by Bowes, K T
“They’re brothers you stupid woman! If I refuse to be tested it will be inconclusive because Logan has a family relationship with Ryan. It will prove nothing,” Sylvia crowed, her voice growing louder and beginning to attract attention. One of the more fearless Māori waitresses made a move towards the table but Helena stopped her deftly with an outstretched arm.
“But she’s havin’ a go at the missus!” the girl said indignantly and Helena demonstrated the authority for which Logan had favoured her, holding onto the teenager and shaking her head.
“She’s the new Du Rose matriarch,” she hissed under her breath. “The Kaumatua told me. She’ll be fine.”
The women watched as Hana drew herself up to her full height and looked benevolently down on the painted doll seated alone at the table for two. Her protruding belly looked suddenly obvious and the eyes of the staff widened even as the guests waded through their food, oblivious of the drama unfolding nearby. Dressed in her grey sweatshirt and baggy tracksuit pants, Hana Du Rose easily outclassed the tart in the tight dress. All the formidable might and authority of the first Phoenix Du Rose and the stubbornness of Miriam coursed through her, inflaming her red hair in the romantic lighting as though she was a siren calling ships to their death. Hana said something as she dipped forward slightly from the waist and the other woman’s jaw dropped grotesquely, the mask of elegance irrevocably broken. The staff strained to listen but only Helena’s sharp ears caught the words, ‘half-brothers’ and ‘12.5% DNA.’ She didn’t know what it meant but the body language of Hana’s opponent showed that she understood perfectly. And that was plenty good enough for the new Du Rose housekeeper.
Hana breezed from the dining room, her whole body shaking with adrenaline. She left a trail of devastation in her wake as Sylvia’s dreams crumbled beneath her fingers and she had to be helped from the table to the lift reserved for the elderly and disabled.
“She’s amazing! You were right,” the teenage waitress concluded to Helena as they cleared the table of its detritus together. “What did the Kaumatua actually say?”
Helena pondered on her chance conversation that awful Christmas, with the elderly man who oversaw proceedings at the town’s local marae, the place where Māori sub-tribes or hapu gathered to debate, celebrate or mourn. Reuben and Miriam Du Rose had finally been honoured together at a joint tangihanga, united in death, brother and sister-in-law, cousins, lifelong lovers and Logan’s parents. The crinkled kaumatua had wagged his finger at Helena’s brown husband, a drover for Logan’s acres of beef cattle and declared authority over the slender British interloper who flanked her visibly distressed husband, clutching the tiny new-born baby girl to her breast. Helena paused, sounding out the Māori words badly with a hint of her Swedish accent. Her husband, Manu had translated for her. “The Kaumatua said, ‘See her mana. She is the next kuikui in the Du Rose line,’ something like that, anyway.” She began to doubt herself, “Did I say it right?”
The Māori teenager who had grown up with the old language running through her veins widened her eyes in awe. She nodded. If the marae elder had prophesied it, then that settled it. Hana Du Rose was queen.
Chapter 26
“Do you want to stay down here tonight? I don’t know if I can be bothered to drive home.” Logan yawned on the double bed in his brother’s childhood room, keeping his cowboy boots away from the covers. Phoenix sat next to his head and sulked.
“Not really,” Hana answered, laying the sandwiches down on the bedside table. “I’ve put the pram in the truck so when you’ve eaten this, I’ll drive us up the mountain.”
Phoenix withdrew her thumb long enough to hold her hand out eagerly for the sandwich. Hana shook her head, “No, not on the bed. You can eat at the dressing table.”
Phoenix looked accusingly at her father and Hana hid her smirk well. “Don’t look at Daddy. He’ll eat where he’s told to as well.”
The little girl rolled onto her stomach, becoming caught up in the petticoats of another of Aunty Liza’s dresses, getting frustrated as she ended up on the floor with her knees stuck. Hana lifted her under the arms and allowed the layers to fall, unbuttoning the back and lifting it over the child’s head. Underneath she wore a white vest and pair of woolly blue tights. Phoenix ran towards the table, diverting herself rapidly to the bathroom when the urgent need to use the toilet seemed more pressing. “No, don’t want nappies no more!” she complained to her father. “My big girl now!”
