by Bowes, K T
Sunlight bathed Logan’s property at the summit, bright after the shade of the bush. The gate stood wide open, the number coded padlock gone. The horses wandered in and Logan dismounted and pulled the gate shut behind them. He untacked the animals, allowing them to move around grazing, but stacked the tack on the fence near the gate for a quick getaway. He didn’t bother to put head collars on them. “They’ll come when I whistle,” he reassured Hana. “Stop worrying.”
“I thought I’d get that small pony again,” Hana joked, reminding him how he sabotaged her ride after she discovered she was pregnant. “I expected my feet to touch the floor.” Logan laughed and put his arm around her. Hana sensed his tension and grew worried. They often referred to this place as Serious Hill.
Logan kept a tight hold on his wife as he walked her to the cliff top and she breathed in the scent of the sea in the distance and saw the haze of buildings that marked out Port Waikato. “It’s so beautiful up here.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Logan said, keeping her close. “I told you I got planning permission for change of usage to residential but I wanted you to tell me where to put the house and what sort of building you’d like. I want you to be part of it. We could truck Culver’s Cottage up here if that’s what you’d like. I want it to be our place, not just yours or mine.”
He stopped and that familiar awkwardness descended. Hana hadn’t seen it for a while but found it endearing. “I don’t think Culver’s Cottage would fit in,” she said. “I think you’re right, we need to start again with something we both have input into.”
Logan sighed with relief. They discussed where the best site would be, Hana relying on her husband’s knowledge of the land. He knew where the sun rose and set and where the worst of the sea breezes would batter a potential dwelling. As Logan stepped out an area, measuring with long strides, a familiar sound stopped Hana, transporting her back seven weeks, when she grovelled on her hands and knees in the dirt and delivered her premature daughter. It was the sound of the tui bird laughing.
“Where are you going?” Logan called as Hana jogged to the gate and let herself out, halting amongst a group of ancient kauri trees on guard. Looking up into the branches, she spied the bird, his blue-black feathers and his little white bow tie. He cocked his head to one side and eyed her from his great height. Then he cackled and made a grunting sound.
Hana giggled, putting her hand over her mouth. “You’d better not be mimicking the sound of my labour!” She shook her fist at him and he fluffed his feathers and called again.
“Hana?” Logan showed concern as he arrived behind her, looking up in confusion. He took her arm and pulled her away from the bottom of the tree. “It’s tapu here,” he said, his voice serious. “Sacred.”
“Oh, sorry,” Hana said, stepping back. “I didn’t know.”
Logan pointed further up the trunk of the enormous tree to writing etched into the peeled wood. Hana squinted and shielded her eyes against the sun, trying to see what it said. “Names?” she asked her husband and he nodded.
Each was carved into the wood with a sharp object. There were over twenty names, including Reuben, Alfred and Logan’s, cascading and spreading out into a well-documented family tree. Attached to each carved name was an image. At a point half way down was the name Phoenix Du Rose and Hana looked confused. She pointed it out with a questioning face. “She was my paternal grandmother, remember?” Logan said. “Kuia Phoenix.” He repeated her name with reverence and awe.
The faded, worn words were almost hidden in the grain of the wood. Logan’s name sat under Alfred’s, but his carving straddled both lines of the family. Hana pointed and Logan shrugged. “It was a clue I missed,” he said, his voice sad. “It looked like there wasn’t enough space to fit me in next to Barry, Liza and Michael.” His name was pushed up against Neville and Kane’s, Reuben’s rightful sons, as though neither side had enough room for him. Hana tutted and squeezed his fingers.
A drawing of a tiki accompanied Logan’s name, a round face with a long tongue and two hands with three fingers on each. Hana knew the tiki depicted the first mortal born to the gods. “Isn’t he the symbol of fertility too?” she asked.
Logan nodded. “And a good luck charm and believed to give the bearer clarity of thought and great inner knowledge.”
“Well, that much is true,” Hana said with encouragement. She pointed to a large phallus between its curved legs and put her hands over her mouth. “Oh my gosh!” she said, “Please tell me that’s not its...thing!”
Logan put his head back and roared with laughter. The tui joined in, mocking the humans. “What can I say?” he said, putting his hands up to his chest in a show of false modesty, “I’m blessed.”
“Māori carvings are so graphic!” Hana cringed, embarrassed by the figure’s amorous boast. She peeked again to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. “It’s massive!”
Logan snorted. “Hey, thanks babe.” He stood behind Hana so his arm reached over her shoulder and pointed to the name beneath his. Phoenix Du Rose was repeated in a beautiful script, standing out against the darker bark like a scar.
“Did you do that?” Hana asked in wonder, “It’s beautiful.”
Logan smiled and embraced Hana from behind, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I buried the baby’s afterbirth here that night,” he said matter-of-factly, “so it’s there with mine and Reuben’s. It felt right, but I didn’t know the history then. It’s what tied me to the land all these years, tangata whenua.”
“So now Phoenix is tied to it too?” asked Hana, a wave of superstition disquieting her soul. She looked around, sad she didn’t absorb it like her husband wanted. Her British ways distanced her from the tikanga and kawa, customs and protocols of Māori. Hana knew she should be in awe, but instead worried about practicalities. “Will you put a different driveway in for the new house?” she asked.
“Na, we’ll use this gateway,” Logan replied, his voice thoughtful.
“I don’t think I can cope with driving past a caricature of my husband with an enormous willy every time I arrive home,” Hana grumbled. “Imagine giving someone directions and having to say, ‘Drive through the gate at the top of the hill without hitting the afterbirth and turn left at the tiki with the giant...’”
Logan snorted and Hana reached back and kissed her husband tenderly on the side of his neck, trying to meld into his world for a while even though she felt a poor fit. Logan’s hands reached forward and cupped her swelling breasts. “Hey,” he said, breathing into her ear. “We’ve got an hour and a half left.”
