by Bowes, K T
“I didn’t kill Sylvia.” Hana’s voice held nobility and grace and her face was hard and unyielding. “You’ve had this house for your investigations long enough. Get cleared up and get out!”
Hana stalked across the gravel to the ute, her low heels crunching in the stones beneath her. She ignored her son, who exited the marked police car to her right as she climbed into the high vehicle. It gave her huge satisfaction, revving the powerful diesel engine and emitting the throaty victory roar. For the first time since she began struggling with the massive size and opulence of a vehicle which Logan had purchased with childish delight, she understood why he liked it. It represented power and supremacy and Hana wrenched the heavy vehicle into an impossible arc, peppering Bodie’s cop car with stone chips like bullets, as an alternative to the rude gesture her fingers struggled to suppress. She flew down the driveway to the road, her face blank as the ute bull bars intimidated another cop car into reversing out onto the fast road backwards. Hana didn’t acknowledge the young, spotty policeman’s look of disgust as the ute ate up the main road under its immense wheels. The Du Rose kuikui had spoken.
Hana brushed angry tears from her cheeks as Logan’s grandmother’s written missives came home to bite her. ‘The curse isn’t that they sleep around, have secret children and act like hypocrites - and oh yes, they certainly do that! It’s that they hold their women in a death-grip, they crush and destroy them from the inside like parasites.’
“Well, it’s too late!” Hana screamed into the empty vehicle as it droned down the hotel driveway like a hive of bees. “They’re my family! And they’re all I have.” The last sentence emerged as a hiccoughed sob and Hana pulled over onto the grass verge, as tears hindered her driving. “The Du Roses are all I have left,” she whispered. “It’s all or nothing.”
Chapter 55
Tama passed his fire service training three months later and a heavily pregnant Hana cried her eyes out at the ceremony as promised. He stood tall in his dark uniform and stared straight ahead, his life finally beginning at the tender age of twenty-one.
Odering removed his makeshift command centre from Nev’s house and the family moved back in. Flick was not seen on the mountain again and Sacha recovered enough to go back to work. Hana stayed away from Jack and the stable yard, throwing herself into her daughter’s care and playing housewife with enthusiasm. But she still felt watched.
“Do you ever get this feeling that somebody’s observing you? It’s this flesh-creeping sensation that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.” Hana used the iron on the delicate fabric with extreme care, watching the beautiful French linen lie flat under her ministrations.
“No!” Will scoffed.
Afraid to mention it again, Hana lifted the girls’ dress up for Will to inspect.
“Yep, that’ll do,” he smiled and held out a plastic coat hanger. “We’ll display this one in that nice new cabinet out of the sun. The glass should protect it though.”
Hana sighed and rubbed a hand across her stomach. Will laid the dress on his thighs and observed his companion with interest. “That girlie of yours is runnin’ you ragged. Take a break.”
“No,” Hana picked up the iron again and checked the setting, making sure it stayed on a low heat. “I’ve only got three more to do. The blue one’s quite pretty. I can’t believe Liza used to wear these. The thought of her in anything except stilettos and business suits is hilarious.”
“French, 1700s. Bloody criminal!” Will complained. “Your girl’s purple juice stain won’t even dry-clean out!”
Hana ignored his rant, having heard it many times before. Her son lashed out with his feet against her ribs and she groaned and almost dropped the heavy iron.
“Watch the fabric!” Will screeched and lurched for the iron from his wheelchair, missing and almost pitching the ironing board over onto Hana. She managed to retain the hottest object but the dress slid to the floor.
“Will!”
“Turn the damn thing off and sit down!” he ordered her and Hana conceded with reluctance.
“I’m a bit sick of this pregnancy now,” she grumbled. “I always seem to do the end part in the heat of summer.”
“Well, that’s your bad planning, then,” Will said and Hana stuck her tongue out at him behind his back.
“Saw that,” he chided her.
“Do you think the diaries will ever come back?” Hana asked, sipping the tea Will made and pulling a face.
