The Pleasure Quartet Read Free

that evening.
    ‘Every single word,’ I replied, my eyes no doubt shining with the joy of it all.
    When the invitation came, it was on thick white card embossed with gold lettering and sealed with a large glob of candle wax. Joan had asked me to peel it open, complaining that her now
arthritic fingers were no match for the heavy envelope although just that morning her digits had flown across the ivories with the dexterity of someone half her age.
    I slid my nail along the surface of the paper, peeled off the seal and examined it between my fingertips. It was soft and pliable and smelled of marshmallows.
    ‘Cape Reinga,’ I breathed softly as I pulled out the card and read the invitation aloud. I rolled the words in my mouth as if they were a benediction. I had long wanted to visit the
point that was often thought to be the Northernmost tip of the North Island, the place that in Maori was called
Te Rerenga Wairua
, the leaping-off place of the spirits. It was said that from
the lighthouse that stood watch on the Island’s tip the line of separation could be seen between the Tasman Sea to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east as the two clashed in a battle of
the tides. Along the way was a ninety-mile beach, a stretch of coastline so vast it seemed never ending to the naked eye.
    ‘And what is the theme to be?’ asked Joan, her bright eyes glowing with anticipation.
    ‘The Day of the Dead,’ I replied, reading further. ‘A little morbid, don’t you think?’
    ‘Not at all,’ replied the old woman, ‘and I ought to know, because I have one foot in the grave already.’ She lifted a wrinkled hand sternly to wave away our polite
protestations. ‘Death is just another step on the way of life.’
    That night Iris and I lay side by side in the single bed in Iris’s bedroom in her parents’ ramshackle house on the North Shore. In another life we might have been sisters but in this
one we had grown to be something more.
    I was in love with Iris. More than in love, I was consumed by her and consumed by the thought of losing her. Now that we had both finished school and Iris had begun working in the office of a
local motor dealership there were inevitable suitors. Older men, mostly, rich men, those who could afford to drive, and very occasionally I suspected that their wives too admired Iris. With her
thick bush of untamed dark brown ringlets that framed her face, eyes the colour of melted chocolate and wrists as delicate as a child’s, who wouldn’t?
    Iris had a round doll-like face and a look of perpetual innocence that attracted people to her like bees to a honey pot. I felt myself to be the opposite. I wasn’t fat, but I was stocky,
my brown hair dull and straight, my eyebrows a little too thick and my features square and unremarkable. At least, that’s how I imagined myself. I rarely looked in mirrors because I found my
own appearance ordinary, and I often wished that I had been born a boy so that I did not need to worry about whether or not my hair was combed or my waist was becoming too thick. Most of all, I
wished that I had been born a boy so that I could propose marriage to Iris.
    As soon as I heard about the Ball, I had wanted to be a part of it, and take Iris with me. There was something magical about the way Joan described it. I felt it in my bones as surely as I felt
that perpetual longing to be near the ocean and when I discovered that the Ball was to be held in Cape Reinga, the place where one sea laps over another, I knew that we must go.
    We had no way to secure an invitation, or so I believed before another thick white envelope appeared through Joan’s letterbox this time addressed to Moana Irving and Iris Lark. I tore it
open with shaking hands to find that the old woman had written to the Ball’s organisers and recommended that both us girls be offered positions in the kitchens. Neither of us could cook
particularly well, but that, Joan said when we next saw her, was of little