by Alan Duff
It cannot be said who and what you really are, of what bad material you are made. It cannot be uttered, not with the political process of moral correctness protecting you, not with its well-armed squadrons of well-paid enforcers and advocates on your behalf, thank you very much, as they bank money and accumulate status off the backs of you scum.
Look, there’s someone! Look, there’s another! Someone’s gonna suffer this night, like they do every Saturday, it’s hardly ever a Friday, your genes don’t kick in at work weekend, you’re not part of that process, you don’t belong to it, you have no job satisfaction to go and celebrate, no contribution you know you’ve made and earned Friday night out as reward. No, Saturday’s your day. Saturday night outcasts waiting for another head to kick in. And worse, sometimes far worse than that.
And I am one of them. I’m what becomes of these, the lost, the born bad. Locked behind bars, I’m no one. I’m nameless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN THE HEART RULES
I DID NOT go there with the intention of being anywhere near the creep; not physically, not even a hug, a kiss on the cheek, let alone sexually, for all the evident change in his manner.
I have not harboured a single thought, not sexually, of even a fling with him, not once. Not even in a dream.
I went to see him to confirm, but preferably disprove, that Jake had changed. (He couldn’t have. Not that much, not with so much distance between him and my subsequent world.) And in the unlikely event I assessed that he had indeed changed, then I wanted to discuss his will, his estate, as he himself had said; the idea of informing my — our — children that he had made provision for them excited me; kind of partly make up for his failings to them as a father.
What I found was a man who called me unrecognisable and said how he didn’t deserve even half an hour of my company and would understand if I remembered how he was of old and got back in my car and left.
What I found was the man he should have been and, more than that, a man who stood before me, trembling, not with rage but its complete opposite. His feelings were extreme, which he had no choice but to face, those feelings he almost embraced at Grace’s death, to become the truly grief-stricken father, till he took the coward’s option and drowned his so-called grief in drink.
Not this Jake.
Jake Heke stood before me, shaking like a leaf and weeping copious, if silent tears. Jake did this. In front of me — to me. Jake-Heke-crying-with-remorse? This could not be.
For you, Beth, he said. What he hadn’t given and I had so much deserved, the words from chest-heaving man who looked like a child. When all you wanted was a decent marriage, to raise good children, improve our lives. Sobbing. I’m sorry, Bethy.
Called me Bethy. I had always liked being called that, probably because he had never said it to me and not meant it; it had meant genuine love for me, his way of saying a word he would not let pass his lips. To say I was unprepared for this is the understatement of my life.
He wept for, he said, our two dead children. Which had me torn between falling for this self-indulgent creep saying sorry, all these years later, and forgiving him. I was torn between feeling for him and fury at it taking this long for the man to grow up.
(Stuff you, Jake the Muss Heke. Too damned late — twenty-five years too late, longer than that.) I was about to tell him those very thoughts, but instead found myself weeping as well. Except, unlike him, I couldn’t hold back the sound.
And then he was holding me and it was as far from sexual, or even mildly affectionate, as you can get. Just two estranged people crying in each other’s arms. But it kept changing as we stood there holding each other.
It was a father, a daddy, bawling eyes out for our two lost babies. God, I was crying so myself and for those same reasons: our two children gone. And at our share of the blame — my own, too. I should have known my Grace better. I should have put my motherhood love on the line with Nig, either the gang or me. For he loved me powerfully, did my big boy.
I was crying, finally, for him. At last the man — and still big and strong — holding me in his arms, saying Nig and Grace’s names, over and over.
He cried with sound then, great sobs unlocked from his inner prison, at long last a true man facing up to himself. It was so moving I felt my own inner being wanting release, the full woman I had always wanted to be; the completed woman, how I am now but with one missing factor: this man.
Grace! Nig! He cried. I did it to you! Jake killed you!
I know he did. Yet he didn’t. Or we are all to blame for everything bad that happens to our children, and there are times when that is just not so. Sometimes they make their own decisions. Though I think Jake was more responsible than not.
I did not go to his cottage with any sexual intention, and he most certainly did not even hint that it was what he hoped for. Hell, we were howling together for our children, and he with added apology for what he’d done to me. (You were a mongrel dog, Jake Heke. A violent loser of a husband. A no-account who spent years on the unemployment. A total failure of a father. Therefore not by any measure a man. And yet.)
Yet here we were in this unexpected state, both of us, and I gathered myself before he did as he’d quite gone, letting out not just this decade apart, not just the years he made miserable and tragic for his family, but for his life before that. The life he’d said so little about and yet it had scarred him so, maybe even made him the awful man he once was.
So I’m wiping the tears from his face and making soothing sounds — it was instinctive, humane, womanly, motherly. But he couldn’t stop and I started crying again and next our lips met — I made them meet. Put my mouth to his. The years came back in the instant. Our better times. Still he tried to push me away. He said, No, no, Beth. I don’t deserve you.
It was me, a happily married woman to a fine man, who was initiating this.
We ended up doing it and it’s the best loving I’ve had since, well, since him. Jake the Lover, when he left that Muss tag outside the marital bedroom door. The best thing, giving myself utterly to him and he to me. The height I had given up ever reaching again.
