Du Rose Sons

by Bowes, K T

  “Did you know about Reuben and Miriam’s affair?” Hana asked tentatively. Tama nodded, his dark wavy fringe bouncing on his eyelashes.

  “The only people who didn’t know were Logan and you,” he said sadly. “Even Alfred knew but he didn’t seem able to stop it. When she didn’t see Reuben she was miserable and had one of her episodes and that was harder than them meeting and...well...having old people sex, I guess.”

  Hana looked revolted. “You have such a way with words!” she chastised him. “I didn’t need that image in my head thank you!”

  “You’re welcome.” Tama shot her a sideways grin.

  “Shut up and drive,” Hana yawned. “And behave when we get there. No saying anything stupid and embarrassing me.”

  “Oh I think you can probably manage that all by yourself,” he complained. “I’m not happy about coming here without Logan knowing. He’s gonna be dirty at me and I’m on his good side at the moment.”

  Hana snorted. “Logan doesn’t have a good side.”

  “Yeah he does,” Tama argued, “and for a few hours I was on it. Now you’re gonna wreck it for me. As usual.”

  “You’re such a comedian,” Hana replied sarcastically. “But I still think it’s odd that Anahera should suddenly be so depressed without explanation. Do you think she knows something about all the vandalism and it’s making her unwell?”

  Tama let out an unattractive guffaw of laughter. “How the hell did you make a leap like that? She’s maybe just a bit down or going through that thing you ladies go through later in life that makes you harder to manage than usual.”

  “Are you deliberately asking for a slap, Tama Du Rose? Because you’re not too big for one!” Hana glared at him sideways and Tama smirked.

  “Right, we’re here.” Tama pulled up alongside a white picket fence, pulling the truck up onto the grass verge to avoid the traffic speeding along the road. He turned in his seat to face Hana and wagged his index finger at her. “If you cause loads of trouble here, then I’ll make sure none of it sticks to me. D’you get that, Ma? I’ve got enough problems at the moment. I don’t need to be offside with Uncle.”

  Hana’s face was unimpressed and she blinked extra slowly and looked like an insolent teenager. “Every man for himself,” she said and launched herself out of the vehicle. Tama swore and followed her. Nothing good ever came of Hana’s sleuthing and usually he got the blame from Logan for not taking care of her.

  “Kia ora!” the old man grinned on the front porch, flashing pink gums and crinkling eyes. “What a lovely surprise. Come in Tama, good to see you.” The kaumatua pulled Tama into him, pressing his nose to the young man’s and holding him there. Then he turned to Hana. “Ah, two for the price of one!” He indicated her blossoming pregnancy and she felt as though she had been stripped naked and lumpy for the entire room to view. Tama read her awkwardness and snorted. Hana cringed inwardly and looked forward to slapping him. The elderly man pulled her into him and pressed his nose and forehead to Hana’s. His eyes bored holes in hers and she gulped, knowing he had read everything about her there. Mana and power came off him like tidal waves and Hana felt safe and comforted for reasons she couldn’t explain.

  “Go find Tui,” the kaumatua said and flapped his hand at Tama. “She’s out the back in the sunshine. She’s been baking, you’re in luck.”

  “Oh what a good idea,” Hana piped up, looking for revenge for the snort. “Tama can ask your wife about his love life.”

  Tama stopped dead in the doorway to the kitchen and looked horrified. Hana’s green eyes danced and sparkled in a face alight with mirth. She might still slap him on the way home anyway. She hadn’t decided yet. Tama did a rude hand gesture behind the kaumatua’s back and Hana kept her face straight and gave nothing away, infuriating him further. “What’s the matter, love?” Hana asked him. “Is there a problem with your hand?”

  Tama’s eyes bugged and he put his gesture quickly away as the old man turned to face him. “Er...no,” he stammered, “I was just...waving goodbye.”

  Hana’s face muscles struggled to stay in place as Tama high-tailed it out through the kitchen. She relaxed when the house juddered on its pilings with the slam of the back door. The kaumatua beamed at her and indicated the seat behind her. “Sit, sit, you are welcome in my whare.”

