Brad. How could I ever have fallen for him?”
“He’s been a good dad,” Skylark said, “and you’ve been a good mum. The best mother in the world.”
“Have I really been that good?” Cora asked. She took off her sunglasses. “I mean, look at you —”
“No, Mum,” Skylark answered. “Let’s not go there.” She hated Cora’s self-pitying moods.
Cora was undeterred. “The way you are is all my fault. You should have been pretty. You should have been skinny. Instead you had to look after me. When your father left me, you had to become the head of the household. All that responsibility, Skylark honey.”
“I’ll say,” Skylark answered, trying to change the focus. “How many of your boyfriends did I have to throw out of the house. Who was it after Dad?”
Skylark’s strategy worked. “Don’t get me started,” Cora said. “Rick?”
“That’s the one. Rick, Rick, thick as a brick. George was next, wasn’t he? I quite liked him. He was replaced by Jock.”
“He doesn’t count,” Cora sniffed. “Jock by name but certainly not by nature. I came home one night and found him in one of my frocks.”
“Jock, Jock, the one in the frock,” Skylark chanted. “One thing’s for sure, you could certainly pick ’em. Then there was Harry —”
“Don’t remind me,” Cora shuddered.
“He was the one who started your little problemo,” Skylark said.
“What was he thinking of, giving me some stuff before I went on to do the weather!” Cora growled. “No wonder I got fired. If you hadn’t stood up for me, I’d have been on my way to prison for possession of a class-A drug.”
Skylark had rung darling Daddy in Canada and asked him for enough money to employ the best lawyer in town. Realising that having an ex in prison was not a good look for an upwardly mobile television executive, Brad instructed the lawyer to arrange a hearing for Cora. There, Skylark sought guardianship of her mother. The judge was another of those men who could never resist Cora’s tears, and when she intervened with an impassioned “Please, sir, I’ll be good”, his heart melted. Surely a weather girl, the darling of the nation, should have a second start at coming up sunshine. So Cora was given in care to Skylark, who guaranteed that her mother would check into a rehab centre. The trouble was, that was where Mum met a certain slimeball called Zac.
“Forget him, Mum,” Skylark said. “He’s so low on the evolutionary scale, his only hope would be if somebody put a microchip in him so he can gain artificial intelligence.”
Cora bit her lip, chewing at her lipstick. Tears were threatening. “God, I’ve made such a mess of my life,” she said. “I’ve made a mess of your life too, of everybody’s lives.”
“I like trench warfare,” Skylark said, trying to console Cora. “Look on the bright side. You beat your drug dependency. That gives you a gold star.”
Cora nodded, but then her eyes widened with something that looked like sheer terror. Her face stilled, became calm with a chilling acceptance. “But I’ve still got another dependency,” she said. “I’m not as strong as you, I’ve always needed a man in my life. I get frightened of being alone.”