Yet I knew it was the biggest mistake of my life — again. With the same man. (Oh, woe is Beth. What have you done? What of your wonderful husband?) And yet why was my heart singing? Oh Lord, what was I to do? What was I to do?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HELL IN THE GARDEN CITY
THE GATES OF Hell didn’t creak or groan at their steel weight being opened and closed yet again. The gates to Hell opened with a well-oiled whisper and closed behind with a heavy thud, of steel vibrating and a key turned with just the softest of rattles against others on an expertly handled key ring. Toted by one of your guards.
It wasn’t an experience but a sensation, a final step with a finite time to be served before you started stepping again. Life had suddenly and unspeakably stopped, right here. Worse, it was not belonging that killed some part of you in the instant of entering.
You were met by the sight of your fellow tenants, and it hit that you were officially one of them, nothing separated you, you wore the same prison-issue clothing, blue and grey, muted (but surely I don’t look like them facially?), controlled, corralled. Yet every face said these men were out of control. Their wiring was bad.
Some of these freaks were whispering as Abe came into the recreation area on the ground floor, some were eyeballing him, trying to let him know they were here first so show us what you’re made of, newcomer. Eyes ran all over him, trying to fit, slot him. Hell echoed in a cavernous three-tiered enclosure: voices, cell doors, steel grilles, footsteps, laughter, grunts. Inside, Abe Heke’s thoughts were screaming.
Tattoo marks spoke the same childish story. Emotional eff-ups. Worked arms and chests, bulging muscles, said brawn held sway here since no thinking mind could survive in this place. If you had a mind you’d not be in here.
No single face read a genuine interest, an intelligent curiosity in a fellow human bein
g for his own sake. Just uniform, fixed sneers and snarls, and pain oozing out every facial expression. If only they knew it.
Abe sat down on a bench and stared up at the TV, seeing nothing, but feeling the eyes on him, their questions itching to get out so they might know his place in the pecking order. Just in case his natural place was high up the chain. Or in case he was lower than he looked. He was thinking, Go to hell, you scum. Gonna (got to) do this on my own, make no friends, keep to myself. I shouldn’t be here. (I was only defending myself. Jesus Christ, has a man no fundamental right to defend his bodily health, his right to dignity?) Burning with a sense of injustice and, yes, he had considered ending it all in the first few days of being in this nightmare. (But that would make me another Grace, and I couldn’t do that to Mum. Can’t even let her know I’m here.) Wondering how many of his fellows here felt obligation to a mother.
It wasn’t so much the physical conditions, a man could imagine worse. It was the quality of the company: inadequacy and banality stared from nearly every face. The absence of a moral code was palpable — if you had eyes for seeing it. The company you have bad dreams of being thrown amongst, like into a den of wild animals no less.
Every metallic sound was a reminder to Abe of his workplace; and the laughter could be his former workmates, and yet it couldn’t possibly be for this laughter had something desperate in it: ugliness, callousness, without even having to state it as such. (I want to be what I was four days ago.)
He could see and sense a discussion going on about him. The prison clothing made everyone look even more hideously the same, bereft humans in one glance. Possessed of what an absent moral code did to your physical appearance, a draining, a big blank space in the normal feedback you get in free life. Worse, they clearly had no inner reflective self, not as an individual, not as a collective. (They think they’re pretty damn cool.)
The discussion was between several inmates, ranging in age from twenty to mid-thirties, gathered round an older man, maybe forty, big as a house, bulging with the necessary muscle, deep grooves in his cheeks, chest tattooing up to his throat, all over the powerful arms, hair prematurely grey. Kingpin written all over him.
Eyes of a kingpin (remind me of my old man) in front of Abe and making him look up, demanding acknowledgement and it better be respect, if not more than that.
Despite the mood Abe was in, his instant assessment of the likely fighting qualities of the man said the kingpin would have some tricks and then some. But he wouldn’t win. He just wouldn’t. (Abe wasn’t Jake’s son for nothing.) But then Abe’s lawyer said he had an excellent chance of winning his appeal, free of these sewer scum, so he must keep his nose clean. Yet he was so angry inside he’d welcome a way to vent it. (No. I’m here because I lost control.)
So Abe nodded to the big guy, flicked a deferential smile, waited for the man’s judgement. Which took its time in coming and had all the guys in hearing and seeing distance fall quiet.
They leaned over the railings of the two landings, staring down on the new boy. The light here had a steel-grey quality to it, like new paint. Over another layer of old. Even the pathological chatter and discordant outbursts of laughter fell away and died in the deliberate silence of the kingpin’s making.
Finally, Abe was asked, in a deep sonorous voice, What’re you in for, bud?
As if he wasn’t already aware, this evident kingpin of this astounding joint whose lackeys would supply him with information on everyone and everything.
Abe smiled respect enough so there could be no misunderstanding. I lost it in a (it wasn’t a fight. A fight you go into voluntarily, this was self-defence) — I got into a fight.
A fight? What kinda fight?
Just a fight.
