by Bowes, K T
Logan smiled with his eyes and laid the laptop on the sofa cushion next to him. He beckoned to Wiri with a crooked finger. “Come sit on my knee,” he said, his voice soft. The child slouched over, resistance in his feet but he snuggled into Logan’s torso without fuss. “You have two choices,” Logan said, lowering his voice. “We’re going to Hamilton for a whole term. I thought you’d want to come with us but if you don’t, that’s fine too.”
“But what will I do then? I can’t open the front door without a chair. How will I get in and out?”
“You can’t stay here alone, mate.” Logan pushed a lock of Wiri’s dark hair away from his forehead. “You’ll go back home and live with your father and Asher.”
“I don’t want to.” Wiri raised his voice and the tears came, spurting from his eyes like an overflow. “I want it to be like it is now. You have to stay here with me. Here!” He slammed his hand into the back of the sofa and Logan dodged.
“We can’t. Me, Hana, Phoe and Mac are moving to Hamilton. You decide which you want to do and we’ll be cool with that.”
“I can’t choose, I just can’t!” Wiri’s panic seemed pitiful and Hana turned away so he wouldn’t see her sadness.
“Would you like to talk to your dad about it?” Logan asked, his voice level and soothing. Hana gritted her teeth, angry that Nev hadn’t yet bothered to see his son, signing the papers with cool efficiency and callous disregard for a small boy’s fate. She left the room and busied herself packing baby clothes for the trip, rolling the little items and fitting them into a suitcase. Logan’s voice rumbled through the wall, a one-way conversation as he spoke to his half-brother on the phone. His tone rose an octave and Hana cringed.
“Mummy?” Her daughter stood in the doorway, balancing on one leg with her other foot swinging. Her grey eyes channelled anxiety and tears pricked at the corners. “Wiri’s crying. He telled me to go away.”
Hana sighed and her brow furrowed. “He’s got some things on his mind; he’ll be okay. Papa’s dealing with it.”
“Sad fings, Mama? He’s crying hard like he fell down on the floor.” Phoenix punctuated her sentence by jabbing an index finger at the tiled surface beneath her feet. Hana held her arms out and the little girl skipped over, burying her face in her mother’s thigh.
“Your daddy will make it better, baby,” she whispered, hoisting the child onto her hip. Phoenix cuddled in close and laid her head on Hana’s shoulder.
“I no like Wiri crying.”
“Me neither.” Hana kissed her forehead and swaddled her under her cardigan like a mother hen gathering her chicks for the night. “Your dad will sort it.”
“Sort it?” Phoenix bobbed her head up and sought Hana’s green eyes, searching for certainty. “Papa big an brave, aye?”
Hana smiled. “Yeah, baby. Papa’s big and brave. And real smart. He’ll sort it out.”
“And mart.” Phoenix snuggled down and then uttered childish logic. “I get Wiri biscuit. And I get Macky biscuit and Phoe biscuit.”
Hana rolled her eyes and bit her bottom lip to stop the smile spreading across her face. “No, baby. Food isn’t the answer to all your troubles. Let’s find Wiri and see if cuddles will cheer him up.”
Phoenix wiggled her nose and released a sigh of defeat, swinging her legs as Hana walked along the corridor. They found Wiri in the room he’d appropriated, his face pushed into his favourite pillow on the double bed. Hana sat on the end and Phoenix pitched out of her arms, crawling across the mattress to her cousin. The little girl fitted her tiny body into his back and reached her skinny arms around his shoulders, her delicate frame shuddering with his sniffs. “All better now, Wiri?” she asked, her tone pleading as her fingers twirled a lock of his dark hair.
“Uncle Logan’s talking to your father,” Hana said, her tone soothing.
Wiri gave a disgusting sniff and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “No. He’s shouting at him. I heard him say he didn’t have time to come up and see me.” Wiri turned his head to face Hana, grey eyes red rimmed and watery. “I want Pa to biff him good.”
Hana swallowed. “Logan’s not going to hit Nev. It’s not how family deals with things.” Wiri raised an eyebrow with far more adult understanding than a five-year-old should ever accrue and his skepticism acted as a knife in Hana’s gut. She winced and corrected herself. “It’s not what family should do, Wiremu. There are better ways.”
