Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
The next morning Dan was returning from a walk to fetch the newspaper his mother still insisted on when he spotted Augi before she saw him.
She was riding along the road that edged MacLeod’s Cottage, hair pulled back, head down, legs pumping steadily as she climbed the slight rise before reaching the house. She looked utterly at home on the bike — balanced and unhurried.
He lifted a hand in greeting. ‘Augustini.’
She braked smoothly and put a foot down, breathless but smiling. ‘Daniel.’
‘You’re out early,’ he said.
‘I like to ride before the wind picks up.’ She tipped her head back, scanning the sky. ‘Though today it looks more like rain. So it won’t be a long ride.’
He followed her gaze. Clouds were gathering inland, dense and low, but the air still felt light and unthreatening.
‘You heading anywhere in particular?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Around the park. I was thinking of riding the inland track.’
Something clicked. ‘The memorial?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes sharpened. ‘You know the Marine we were talking about. The one connected to the cottage.’
‘John Kowalski,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘There are panels there. Names, units. Sometimes extra material if you know where to look.’
‘I guess I should have looked online,’ he said.
She tilted her head, considering him. ‘I have already, but I thought I’d like to see it for myself.’
‘I haven’t been on a bike since I was a kid,’ he said.
She shrugged again. ‘I love cycling.’ She glanced around at the trees, their leaves whispering in the breeze, and when she looked back her eyes were bright, cheeks flushed. ‘It makes me feel free.’
She shot him a wide, unguarded smile and he knew he wasn’t going to get done any of the jobs Kate had asked him to do.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked.
She blinked, surprised but not dismayed. ‘Do you have a bike?’
‘Are you kidding?’ He pointed toward the shed beside the house. ‘We have loads. Question is, do they still work?’
‘Mine will,’ said Kate, stepping out onto the verandah. ‘I thought I heard voices.’
She leaned against the rail, taking in the scene with a knowing glint in her eye.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘The Marine’s Memorial,’ said Augi.
‘Just need to see if there’s a bike in the shed that won’t kill me.’
‘Mine works OK,’ Kate said. ‘And I think your dad’s old one still functions.’
Her phone rang. She waved them off. ‘Have fun.’
The rain began just as they reached the edge of Queen Elizabeth Park.
At first it was only a mist, but as they rode further inland, the mist turned to drizzle.
But they continued along the track which wound through rolling sand dune ridges covered in scrub and flax.
From time to time a curve in the track brought sudden, breathtaking views of the sea and Kāpiti Island framed against a darkening sky.
They talked as they rode, side by side on the wider parts of the path, and laughed when Dan misjudged a turn and wobbled, narrowly avoiding a thorny bush. It seemed neither of them had noticed the darkening sky and increasing rain until they reached their destination.
By the time they reached the memorial site, the rain was falling in earnest. Laughing, they wheeled their bikes under the open-sided shelter. The rain hammered against the iron roof, loud enough to drown out the rest of the world.
Dan leaned against one of the posts, chest heaving slightly, grinning like an idiot. ‘I’d forgotten how good this feels,’ he said.
Augi laughed — properly laughed — pushing wet hair back from her face. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her like this.
‘I know. There’s nothing like a bike ride to make you forget your worries.’
His smile faded and he looked around the memorial site, as he thought about Augi and her worries. ‘I hope,’ he said, watching the flags flap soggily in the quickening breeze, ‘that you aren’t burdened with too many worries.’
‘Compared to the stories of what went on here?’ she said, indicating the interpretation panels which told the story of Camp Russell, one of three camps hastily built to house fifteen thousand US Marines stationed in Paekākāriki between 1942 and 1944.
‘Or here,’ she pointed to where a panel commemorated the ten U.S.
Navy seamen who’d died during a failed landing exercise off Whareroa Beach in June 1943.
‘No. Nowhere near. Just ordinary, mundane worries.’
He walked over to where she was studying a panel, the names blurred by rain. He stood close to her and she stilled. He felt as if they were the only two people in the world, locked in this place far from anyone, separated by the elements and surrounded by a history about which they knew so little.
She looked up, her eyes darkening. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words emerged. She looked younger, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed by the exercise and she also looked suddenly uncertain.
She swept a strand of wet hair back from her face. ‘Daniel?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, noticing the way his voice had dropped a little.
‘You’re… looking at me strangely.’
He considered denying it. Instead, he told the truth.
‘It’s like I’ve just seen you for the first time.’
She swallowed. ‘That sounds dangerous.’
‘It might be,’ he said. ‘But it’s also… real.’
She turned back to the panels, as if trying to regain hold of a reality which seemed to be slipping away from them both. She cleared her throat.
‘You wanted to know about the Marine,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’
He could have stayed where they were forever, but he took her lead and they walked along the displays together, shoulders brushing occasionally, reading names, dates, units.
Then she stopped.
Her finger hovered over a line.
‘Kowalski,’ she said quietly.
Dan’s pulse jumped. ‘That’s him?’
‘It could be,’ she said. ‘Captain. Marine Corps. Stationed here in ’42.’
He stepped closer, reading over her shoulder.
‘So he was real,’ he murmured.
‘Yes.’ She straightened, turning to face him. ‘Daniel, before we go any further… there’s something I need to tell you.’
Something in his chest tightened.
‘I don’t like secrets,’ he said slowly.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I’m telling you now.’
The rain thundered overhead.
‘I had another name once. Another identity, another life. In Greece.’