“Oh, crikey!” Logan’s voice echoed around the tiled ensuite bathroom. “Does Mummy know you’ve only got woolly tights on and nothing underneath? Where’s your nappy gone?”
“Don’t know. All gone.”
“Yeah, I can see that!”
Hana sat against the pillows listening to her husband help his daughter flush and wash her hands, nibbling at a corner of one of Logan’s sandwiches. Her appetite seemed to have miraculously returned.
“Hey!” Logan said, fake indignation on his face. “Take everything why don’t you? Even the food out my mouth.” He remained standing, watching his daughter fill her mouth too full as he did the same. Hana watched him silently. He blanched swiftly and swallowed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you would take everything. I was just thinking of...”
Hana reached up and placed the bitten sandwich on her husband’s plate with a smile. Then she lay on her back, the creamy skin of her neat bump revealed as the sweatshirt rode inelegantly up. “Oh, it’s fine really. I am taking over all of it.” She smiled sweetly with a twinkle in her eye and looked at the ceiling. “As for Sylvia, don’t give her another thought. I think she’ll be moving on soon.”
“But I’ve booked the DNA for Friday.” Logan looked irritated. “What’s she playing at?”
“Don’t know,” Hana said, rolling onto her side and inspecting a green stain on the sweatshirt. “You know all those boxes that came up from Culver’s Cottage, do you think my maternity clothes will be in them?”
Logan put the plate on the bedside table and lay down on the bed next to his beautiful wife. He leaned towards her and planted a tender kiss on her rosebud lips, stroking her face with gentle fingers. His hand moved down over her clothing and up underneath the grey sweatshirt, playing sensuously over her sensitive stomach and irritating his unborn son. The child moved away with a kick, like a swimmer. Tracing the line of Hana’s knickers as they folded away from the bump, Logan seductively flicked the straining elastic with his fingernail, just as Phoenix filled her mouth too full and barfed on the dressing table. The bed shook as Logan ran to rescue his daughter and Hana heard him talking to her in the background. “Don’t be such a piggie, Phoe! That’s how you choke yourself.”
“Dat nasty,” Phoenix complained and Hana heard Logan sigh.
“It is now! You smushed it up,” he answered.
Hana smiled at the remembered sensation of her husband’s fingers walking over her flesh and the thought of his hands reminded her of one very salient fact. Basking in the spirit of her recent reconciliation with Logan, Hana decided to put him out of his misery. “I’m guessing Michael visited you when you were in London.”
“Yeah, a couple of times in the years I was over there. He interned at Guy’s Hospital for a year and lived in hospital accommodation. When he wanted to go clubbing, he used my place for somewhere to crash. Not often though. We weren’t really getting on at the time, not after his affair with my girlfriend back here. He had a real cheek turning up, to be honest. But family’s family, aye?” The chair scraped on the wooden floor as Logan told his daughter, “Eat that one more slowly,” and pushed her closer to the table. “Why?”
Hana smiled in satisfaction, not bothering to seek out her husband’s face in the room as she dropped her bombshell. She had cared that Logan might be upset. It affected him deeply believing he’d condemned a son of his to the same fate; an absentee father. As she searched her soul she found she actually didn’t care. In his own way, Logan had put her through hell. “Have you ever looked at Ryan�
�s hands?” she asked, making her voice sound conversational. The image of Ryan’s fingers clutching the plate floated before her eyes. “He has funny thumbs, just like Alfred...and Michael.”
The absence of noise was as crashing and destructive as if a Greek wedding party had entered and smashed plates all over the room. Hana couldn’t resist and rolled onto her side to peek at Logan’s face. Her green eyes flashed with determination and the gunmetal of Logan’s met hers, finding she didn’t back down. He shook his head at her in disbelief and uttered his verdict, “You bitch!”
Hana lay on her back and inhaled, glad her husband had taken his punishment so well. A smirk played at the corner of her lips as Logan shook his head at himself, resting his backside against the fireplace as Phoenix bit into her sandwich, fortunately too busy to repeat the bad word her Daddy just said. “Does Sylvia know you worked it out?” he asked, his voice quiet.