“Uncle Kane would biff him so hard he’d make his teeth rattle.”
Phoenix giggled around the thumb she’d pushed into her mouth and repeated half the sentence. “Teef rattle.”
“Yeah, well Logan’s not Uncle Kane.” Hana kept the silent prayer of thanks to herself. The thought of Caroline’s incestuous pregnancy to Kane sent a dart of fear up her spine.
“I don’t like Uncle Kane,” Wiri muttered under his breath. “He’s scary and he locked me in a cupboard once for touching his stuff.”
Hana’s eyes widened in horror but she managed to mask it as Logan’s feet pattered along the corridor. She heard him peering into rooms. “We’re in here,” she called. “Macky’s having a nap.”
“And Wiri’s havin’ tears, Pa.” Phoenix sat up and looked at her father with childish hope. “Can you fix him? He don’t wanna be in a cupboard though, fanks.”
Logan’s features jerked in surprise and he ran his fingers along the back of Hana’s neck, infusing her with comfort and solidarity. “Your father’s asked me to drive you down to his place.” Logan corrected himself. “Your place. He’d like to talk to you.”
Wiri took a last sniff of the pillow fabric and Hana felt his isolation. Tama’s scent must be long gone but the child wouldn’t let her banish the imaginary remnants in the washing machine. He sat up and Phoenix rolled away like a rugby pro. “Na, fanks. I’m not going.” He used the hem of his sweatshirt to dry his eyes and nose. “I’ll come wiv you guys.”
Logan’s perplexed expression made Hana suppress an inappropriate laugh. “But your dad’s waiting for us.” His eyes spoke of the angry battle he’d endured to achieve the small concession in the face of Nev’s disinterest. “We need to speak to him.” Logan ground his teeth in irritation, having gained victory over Nev only to lose ground to a child. “He wants to see you.”
“Na, he doesn’t. I heard what he said. He don’t have time for me so I don’t have time for him.”
Logan floundered, looking to Hana for help. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t make time. What he actually said was...”
“He said he didn’t want to drive all the way up here just to pat me on the head and wave me off. He said it was a waste of his time.” The child’s repetition of his father’s words left a searing trail in the air molecules which took Hana’s breath away. Logan closed his eyes and they were stormy with the texture of a wind torn lake when he opened them again. He shook off the awful legacy of his own unwanted status but the effort left him ragged.
“Who wants to help me dig up veggies?” Hana took charge, breaking the silence with practicality. “I’ll make homemade chips for tea with the special crinkler and you guys can help.”
“Crinkle chips!” Wonderment passed across Phoenix’s face and she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I do, I do!” She stood up on the bed and raised her hand in the air as she’d seen Wiri do in class on a family visit. “My wants crinkle chips, pees.”
“Right then. Wellies on and away we go.” Hana pointed at the bedroom door and Phoenix slithered off the bed, giggling.
“Them’s not wellies. Them’s is gumboots, silly Mama.”
Hana stood and slipped past her husband’s static body, dragging her fingers around his waist and down across his neat butt. His hand was a fist and she tugged the bunched digits straight until they relaxed. “She’s wrecking the joint,” he muttered, cocking his head to listen to his daughter yanking boots from the cupboard in the garage.
“It’s fine.” Hana leaned in and kissed his upper arm through his shirt, feeling the mu
scle flex beneath her lips. “Go help your nephew and I’ll occupy Phoe.” She left the room with a quick glance at Wiri. The boy sat upright on the bed, bottom lip pushed out and his arms folded around his body as though encasing himself in a strait jacket of protection. Her heart ached for his misery but age and wisdom told her she wasn’t the best person to deal with his fury.