He swallowed down the frisson of fear. ‘Another name?’
She nodded.
Of all the things he could focus on, he chose her name. It seemed to symbolise all the unknowns. ‘So your name isn’t Augustini?’
‘It’s my second name. But only recently has anyone called me by it.
Everyone but you calls me Augi. Or, in your case, Augustini.
’ She paused, as if wanting to explain further but not wanting to give too much away.
Still secretive. ‘No one in Greece called me Augi or Augustini. They call me — or used to call me,’ she corrected herself, ‘by my first name of Eleni.’
‘Eleni,’ he repeated, trying to fix it on her. But it didn’t work. ‘I can’t think of you as Eleni. You’re Augustini.’
‘You can’t think of me as anything, Daniel.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because my real name is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not the woman you think I am. And I can’t be with you while I hold those secrets.’
‘Then tell me them.’
‘I will never tell you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s none of your business. Only mine. Only mine and people who were dear to me in Greece.’
He didn’t know what kind of secrets she was talking about. Had she done something she was ashamed of? Been someone who she was ashamed of? Knew things which would endanger anyone who knew them? What exactly were these secrets?
But he could voice none of these things. Instead he shook his head in frustration. She was everything he feared. A woman who mattered and a woman who had a life she refused to share with him.
Dan stepped away from her, heart pounding, the rain suddenly too loud, the shelter too small. This — this — was exactly what he’d sworn never to walk into again.
And somehow, impossibly, he’d ridden straight toward it.
Augi didn’t think she’d ever seen such a dramatic change in anyone’s expression. One moment Dan had been warm, attentive and his eyes full of appreciation and interest. The next they were wary, hurt even. And she’d done that. But she’d had no choice, had she?
She turned away from him, not able to look at the effect of her words a moment longer.
She walked over to the entrance of the shed and looked out at the rain.
It had intensified if anything and was coming down in sheets, turning the park to a world of watery grey.
She closed her eyes and for a moment imagined the men who’d have only had canvas above their heads, seventy years earlier.
The image softened her thoughts, diluting her pain.
‘We should leave,’ she said to Dan.
When he replied his voice came from directly behind her.
She could imagine him staring at her, trying to crack the code of who she was through the way she stood, the set of her shoulders, the way she held her hands.
But he wouldn’t find any clues there. She was a past-master at hiding in plain sight.
‘It’s still raining. We’ll get soaked.’
She noticed he didn’t argue. She drew in a deep breath and turned to face him, confident that her features wouldn’t betray her. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘You wait until the rain stops.’
Ever the gentleman. Except now he was a gentleman she’d pushed away so effectively that he couldn’t wait to leave.
His eyes were wide with a kind of desperate longing.
It made her want to rage against him to tell him that he didn’t know how lucky he was to be born into his life, to be cushioned by love and care and to never want for either.
It made her want to grab him and demand that he love her despite her secrets, or even because of them.
But instead she resorted to chilly words.
‘OK. Go then. I can see you can’t wait.’
‘You’re angry,’ he said.
She shrugged. She could hardly deny it. ‘And you’re scared. I guess that makes us even.’
He narrowed his eyes, irritated at the attack. She wanted to go on. Load more ammunition at him, anything to stop the pain of acknowledging he didn’t want to know her because of her past and because of her secrets.
‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re too macho to consider you can be scared of anything.’ Her words were edged with bitterness, but she didn’t care.
‘Augustini,’ he said, his low voice sending warning signals.
‘But you cannot deny it.’ She took a step closer, noticing the darkening in his eyes as she did so. ‘Things you don’t know don’t just scare you, they terrify you. But you don’t understand why, do you?’
‘Whether I know the reason or not, is irrelevant here, because I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
She nodded. ‘I am. You hate secrets because you only trust what you can see and hear and touch. Concrete things.’ She shook her head, blinking as the pressure of her emotions threatened to break through. She took a step away. ‘I can’t give you those concrete things.’
‘Then I can’t trust you,’ he said quietly.
She threw up her hands. ‘I know. And therein lies the tragedy.’
‘There’s no tragedy if you just tell me what the hell’s going on. Why insist on keeping these secrets?’
‘And why do you insist I tell you? Hey? Is that how it will be with us? You demand to know things from me? You want to control me?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to control you. You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘Then tell me what it is you want from me?’
‘I want to know what happened to you. What are the secrets you keep.’
‘They are my secrets,’ she said, leaning in to him, her eyes blazing. ‘Mine.’
‘How can I trust you if you keep secrets from me?’
‘Because you trust me! Me!’ she repeated with emphasis. ‘You trust that I am keeping those secrets for a reason. You trust my integrity. I shouldn’t need to prove to you that I have this. Nothing comes with guarantees, Daniel, nothing!’
She turned away. She knew she’d break down in tears if she said anything further.
She heard him walk up behind her. She closed her eyes against the rain which continued to stream down from the gutter outside the door and gush into the water barrel.
‘I trusted once, Augustini, and I was tricked.’
‘Then you trusted the wrong person. You trusted someone who told lies. I do not tell lies. And I do not give away secrets that might harm people, as well as myself.’
‘I can’t do it, Augustini. I just can’t.’
‘Then you should leave now.’ She looked up at the sky which was beginning to clear. ‘The rain is easing.’
There was a moment of silence before he walked over to his bike, and cycled off in the drizzle, his figure disappearing into the watery landscape.
And she knew that with him went her only chance of living a normal life.