The Singing Whakapapa by CK Stead

Author:CK Stead [C. K. Stead]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743487259
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Monday evenings bring sons and daughters-in-law, bring grandchildren, bring (this one does) Jean-Anne Devantier and her husband Philip and their evident impending progeny. It is all arranged, agreed to, organised. The grandchildren have been fed and are playing upstairs. There are eight places set at the glass-topped table, where Hugh sits at one end, Hat at the other, the three young couples interlocked and overlapped down the sides in the approved bourgeois manner. Yesterday they got it ready, Hat as cook and kitchen-commandant, Hugh as sous-chef — chopper, peeler, stirrer, mixer, grinder. The courses (minestrone, squid salad, chicken cacciatore, fruit and cheese, cake and coffee, with appropriate wines) come effortlessly now from the kitchen, with pauses for talk and more wine and even cigarettes, the three, Evie, Philip and Hugh, who have lately or long ago given up, taking cigarettes from the one, Richard, who has just relapsed, while the others-who-have-never warn and cajole but say they don’t mind, not really — though in recognition of Jean-Anne’s condition they smoke only a few and with a window wide open.

It is — this Jean-Anne and Philip addition to the family occasion — a once-only, by agreement; Hat has even welcomed it, but with an overtone of magnanimity and a consequent undertone of reserve. She has been, Hugh is sure of it, suspicious of his friendship and workship with this healthy young librarian-female, more when he doesn’t talk about her than when he does. Better to have her here, on display, visibly pregnant and with her very presentable husband.

And now Hat is locked in conversation with Philip, a young medic, GP returned to Auckland Hospital where he is specialising in pathology. There has been in the past day or so a killing — several killings by one man — and Philip has seen all the bodies and done the post-mortem on one, a woman. Since the killer killed himself there will be no trial, no chance that the depositions and accompanying forensic evidence will come before District Court Judge Harriet Enverson, and they are able to talk about it freely. He is describing the wounds inflicted by shotgun — the first fired at close quarters, out of doors, and deflected by the victim’s outstretched hand so that it sprayed along her right arm, across her upper body, and along the other arm, without inflicting a fatal wound. Leaving a trail of blood she ran in to call the police but in her panic and distress neglected to lock the door. Her call got through, but as she talked to the police operator she was shot in the body at close range. The third shot was point blank, straight into the middle of her face as she lay on the floor. Philip is explaining to Hat, who is accustomed to photographs and accounts of such matters, how with shotgun wounds at close quarters there is always, in addition to the pellets, a wad from the cartridge, and how he had to hunt for it inside the head, finding it at last buried deep in the back of the throat.

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