“When they’re ready,” he said, his tone ominous and Hana shook her head, her red hair cascading down her back and tickling her neck.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“When’s that baby due?” The old man pointed a teaspoon at Hana’s enormous stomach.
“Six weeks. Izzie was two weeks late though, so I could be ages yet.” Hana slurped her tea with all the finesse of the builder it would have suited. She shuddered at the bitterness of it. “I don’t like my new midwife. Bodie kindly screwed up my grand plan to have the baby in Hamilton. I swear he did it deliberately!”
“Ah yep,” came Will’s diplomatic answer, aimed at keeping him out of trouble.
“She’s called Pam, she’s got a voice like a cheese grater and fancies the pants off Logan. She practically dribbles at the sight of him. He says it’s like being mentally undressed by one of those waste disposal units you have in your sink.” Hana snorted with laughter and reached for a biscuit. “She keeps going on and on about how big the baby is. The scans show that he’s fine; we’re both fine! My husband’s six foot four inches and it’s a boy. He’s hardly genetically disposed to be a midget is he?”
Will stared at Hana with a curious look in his eyes. “What?” she asked him, waving her cookie in the air and dropping crumbs she would never be able to retrieve.
“I’m just wonderin’ what a cheese grater sounds like,” he mused.
“Come to my next appointment with me,” Hana suggested, putting her hand up to cover a yawn.
“Right woman, ring that Leslie upstairs and ask her to keep your girlie for a few hours. You look like crap. Go have a lie down. Or grab a room upstairs. I’m sure they could find you one.”
Hana’s face clouded. “I’ll never sleep down here again. Not after...” She bit her lip and reached for the phone, discovering from Alfred that Leslie was out anyway. Phoenix and Wiri were being treated to another trip to the zoo.
Hana kissed Will on his bristly cheek and used the ute to drive up the hill. She opened and closed the gate and parked the huge vehicle on the driveway, feeling a horrid pressing between her legs. “Ouch, baby!” she exclaimed and rested one hand on the truck’s bonnet. “Nice of you to engage your head, but I can think of more appropriate moments!”
She waddled to the door clutching her stomach and fumbled with the key. The small white cigarette end on the doormat made her gasp in horror and she bent to pick it up, overbalancing against the bench and banging her face on the metal. “Oh, please God, no!” she groaned, sensing danger. Hana shoved at the door with terrified abandon and then pushed it behind her as a wave of pain shot through her bladder. She turned the key, panting with relief at her perceived safety.
As Hana stepped over the doormat, water cascaded down her legs, soaking everything in its path. Fury added itself to fear as she bent double and let out a roar of frustration. “Noooo! Not again!” A contraction joined the imminence of her labour as pain tore at her insides like a hot knife. The forewaters seemed relentless in their gravitational tumble, making a decent puddle on a previously welcoming rug and Hana sank to her knees in misery. With difficulty, she wrested off her tights and underwear, wincing at the uncomfortable sensation of the cooling water. Another contraction bit half way through and she had to pause, panting for breath and swearing out loud with the effort of not crying out. “This is not fair!” she complained as, unable to stand, she was forced to crawl to the bedroom on her knees.
The toilet was a welcome seat and caught some of the mess
as Hana grappled around in the small bag across her body. She sat still and typed a gentle message to her husband, explaining the problem and whilst urging him not to panic, suggested he didn’t muck around either. In an attempt at light-hearted humour, she mentioned that he might like to step over the doormat in the hall to avoid breaking his neck. Then she pressed the button that would summon the cavalry.
“No, no, no! Don’t do this to me! Not today. Send you stupid thing, send!” Hana peered at the screen, seeing the revolving icon that showed the phone searching for signal. Her heart sank at the same moment as a violent contraction drove her to the tiled floor. “Oh, God, please help me? Not like this! Not again!” She seemed hardly able to take a breath between contractions and memories of Phoenix’s hurried entrance into the world failed to help. At least that time she hadn’t been alone. She had Tama.