Hana nodded. “She does now I’ve told her.” Getting up to collect their things together for the ride home, Hana found Logan’s eyes on her as he helped his daughter out of the chair. He smiled at her with a new found respect.
“I never knew you had it in you,” he said quietly. Hana decided to capitalise on the moment and gave him a steely glare as Phoenix ran to wash her hands. Hana heard the tap running too loudly, evocative of her monkey-like daughter having climbed on the toilet seat to turn it on. Splashing followed.
“Yes, I do have it in me, Logan. Fortunately for you, it runs deep so don’t push me again. You already had a son.” She ran a slender hand over her belly as Phoenix found the tooth mug and started to fill the bath, accompanied by the sound of water sloshing on the tiled floor. “You weren’t in need of a counterfeit!” The hard look she gave Logan almost took his breath away as he realised once again in their marriage; he had grossly underestimated his wife.
“Kuikui indeed,” he said under his breath and turned to face his own reflection in the darkened windows. Hana retrieved her daughter, making Phoenix clean up her own mess with towels. The Du Rose men were fatally flawed. Phoenix Du Rose had written that in her diary, ‘The men will be the ruin of this family.’
Hana pushed at the little foot which dug into her ribs, the baby more active since the scan. “You won’t be ruining anything, young man,” she said sternly to him.
Phoenix stopped her ineffective mopping, which had now become more of a game anyway and said, “Wot?” attentively.
Hana confiscated the towels and corrected her, “Pardon! What’s the matter with your generation?” Hana pulled the door of Michael’s old room closed behind her as Logan carried his sleepy daughter down the corridor of the family wing.
“What do you think to me turning this whole wing into more hotel rooms?” Logan asked over his shoulder. Hana thought about Logan’s room, the striking blue walls and the large bed in which she had probably conceived her daughter, currently being schemed in by Sylvia.
“I thought you were screwing Sylvia in your room,” she sighed. “I won’t be staying in there ever again.”
“Well I wasn’t,” he said under his breath.
A deafening crash was followed by a piercing scream and Logan almost dropped his dozing daughter. Startled awake, Phoenix wailed and Logan handed her to Hana before whirling round on the spot and trying to pinpoint the noise. Sylvia catapulted from the doorway of Logan’s old room and threw herself into his arms making a terrific howling noise. Broken glass sparkled in her hair and on her clothes. Hana’s eyes narrowed at the sight of Logan’s hands gripping the other woman’s wrists and she wasn’t satisfied until her husband had righted the woman on her feet and let go, stepping back to remove himself from her vicinity. His grey eyes glanced in Hana’s direction once, as though seeking her approval for his actions. “Stop spreading glass everywhere!” Hana told the woman sternly and Phoenix looked at her mother curiously. “Get back inside.”
Hana followed the sobbing blonde back into the bedroom and immediately saw the expensive billowing curtains and the ranch slider beyond, smashed into a million small shards. She turned back to Logan. “Take Phoenix downstairs and get someone to ring the cops. Ask Bobby...Flick to bring some board and we can cover the window for tonight. I’ll get her sorted,” Hana indicated the pathetic, trembling Sylvia and rolled her eyes. “Someone threw a brick. Look, it landed on the rug near the windows.”
Logan stepped forward as though to check the location of the brick, but Hana indicated the child in her arms with annoyance at the same time as her eyes told him to leave. Sylvia needed to remove her clothing and Hana had no intention of allowing her to do it in front of him. Logan hefted the reluctant child onto his hip and left. Hana relaxed as the door clicked shut behind him. “I know it’s unpleasant,” she said to a shaking Sylvia. “It happened to me recently and it was quite a shock. Get into the shower and take your clothes off, then you can wash your hair and get it all out. Just be careful not to cut your hands.”
“I can’t wash my hair!” Sylvia protested. “It takes too long to straighten it. I don’t have time.”
Hana noticed the bags packed on the bed then, underwear and dresses flung into two neat, expensive looking cases. “You’re leaving already?” she said in surprise. She hadn’t expected Sylvia to take defeat quite so magnanimously.
“I’m going to Auckland, to see Michael,” Sylvia tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and the sound of glass tinkling onto the floorboards filled the room.