Ya don’t get sent down for just a fight, bud. Papers said it was four on one — you took on four? With a bit of nature’s help, so the paper said. Namely a fence paling. Not as good as an iron bar, hahaha. But then they don’t have fences made of iron bars, do they, except prisons — hahaha. Though the laughter was brought to an abrupt, unnatural halt. Four? Against just you?
If Abe was meant to take this as a compliment it went right over his head. Four of them, me and a mate.
Paper said your pal did nothing. What, he turn evidence against you?
(Evidence?) A reminder of what he himself had done to Apeman, which had helped put the gang leader away for life. (And here I am in a prison, too.)
No, he just didn’t fight back.
And you did? Kingpin made that a personal challenge to himself, his own fighting mana, in his tone, the you-try-me look.
They were head-kicker shits.
What, you mean skinheads who hate niggers head-kickers?
(Niggers?) Abe shifted weight from one foot to the other. (Who’re you calling a nigger?) His father’s genes stirring (again). Maybe they were skinheads, I don’t think that was the issue.
Issue? Whoo, issue he says. You mean you, Mr wild warrior Maori, didn’t take kindly to being mob-attacked? I mean, everyone knows what Maoris are like. Right?
Abe didn’t say anything. (I just want to do my time, not have a discussion on race.)
Stand up. Now.
Abe sighed and stood up.
Kingpin said, You’re a big unit. A man can take on four by himself, the hunk a wood notwithstanding. I could respect that. Couldn’t I, guys?
Yeah, a chorus seemed at the ready. You could respect that, Ambo. If you must, it said in the unspoken back echo.
Abe swallowed (his pride), made himself forget the nigger reference and told the kingpin, I think I know the rules, mate.
The man mountain smiled and said, Yeah. I am the rule. As in ruler. Ya hear?
Sure, Abe said. That prideful lift of jutting jaw reminding, bringing back an image of his father (Jake the Muss. What a handle. What an idiot he was, my old man. Like this idiot in prison issue, demanding I now step up and shake his heavily tattooed hand).
Flicking a sweeping glance at the faces around him, Abe saw their disappointment in him, knew they’d assessed his size as having something behind it. But he didn’t give a stuff of their opinion of him.
Roger Ambrose. Call me Ambo.
The man’s handshake was strong indeed, big hands belonging to powerful arms, a lot of iron pumped here in the gym, press-ups on the cell floor. And born strength. This is where he thought he’d got to, the mountain he believed he’d climbed.
Abe Heke, Abe said, wanting this ritual to be over so he could go back to his cell, hide the hurt threatening to expose him to these hyenas. Surreal it was, this place, these people, this sensation of being locked up, your right to make any decision gone, except to breathe, to hurt. To hurt. Or be hurt. In disbelief that he was waiting for permission from Ambo to take his leave to go to his cell. (My cell?) Like a school kid asking, Please may I go to the toilet, sir?
Permission was granted when Ambo nodded his balding head and ambled away like an appeased bear.
Abe headed quickly for his cell before his heaving stomach gave him away. (My cell? My cell?) Unable to accept what had happened to him.
Apeman, AKA Montgomery Black, meanwhile, had been given a date for his transfer from the maximum-security prison north of Auckland to medium-security in the pretty city of Christchurch, where a river twisted its way through. In five weeks’ time he’d travel, under escort, in a prison van with two others whose transfer applications had also been granted, be held overnight in a prison outside Wellington, special exemption made to keep the prisoner passengers in their vehicle for the three-hour Cook Strait crossing, then it was about six hours’ drive to Christchurch.
He’d just had an extraordinary bit of information, about the man whose face was burned deeper in his brain than the tattoos electric-needled into his face. Such a handsome face was Abe Heke’s, too, no denying that. Son of Jake and sharing residence. Fancy that. It comes to he who has (utu) patience.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IS THAT THE BABY CRYING (OR YOU?)
ALISTAIR WAS AS worried about himself, his own pathetic reaction, as he was the cause itself: the (damn) baby crying. And its damn mother gone for a drive — again. Stuff her, the irresponsible bitch. Worried that he was sitting watching television with the volume turned up once, twice, to try and shut out the sound, since there was nothing he could do, Sharns could be anywhere, so why not just shut it out? Not his problem. I didn’t have the thing. Not my baby.
His watch kept telling that his inaction was an evolving thing in itself, like the baby’s crying had evolved, in the process of hunger — and wanting attention — even over the din of the television. This passage of time was evolving into either him walking right out, or exploding. Or, just possibly, doing something about the bloody kid.
One hour had passed, then two. He couldn’t stand it any longer and up he got and stomped down to Sharns’s bedroom. (Bloody woman, why don’t you take care of your kid?) This bedroom that he’d violated once, and only that once, before. Sharns had shocked him with the ferocity of her defence of her private space; the anger and confusion at why he had the photograph of her out in the passage. Worse, she tore into him about what a big sook he was regarding his need for Kayla. Which is why, if nothing else, he’d not called out in his whining, demanding manner for Kayla to come offer a solution. Not with Sharns’s words forever seared into his brain. For she was right. He had become totally dependent on Kayla, his existence had come to count on her validating it, otherwise it was not worth living.