Read Memory of Love (9781101603024) for Free Online Page B

he rubs sunblock on her back and shoulders. His hand gently lifts her hair to reach her neck.
    Who am I? she thinks. Who is this person who stands here, barefoot on a beach, allowing a stranger to rub her back and shoulders? Her neck and her arms? She smiles – can’t help herself. She can’t possibly be me. She is new and the world is new.
    â€˜It’s a pohutukawa,’ he says, pointing upwards. ‘This tree that shades us. A month earlier and it would have been covered in red flowers. It’s odd, but like jacaranda flowers they are hard to photograph. Never come out quite as extraordinary as the real thing. But I guess that goes for many things . . .’
    He takes out a low folding chair for her, and she sits and watches him get the small barbecue going. He squats on the ground before her and while he is busying himself, he tells her about his long and winding journey through the country, from the Far North all the way down to Bluff and Stewart Island. And then back up along the West Coast. His back is tanned and tiny drops of sweat glisten along his spine.
    He looks up and asks her where she has been.
    â€˜Oh, nowhere really. I’ve just arrived.’
    He nods and takes the lid off the chilly-bin he has unpacked from the car.
    The crayfish is enormous. It looks like a large lobster, she thinks. And it’s alive. He holds it up, laughing. She asks if she can use his camera and he nods. When she has it ready he poses happily holding the crayfish in his hand. Then he takes out a knife, holds the crayfish down on a piece of driftwood and kills it with a swift insertion of the knife in the neck. She is not sure if crayfish can be considered to have necks. The crayfish flounders a couple of times, then it is still. He splits it lengthwise and puts the two halves face down on the barbecue. While it cooks he makes a salad, wraps some bread in tinfoil and places it on the barbecue. All the while he rejects her offers of help. And all the while she keeps taking pictures. The powerful zoom takes her close to his face while he focuses on what he is doing. She clicks away. Picture after picture.
    â€˜I’ve done this for so long, it’s a routine that can’t be altered,’ he says, smiling. ‘I enjoy doing it myself. But don’t let this fool you. This is the only cooking I do. I am hopeless in a normal kitchen.’
    She laughs. She can hear the sound of her own laughter. It flows from inside her like the most natural thing. Where is it coming from? She is not aware of having heard it ever before.
    They sit side by side in the low chairs, facing the sea and with their plates on their laps. The chilly-bin sits between them and on it are two cold beers.
    She still has a feeling of floating, of not quite touching the ground. She closes her eyes against the sun.
    Then she looks at him. She is not aware of having any thoughts at all. She is all lightness and light.
    â€˜Why don’t you join me for the last leg of my trip?’ he says suddenly. ‘It’s just for a couple of days. I have to be back in Auckland next week. I’ll show you something you wouldn’t find by yourself.’
    She is helpless; she has nothing to hold her back.
    â€˜If we’re lucky the godwits will still be around.’
    â€˜Godwits?’
    â€˜Here they are called kuaka. They’re a wading bird. They migrate here from Alaska every year, and then back at the end of summer. The longest non-stop bird migration there is. Apparently they cruise on the winds and manage without food or water all the way, up to ten days or more. Because they are wading birds they can’t feed out on the sea. They have to reach land. A very risky undertaking, it seems to me. But somehow they manage it, year after year.’
    He looks out over the sea and she studies his profile.
    â€˜But that’s not why I want to see this place. It’s the place itself. That isolated peninsula