Phoenix bounced around in the garage while Hana stuffed her feet into her own boots and collected the pitchfork from the shed. The greenhouse was a new addition to the property, snuggled against the boundary fence and given necessary protection from the furious storms which encased the mountain during winter. Logan used a pile driver to punch vertical logs into the ground, determined the wind shouldn’t get its wily tendrils around the structure and throw it to the far reaches. Only two sides and the roof housed safety glass, aluminum forming the windward walls. Somehow the greenhouse survived, set into a dip in the green plateau and sheltered by native punga and silver ferns waving overhead. Hana held her daughter’s hand as Phoenix exercised her new found skill; skipping. “Last of the potatoes,” she mused, her inner vision consumed by the sight of Wiri’s sad face. “Do you think they’ll be big ones?”
“No.” Phoenix shook her head, doubt filling her mind. Then her brain reasoned there would be no crinkly chips. “Yes.” She changed her answer and increased her speed.
They harvested the last of the veggies, packing the potatoes into a wooden crate and dumping the foliage in the compost bin. Phoenix grunted as she tried to lift the box, finding it impossible as the tendons stuck out in her neck and she breathed through her mouth like a weight lifter. Hana laughed. “Leave it, Phoe. We’ll get Dad to lift it with his big muscles.”
“Dad lift it.” She looked relieved, smacking her hands together to loosen the dirt as she stood. They went back to the house the long way, stopping to watch the falcons soaring on the up draught overhead. Phoenix clutched the metal rungs of the fence and pushed her face through. “Birdies,” she said, pointing with excitement as one flew close. The sheerness of the cliff seemed terrifying up close, more frightening with the protection of the fence than it ever seemed without. Hana glanced down into the bush canopy sloping below and imagined Bobby’s last letter to her moldering in the damp soil below. She sighed.
“You sad, Mama?” her perceptive daughter asked, touching Hana’s jeans with her dirty fingers. “I do crinkles for you. Special ones.”
“You’re a beautiful person, Phoenix Du Rose.” Hana smoothed the dark curls back from the tiny forehead, thwarted by the wind which whipped them up again. “You’re like your sister.”
“Sister,” Phoenix repeated. “Baby sister.”
Hana winced. “Nope. No more babies my dear. I meant Isobel, your big sister. We don’t see enough of her, do we? We’re surrounded by men in the Du Rose world. Men everywhere.”
“Men eweewhere.” Phoenix nodded her head as though she understood, safe in her cocooned world of family; regardless of their sex. She turned and held her arms upwards. “I wide on your head, Mama.”
“No.” Hana took one of the hands, feeling the coolness of the slender fingers. “That’s a Daddy thing. I’m for cuddles and nice playing. He’s for rough housing and messing about. Besides, you sit on his shoulders, not his head.”
“I ngā pokowhiwhi.” Phoenix tapped her shoulder with her free hand and Hana nodded and smiled without replying. Her daughter’s fluency in Te Reo isolated her; she’d tried hard to learn but the complicated structure of the language messed with her head and emerged on her tongue as awkwardness and embarrassment, especially in front of Logan.
Indoors the boys had settled before the fire, a game of cards between them. “Snap!” Wiri shouted and Logan jumped and let him collect the pile on the hearth rug.
“No!” Phoenix began. Her keen eyes spotted the queen of hearts mistaken for diamonds and Hana put her hand over the child’s mouth and distracted her from budding mayhem.
“Come on, Miss Crinkly. Let’s get chipping.”
“Chipping! Chipping!” Phoenix bounced to the kitchen in her socks, eager to find the wavy cutter which produced crinkly shaped chips. Hana heard the long drawer being yanked out and smiled to herself at her daughter’s natural enthusiasm for life.
With the crinkler found, Logan was commandeered to fetch the crate of vegetables and he took Wiri with him. The child moved like a shadow, aligning and bonding himself to Logan’s masculinity like a safe anchor in a troubled port. The darkness of a bitter spirit shrouded him, smothering the lightness that was Wiremu Du Rose and Hana feared for him.
Caleb proved the other fly in the ointment and made his reluctance to leave the hotel clear. “Maybe Mr Du Rose will give me a job when my leg’s better. Then I can pay you back for the free food and lodging.” The teenager twisted the bottom of his jacket in writhing fingers.
“You need to get your cast checked at the Waikato Hospital.” Hana gritted her teeth ready for the ensuing battle. “With Logan gone there’ll be nobody free to drive you all the way there and back again. It’s easier if you’re in Hamilton so I can do it.”