Hana sighed. She wanted the woman out and had no intention of dissuading her. “Then just take your clothes off and I’ll try and shake them out enough for you to put them in your bag. Your hair’s quite fine so perhaps you can brush the shards out. The cops have been called but they take hours to get anywhere out here and they’ll need to talk to you. After that, do what you like.”
Hana waited patiently by the ensuite door while Sylvia removed her clothes and handed them out to her. Her hands bore cuts and scratches as the razor thin shards attacked her fingers in the process. Hana shook the clothing out by the fireplace, trying not to contaminate the crime scene over by the sliding door. The brick lay in the centre of the pile like an accusation. But of what?
“Pass me the purple suit from the tan bag, will you?” Sylvia demanded through the partially open door. Hana finished shaking out the blouse and skirt in her hand and laid them on the bed while she dug inside the messy bag. The quality of the suit she pulled out was exquisite and the price tag betrayed its newness and hefty cost. Hana handed the lilac dress and matching jacket through the gap in the door, seeing Sylvia’s lithe body clad in a bright red push up bra and thong. She had an excellent figure which instantly made Hana feel inferior. She tried not to think too hard about her favourite knickers currently clutching her bum under the ancient tracksuit pants, a dingy over-washed grey colour. In stark contrast, Sylvia’s underwear was eye-catching, even down to the string of red dental floss that disappeared between her firm buttocks in the reflection from the mirror over the sink. Hana sighed and turned away.
“You put blood on my dress!” came Sylvia’s shriek from the bathroom. Hana looked down at her hands. Her finger pads had been punctured in two places without her realising.
“Sorry,” she said, “I’ve cut myself and didn’t realise.”
Now that Sylvia had Hana on the back foot and operating under a guilt reaction, she tried to press home her superiority. “You’ll never hold onto him,” she sneered. “It wouldn’t have taken much more for your husband to have ended up in my bed. He was weakening.”
“Maybe,” Hana said, sucking at the cuts and tasting glass in her mouth. She picked it carefully off her tongue, feeling its grittiness on her skin. “But to really get under Logan’s skin, you have to know him. He hates being touched and he cringed when you clung to him like you did. And he watches everything you say and do before he trusts you.”
“Oh, I know all that,” Sylvia waved her hand dismissively. “But we’d gone way past all that while you were sulking with that
spiteful old woman upstairs. He loved my body and his is just flawless. We were great together.”
Hana’s heart constricted in her chest and the thought of Logan naked with this poisonous woman was painful. Her mind started to run overtime. Logan said he hadn’t done anything wrong and getting naked with Sylvia was more than just wrong, it was the stuff of divorce. Hana closed her eyes and waited for the feeling of exhaustion to pass. They had struggled past it once but she knew she couldn’t reopen it all and survive a second run.
“Flawless,” she heard herself say, as though another being had taken over her speech capability. “Do you mean unblemished?”
“Oh yeah,” Sylvia gushed. “He’s absolutely gorgeous. Nothing wrong with him!”
“What about his scar?” Hana asked and Sylvia continued her appreciation of Logan’s body.
“Oh that little thing. You can’t even see it.”
“Which one?”
“What?”
“Pardon! I said which scar?”
“Er...” Sylvia floundered. “Oh, he didn’t have that back when we were together. But he’s still gorgeous.”
Hana shook her head sadly as the false, leggy blonde emerged from the bathroom in her finery. The woman was determined to try and cost her her marriage. Logan’s haemophilia had riddled his body with scars. There was hardly an inch of him clear of marks from some minor cut which had struggled to heal. He hated his naked body, especially the long, ridged watershed that ran from under his right armpit to below his hip. It was his mother and father’s gift to him, Miriam the carrier and Reuben the sufferer. The odds had been heavily stacked against Logan Du Rose in the haemophilia stakes. Hana had kissed and touched every inch of the worst scar, loving it as part of her husband’s demi-god body. She held onto the certainty that this woman hadn’t. “Goodbye Sylvia,” Hana said politely. “You can leave after you’ve seen the cops.” She opened the bedroom door and took one last look back at the viper in Logan’s childhood room. Helena stood outside with her hand raised, just about to knock.