  “Thank you.” Hana backed up to the comfy sofa behind her and sat down, sinking into its soft folds like an embrace. The seat cushion sucked her in so that her feet hardly touched the floor.

  “That boy’s still an egg!” the old man sat on an adjacent sofa and shook his head at Tama’s antics. Hana looked confused and he pointed at the ranch slider behind her. “I seen his reflection. I assume it’s at you and not me. He knows I would take his head off.”

  Hana shrugged. “Sorry, we’ve always brought out the worst in each other.”

  “Na, you’ve been the best thing in his life. Ever. Don’t doubt that.” He settled back in his seat comfortably and turned his perceptive brown eyes on Hana. “So, kōtiro, what brings you out to this side of the maunga?”

  Hana felt overcome by a sense of futility, as she sat in the overstuffed chair in front of someone she had hoped would have all the answers. She struggled to know where to start and the embattled Du Rose legacy hung around her neck like a millstone, threatening to drown her under its weight. “The boxes,” she said haltingly. “The family taonga.”

  “Ah yes,” the man smiled with enthusiasm. “I’ve seen the museum and met your curator. It’s a very fine way of honouring a whānau’s memories, even if your Will is from Ngāti Maniapoto.”

  Hana looked momentarily confused. It had never occurred to her that Will’s tribal affiliation might matter. “Erm...well, Logan...”

  The elderly man threw his head back and laughed himself almost sick, ending with a guttural cough that Hana thought served him right. The sight of a plaster crucifix hanging over the ranch slider opening made her start with guilt and she wondered if she should bang the old man on the back. He blew his nose into a handkerchief with gusto and she glanced at Jesus again. See he’s fine, she reasoned. The kaumatua collected himself. “Right, start at the beginning and tell me what’s wrong with the taonga.”

  Hana narrowed her eyes at him. “You know all of it, don’t you? Everything I’m about to ask.” She held his gaze, her stunning green eyes flashing her hope and expectation and the old man hated to disappoint her. But he did it anyway.

  “No. Sorry, kōtiro. My father would have, but I only know rumour and speculation, same as most others.”

  Hana’s shoulders slumped. “Didn’t you read Phoenix’s diaries?”

  The man looked horrified. “No! They were in my safekeeping only. I would never damage my father’s mana by doing that!”

  “Fair enough,” Hana sighed. “But I kinda wished you had. When I asked Logan what they were, he said they were a ‘box of trouble’ and they’ve certainly been that.”

  “History can do that,” the old man smiled, “nothing like family secrets to blow relationships open.”

  Hana snuffed out a defeated breath. “Yeah, I saw that with Logan finding out Reuben was really his father. Will’s brother from Hamilton was friends with Reuben and they wrote to each other. He gave Logan all his father’s letters when we got back from Europe. They go back years, even before Logan was born. He’s read them and I think he understands things a bit more now. He distanced himself from Alfred for a while but they seem to be getting on better and Logan’s started calling him ‘Dad’ again.”

  The kaumatua nodded sagely. “Another’s perspective can often help. I’m glad the letters were useful to your husband.”

  “I haven’t read them. Logan hasn’t offered and I’m not going to ask. I’ve got enough problems with his grandmother’s musings to want to add Reuben’s to the pile. The stuff she recorded...well, I actually wish she hadn’t. No wonder she hid them with your family.”

  “So what specifically do you want to ask me?” the man as
ked, opening his hands in a universal gesture of acceptance.

  Hana leaned forward in her seat. “I had all these questions, but now I’m here, I think it comes down to just two. Should I keep reading them and amassing all this terrible knowledge about the Du Roses and if I do, what should I do with the information?”

  “Ah, then I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted trip,” he replied. “My name is Arama, not Atua. Only God can tell you what to do. Some things are best left asleep and others benefit everyone by bringing them out into the light.”

  “I don’t see any of this benefitting anyone,” Hana said, biting her lower lip and holding the old man’s gaze with frightening intensity.