Hana crawled out of the bathroom and across the bedroom floor, stopping at regular intervals to leak more mess on the rimu wood floorboards and hug her stomach in agony as it threatened to rip clean open. “I just wanted you to be a Paris baby!” she wailed to her busy son. “Why couldn’t you just do as you were told? I’m not ready for this yet!”
The bedroom door seemed a long way away and the kitchen even further as Hana’s forehead rested against the floorboards of her bedroom. Her only source of help was the intercom with the main house, but it may as well have been a gap of miles to bridge. “I’m too old for this!” she raged as the pain intensified and the dreadful urge to push her guts out onto the floor began in earnest. At the end of a spiteful contraction and in the moment’s lull between that and the next, Hana caught a dark shadow in her peripheral view and shrieked. The steady knocking she had mistaken for her pulse beating in her temple; was actually a man’s hand thumping the bedroom window.
“Jack, help me!” Hana wailed as the threatened contraction bit. The elderly man cast around him, looking for something to smash the glass with and settled on a plant pot. It bounced off the toughened glass and hit him comically in the stomach, bending him double to match Hana’s stance. She heard herself laughing like a maniac at the hilarity of her situation, dissolving into tears at the unbearable pain of the next contraction. Jack stood upright again and resumed his steady drum beat on the window and Hana relented.
In the seconds between the next few contractions, she managed to cover the distance between her and the ranch slider but it took her a good five minutes to be able to reach up and unlock the catch. Jack came quickly inside and hunkered down next to her, trying to communicate words with his hands. Hana made the action of a telephone and he looked at her askance and spread his hands wide, mouthing, ‘How?’ His inability to speak made ringing anyone impossible.
Hana writhed, alternately sitting and then kneeling and then sitting again. Nothing helped. “I need to sit against the bed,” she decided, pointing frantically to the side nearest the bedroom door. Jack pointed to the side nearest her and she shook her head and motioned to the ranch slider. “Lock it, Jack. Please, lock it. It’s not safe.”
Understanding, the old man pressed the catch on the door and then transferred his efforts to helping Hana get to where she wanted to be, dragging her the final few metres as she groaned and railed at the injustice of her circumstances. When she peeled the soaked dress away from her skin and felt between her legs, her probing fingers contacted the baby’s fluffy topknot and she knew then. It was game over.
Chapter 56
The baby bellowed lustily from lungs that couldn’t possibly be under formed. Exhausted, her breath coming in heaves, Hana pushed herself into a sitting position, her back against the hard wood of the four poster bed. The sharp angles cut into her shoulder blades, offering a different focus from the pain between her legs.
Jack knelt on the floor on his rickety joints and Hana saw a pair of pale, kicking legs, chubby and streaked with blood, flailing around between his hands. With competence and grave calm born of years of farming experience, Jack snatched up Hana’s discarded cardigan and swaddled the crying boy into it. With difficulty he pushed himself across to Hana on his old-man’s-legs and handed her the child. Hana looked down at the source of her previous agony and her first contact with her son brought an unladylike hoot of laughter. Jack looked at her curiously with his brows knitted.
“Oh my gosh!” Hana exclaimed, looking at her unusual midwife with green eyes that leapt and danced with pleasure. “Not Paris at all. This little chap is pure McGillivray. He’s a little gift from Belfast.”
The child stared up at the sound, unfocussed eyes following unseen light and tone, watching angels dance near the ceiling as only newborns can. His eyes were darkest blue, with no intention of staying the familiar baby colour. His shock of downy auburn hair told Hana exactly what colour they would become. He was a tiny replica of her and would share her mother’s emerald eyes and red hair. He knitted his brow and pursed his tiny lips, already fighting the cardigan with clenched fists. Judith McGillivray’s bright face and determination lived on in her daughter’s child.