“You don’t want me hanging around,” Caleb protested. “What will I do when the cast’s off?”
Hana sighed. “Why don’t we work that out when it happens?”
“If you leave me here, I’ll find a way to pay for my stay.” The crutch slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor and Caleb reached for it and missed. The chair creaked and he winced with pain as he stretched too far, nearly pitching himself onto the carpet. Exasperated, Hana left the motel room and slid the door closed behind her. She almost missed the sound of the boy calling her name, fear in his voice. “Hana! I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She leaned against the weatherboard wall and put both hands up to her temples, massaging away her anxiety. Mac’s needs dictated her desire to move back to town, but it felt as though the weight of the world pulled backwards like a noose around her throat. Vibrations came through the floor as Caleb retrieved his crutch and moved towards the door. Metal clattered against glass as he fought the ranch slider and poked his head through the gap. “I’m being an ungrateful dick.” His eyes narrowed with relief at Hana’s presence and he stepped across the threshold, his face pinched into an expression of tearfulness. “You’ve been awesome and I’m throwing it back in your face.”
“Yeah, you are.” Exhaustion and frustration made her bitchy. “Do what you like, Caleb. I’m taking my baby to the city and you’re welcome to come; there’s room for you. If not, stay here until you’re healed and ask one of the stockmen to drive you to Auckland or Hamilton. Get Marla on reception to watch for the appointment coming through and change it to wherever you want. There’s no charge for staying here; it’s on me.” She pushed off from the wall and strode along the deck without looking back, tired of trying to shepherd a resistant flock. Hearing Caleb call her name she kept walking, releasing herself from responsibility and absolving herself of the flicker of guilt.
Chapter 25
Memories
“You all right?” Logan took his left hand from the steering wheel and reached across, stroking Hana’s fingers under his.
She nodded. “I think so. It feels strange coming back after so long away.”
“Eighteen months.”
“What?”
“We left eighteen months ago.”
Hana looked out of the window as the Waikato spiralled by, its legendary greenness lush against the browner tones of further north. “The Godzone,” she murmured, watching the off ramp for Huntly looming ahead.
Logan stroked her thumb and smiled. “Do you know where that phrase came from?”
Hana shook her head, accepting his encyclopedic knowledge as a distraction ploy. “No.”
“It’s from a poem.” He took his hand back to use the indicator, overtaking a tractor on the dual carriageway. “Thomas Bracken wrote it in the late 1800s. He called it God’s Own Country and it’s been abbreviated to Godzone.”
“He wrote God Defend New Zealand,” Logan said, glancing sideways and wincing as her attention wandered.
“The national anthem?” Hana asked, her voice listless. “I love that. Such beautiful words. Do you think he does?”
“Who? What?” Logan put his hand back over hers.
“God.” Hana turned to face him, her teeth gnawing on the inside of her bottom lip. “Do you think he defends New Zealand?”
“Yes.” Logan’s confidence halted her and she pushed it no further, aligning to the peace in his spirit and drawing comfort from the assurance, even if he’d lied just to soothe her.
They drove through the suburbs in silence as the three children slept in the back seat, Wiri’s hand resting on the side of Phoenix’s car seat so his fluttering fingers could seek out hers if he needed to. Hana glanced backwards at the boy’s pink cheeks, seeing the torture which assailed him even in slumber. Her own children slept in comfort, understanding nothing of their cousin’s agony; witnessing his outpourings of grief and temper as concerned but baffled observers. “Wiri cried all the way to the highway,” she said, keeping her voice low. Logan’s face set in a hard line and she watched his jaw working beneath the beard growth.
“I saw.”
“What do I say to him?” she asked, floundering. “I don’t know how to make it better.”
“You can’t.” Logan swallowed and made the turns to steer the ute towards Fairview Downs. “Whatever you did for Bodie when your first husband died; just do that.”
Hana snorted with disdain. “No. I made dreadful mistakes. I wrapped him in cotton wool because I couldn’t get to him emotionally and I created a monster. I won’t do that again.”