  “I disagree. It was painful and damaging for Logan to find out his origins and the way he found out was unimaginable. But look at the fruit of that revelation? The family is joined and the mountain whole again. If Logan had not been made to see his link to that land, the whenua would have slipped away. He may have just let it go and two complete generations of Du Roses would have been displaced. This way is better. Nev is a good man and like Logan in so many ways. They were allies as boys and now can be as men. We are none of us self-sufficient or without the need for family.”

  “But what about knowing things that are illegal, or morally wrong?” Hana pleaded, “What then?”

  “It is a matter for your own conscience,” the wise man replied.

  “I’m just rubbish with secrets,” Hana conceded, looking as slumped and defeated as she felt. “I knew about Reuben and Logan before he died. I worked it out when he appeared in Logan’s bedroom and touched my stomach. Phoenix responded to him and I just knew. Reuben was like an older version of Logan and it felt overwhelming to know this awful secret and try to keep it here.” Hana tapped her temple. “I didn’t tell Logan and it weighed on me and made me depressed. Now I’m in the same situation. I know that two people who are now married, are actually half-brother and sister and they have no idea. It’s burning inside my chest but I don’t know what to do about it. If I say something, I cause devastation and if I don’t, it just eats away at me. I sometimes feel like I have to make a choice about who to sacrifice and it’s not fair! It’s not my history!”

  Arama, a man of immeasurable wisdom and mana, selected by his iwi for leadership, hefted himself out of his comfy seat and plonked himself down next to Hana. To her surprise he placed a firm arm around her shoulder and rested the other one on her writhing fingers. “You’re asking all the wrong questions, kōtiro. It became your history from the moment you made your vows to your toihau. Logan is a noble leader and you come under his authority. What belongs to him is also yours. The mistake you’re making is that it is your history, your kōrero tuku iho, but it is not your responsibility. Your part is to safeguard and add to it, which you are already doing.” He smiled and lightly touched her belly with his finger. “It is not your place to judge, to dissect or to reason with the ghosts of our past. The weight you feel is because you cannot mend what was broken or stop its consequences reaching forward. That is not your role, it is your toihau’s and he will do what he sees fit.”

  Hana nodded slowly. “So should I tell everything to Logan and let him deal with it? Because I learned something else about Reuben’s father and I...”

  Arama moved his arthritic finger from Hana’s belly to her lips. “Sshhh, do not tell me. Does Logan know where the diaries are if he wants them?” Hana nodded. “Then your work is complete. Safeguard and keep them for him and your children. They will know when the time is right and Atua will give them wisdom to know what to do.”

  “But I believe in God,” Hana said petulantly, “so why won’t he just tell me?”

  The old man hooted with laughter and squeezed Hana’s shoulder. “Does he tell me how to cure cancer by mixing chemicals or what to say to men with guns pointed at the hearts of his children?”

  Hana shook her head. The man was amazing but possibly not that accomplished yet. “No.”

  “Well then. That is your answer. Atua has other people already busy doing those things and doesn’t require my expertise. He knows I would accidentally drop the important test tube and my big mouth would get everyone killed. There are those better suited than me. It is the same with you. You are reading about a woman’s life. A very beautiful, talented and powerful woman, but still a faulty human being. Treat her writing like a soap opera, because surely it was.” He chuckled heartily but his gaze on Hana as he stood up was serious. “But do not let it touch or influence you. You are not responsible for any of it. You are only the guardian. During the wars, when a Māori warrior was asked to guard a particular pa or fortification with his life; he did not ask why, he just did it. It’s no different for you.”

  Hana exhaled, feeling easier within herself. The kaumatua was right. It wasn’t her responsibility - none of it - and even with a century at her fingertips she wouldn’t even begin to fix any of the consequences that the Du Roses had hailed down on subsequent generations. She smiled at the old man who stood warming the seat of his pants against the roaring fire like an old English gentleman and nodded happily.

  “Do you think it’s safe to find my wife now?” he smiled cheekily. “Do you think the marriage counselling is finished yet?” Arama led Hana to the kitchen window and they peered out at Tama and the kuia. The woman was in her seventies and sprightly, harvesting something from the loamy soil. A ta moko tattoo covered her chin and her white hair was pulled tightly back into a knot, a black beret resting jauntily on her head. Tama wielded the shovel in response to her pointing finger. Hana recalled the woman singing her onto the marae, welcoming her as part of their iwi and hapu, her beautiful, lilting voice lodging itself in Hana’s heart with a sense of belonging. Arama was right. Logan’s tribal tikanga was her history too.