Hana felt self-conscious about her splayed, naked legs and the mess on the rug beneath her. Her eyes flicked curiously in Jack’s direction, looking for disgust or some other kind of emotion. He held her gaze, his hooded eyes blank and expressionless. Hana shifted with the baby clasped firmly in one arm and tried to pull her dress down. The lusty wail started again like a claxon, rising and falling. It was the sound of frustration and dismay. “Ok, baby. Let’s see if I can remember this,” Hana spoke to her son, who crinkled his face and wobbled his bottom lip. She undid the buttons on the front of her maternity dress, hearing one skitter across the wooden floor as she pulled too hard. “Thank heavens for maternity bras,” Hana wittered as the arms and legs flapped again. Eventually she sorted herself out and put the child to her breast. Like an angry lamprey he latched on, causing Hana to groan with the intensity of the let-down. The instant rush of flowing milk confirmed her earlier revelation. The child wasn’t early at all. “My dates were wrong,” Hana said to Jack, mid groan. “I’m an idiot!”
Jack said nothing but his face had changed. He looked at the child with something akin to hatred. A wave of evil doused the room and hung cloying and heavy over Hana and her baby. Her body involuntarily reacted, flexing her muscles in a fear reaction. “Jack?” she said slowly, mouthing the word precisely for him to follow and forcing a questioning look onto her face.
His eyes narrowed but not before they had flashed unmistakeably. The hooded eyelids fractionally revealed the grey Du Rose eyes and Hana’s jaw dropped. How could she never have noticed? The man put his hands up in front of his face and signed something to her in his strange variation of the familiar deaf language. Hana recoiled in shock and clutched her child closer to her breast. “No!” she cried and her face filled with horror. Jack pushed his hand towards the child, jabbing his index finger with the same bland look on his face and then signed the awful word again. Bastard.
“No!” Hana slapped at the gnarled hand and tried to shift backwards away from him. “No he isn’t! How dare you say that!” She held the baby in one arm, feeling him tug on her nipple as she disturbed his relentless feeding frenzy. She pushed at the floor with her free arm and slithered away from the old man, horrified at the streak of blood she left behind. A dull warning ache in her stomach reminded her of what was still to come and the child’s feeding hastened its process. “Oh, God no!” she wailed, moving backwards but getting nowhere of any significance. “Please, Jack why? Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”
The old man’s eyes were gimlet hard and he shrugged as though he didn’t care. He pointed at the child again and signed the wicked word. Hana shook her head, not understanding. Jack’s face hardened and he moved from his uncomfortable stance, half leaned on one thigh and buttock, to a kneeling position again. Something fell from his inside jacket pocket in the motion, a small rectangular package. The cigarette papers skittered across the smooth floor and lodged in her sticky blood like a
thwarted snowboarder. Hana’s breath caught in her throat as divine clarity flooded her muddled brain and she knew everything. The faint scent of tobacco wafted across to her, not unpleasant like the filtered white sticks but musky, slightly sweet like her Irish grandfather’s pipe smoke.
“Don’t you dare touch Logan’s son!” Hana shouted, hearing the smacking sound as her treacherous phone fell off the bed behind her and landed on the boards. The battery went one way and the sim card another. Unable to hear the noise, Jack didn’t flinch, standing awkwardly and pausing with a look of pain on his face as the blood reoccupied his stiff legs. He shook his head again and pointed at the child. “Get away from me, get out!” Hana screamed, hearing with disgust the heightened pitch that made her sound panicked and betrayed her terror. It was pointless. Jack didn’t need the words to tell him what she was saying. He could read it in her face.
Jack shook his head sadly and signed the incongruous sentence to her, “I thought better of you.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Hana sobbed, gripping the child tightly with both hands. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” her legs felt ineffectual and wobbly and she knew what would happen if she tried to stand. Hana’s only defence was to hang on to her baby and make it difficult for the old man to wrestle with her. But she had seen him with the horses, his will of iron always beating them in a tussle.
She breathed out loud jagged breaths into the silence, feeling a sudden familiar pressure. “No, no, no!” she gasped as a sharp tug pulled in the centre of her chest, spreading ominously left. Labour and shock played their part in overworking her delicate heart and for the first time since its implantation, Hana willed the pacemaker to administer the promised kick. “Do it, just do it,” she begged, gripping the child and understanding that the electrical impulse may temporarily incapacitate her more.