  “He’s got his serious face on,” Hana smiled, staring at Tama’s nodding head. It bobbed prolifically. He looked like Phoenix’s bobble head toy and it was comical. “Maybe we should wait a while.”

  “Help me make tea then.” The old man pointed and Hana got cups and plates out of cupboards at his direction.

  “I don’t suppose you remember anyone on the Du Rose land who went by the name of JD?” Hana said, placing worn cutlery on the table next to a sumptuous plate of homemade scones. “He’s been cropping up a lot lately.” She faced the kaumatua. “I mean, am I supposed to try and make sense of this stuff, or just look after the artifacts and then leave them alone?”

  Arama hissed through his gums. “It’s about learning to live with what you find. Whakamatemate is a passion and a sense of mental anguish when one quests to find out a truth about something. It is a concern that seems to come from your very soul. But it can be all consuming. You have a naturally curious mind and your findings may help future seekers of truth. Just don’t let it bite you harder than you can cope with.” He smiled. “My father spoke once about someone named Jacob Du Rose. Perhaps it was him. He was the rangatira’s first born and Phoenix Du Rose’s elder brother. He was a sickly boy, but did not make it past his first decade. I remember my father saying he was deformed in some way. Latterly it was blamed on the Du Rose curse making itself known, but that’s just township superstition. He could have been the heir to everything which passed to Phoenix. The Frenchman united the property under his daughter and the rangatira, Phoenix and Jacob’s mother. There was a sister too. Leadership is passed to the most suitable candidate chosen and not always the eldest in a whānau. The rangatira may have favoured him but then again, maybe not. It would depend on his character. I can only think this JD might be him. When did Phoenix write of him?”

  “On and off throughout. There’s a lot of references to him just before Logan was born and especially around the time they were getting the breeding programme for the Charolaise started.”

  The kaumatua shrugged. “It must have been a paid employee then. It can’t be Jacob. Perhaps search the names on the kauri tree on the mountain for another, but I don’t recall anyone else of a simil
ar name. Perhaps the ‘D’ is not Du Rose.”

  “That’s true,” Hana conceded and looked wistfully out of the window at Tama and the kuia chatting in the middle of what looked like a mini tornado. Leaves and soil whipped around them and they talked with animation and mutual pleasure.

  “Hana Du Rose,” the old man spoke her name gently and she jerked her attention back to him. “Hold it lightly, like the koru. If you uncurl it before it’s ready, it loses its shape and will grow deformed. Let the stories unfold at their own pace.”

  She nodded. “Ok.”

  Chapter 29

  Hana stood in the lobby of the hotel chatting to Tama. “They’re incredible people aren’t they?” she said wistfully. “I wish they were related to me and then I could justify popping in to see them all the time. I could adopt them like pretend grandparents or something.” Hana sighed and Tama pulled a face betraying his complete lack of comprehension.

  Something behind Hana snatched at his attention, his grey eyes widening in a fear reaction and Hana sensed her husband’s presence in the room. His strong arms snaked around her shoulders from behind and she felt his powerful heartbeat through the thin material of her jacket as it beat against her shoulder blades. Logan locked his hands in front of Hana’s breasts and pulled her body into his. She resisted the urge to lay back against him, knowing that Tama’s eye-roll threatened to be unleashed. Logan’s hands were dotted with healing cuts and scratches and dark lines decorated his palms from the constant outdoor work. He smelled of Sacha and Hana inhaled the heady scent of horse, hay and sunshine. “Where have you two been?” Logan asked with feigned casualness and kissed Hana’s neck, the brim of his hat brushing roughly against her cheek. Hana opened her mouth but unfortunately, a little too late.

  “She made me,” Tama blurted, ignoring Hana’s look of astonishment. He pointed a jabbing index figure at her, his betrayal almost complete. “I didn’t want to go and I said you’d be mad.”