“No!” squealed Hana, breaking free and running into the bush.
Logan laughed and called after her, “But woman, I need to show you the rest of my tiki!”
They emerged from the bush half an hour later. Hana’s hair stuck up at a jaunty angle and her hat looked squashed. Half a silver fern hung from her shirt collar and her face creased with the horrid feeling in her jeans. “I think something crawled into my knickers,” she said, her expression one of discomfort.
“Yep,” Logan confirmed, without humour. “Me.”
“No, really, like a bug!” Hana hopped around, grimacing. “Oh no!” she cried, pointing at the open gate. “Didn’t you shut it after you?”
“I thought you were last out,” Logan replied, fixing a look of innocence on his rugged features as Hana rounded on him angrily.
“No! I came out first and you followed me! Gosh farm-boy, don’t you even know how to shut gates?” Hana stomped around panicking and worrying about Phoenix. She shaded her eyes with her hand but the horses were nowhere to be seen. “To walk back without the horses will take hours and hours. You promised!” she ranted.
Logan smirked, putting two fingers into his mouth and letting out a shrill whistle. Within seconds, the two beasts appeared on the horizon, trotting purposefully towards the call. Hana gritted her teeth, feeling guilty and stroppy at the same time. “How did you know they hadn’t gone
out the gate?”
He snorted. “Why would they? Er...nice lush mountain grass never grazed or tree roots, bark chippings and silver fern. Not much of a contest is it?”
Hana hung her head, feeling stupid. Logan rarely played the ‘blame game’ and yet Hana discovered the awful trait in herself. “Sorry,” she said with contrition. The horses stood while Logan tacked them up, giving Hana a leg up into the saddle and enjoying her discomfort. When he concluded she’d suffered enough, he winked at her facetiously. She stuck her tongue out.
“Don’t you know what it means when a Māori woman sticks her tongue out?” he asked, his hand still on her leg.
“War?” Hana asked.
Logan chuckled. “That’s the men, you egg! For the women it’s the opposite.”
Hana almost did it again, but put it back into her mouth. Logan didn’t need an excuse and she wanted to get back to her child. The free morning began to feel like an enforced absence alongside the urge to feed her baby. The figurative umbilical cord stretched over the kilometres between them, tugging and pulling. Anxiety lit her eyes and Logan obligingly turned his horse for home. The animal, knowing her belly full of sweet summer grass could be supplemented by tasty kibbles in the stable yard, was willing to canter down the slopes. Her foal waited for her in the pen with his younger cousins and she wanted to see him as much as the human wanted her own child. Digger plodded happily behind, nodding his head in time to the relentless beat of his hooves. Hana lay back in her saddle to balance him out, slowing him to a trot as the going got tougher.
Logan turned off the original track, making a detour. Hana inwardly griped at the delay until they came to a familiar section of land. At the bottom of a steep slope was a flat, scarred piece of burned ground. It looked half-cleared with a yellow earth mover parked up next to a bulldozer, both idle for the weekend. The huge machines slept. Only the sound of the bush, the birds calling and the wind in the trees disturbed their peace. The old boundary fence still lay flat on the ground and Hana shivered, reminded of the sights and sounds of that terrible night, when she struggled to heave her heavily pregnant body over the fence and slide down the slope to the fire. Hana put her fingers to her lips and squeezed her eyes shut as the screams of Miriam came again, running into an inferno to die. She heard the stunned silence of the family and sensed their panic afresh.
“Hey, don’t.” Logan pulled Hana’s hand from her lips and caressed her fingers. His skin felt coarse and work worn and she clung to the security of his presence. The horses stamped and crunched their teeth on metal bits as the couple stared in silence at the charred earth. “I’ve bought it.” Logan said and Hana looked at him, not understanding. He turned towards her, his face a mask of sadness as Sacha’s tack clanked beneath him. “I’ve bought this part of the mountain. They didn’t want to build here again and I don’t want them to. It’s cursed now.”
“What will you do with it?” Hana asked.
“I thought we could plant it and make a memorial garden for them,” he said. “What do you think?”
Hana nodded. “Yeah,” she breathed, “That’s a great idea. I’ll help you if you want? We can’t leave it like this. Even if it grows over as grazing, it won’t feel right.”
Logan nodded gratefully and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Thanks, babe,” he whispered. Then the shutters came down over his soul and the moment of vulnerability ceased. He clicked his tongue and Sacha cantered off along the track. Hana followed, with only one quick glance back towards the scorched earth.
In her mind’s eye she saw Reuben’s face, a mirror image of Logan’s, smiling at her and registering obvious pleasure as her baby kicked against his scarred hand.
Chapter 18
“She didn’t even miss me!” Hana said for the tenth time on the journey back to Culver’s Cottage. “It’s the longest I’ve ever left her and she wasn’t even bothered.” She sounded grumpy and Logan kept his ironic smile to himself. Hana made it clear she didn’t want to come back to ‘hysterical baby’ but ‘happy, gurgling baby’ didn’t seem to the right response either. Hana sat in the back of the Honda next to the car seat looking cross and her baby slept on, unaware of her offence.
“Oh, Angus texted me,” Logan said. “We can move back into the unit tomorrow. He kept the tradies at it all weekend and they’ve finished.”
Hana pulled a face. “It hardly seems worth it. The new manager arrives in a week’s time. Then we’ll move out again. I’ll stay at home and you can travel in like we used to.” Her lips creased into a smug smile of satisfaction.
“Yeah, about that...” Logan said, peering at his wife through the rear view mirror. “He says there’s a problem and he wants to talk to me first thing.”
Fantastic, thought Hana to herself. A delay, that’s all I need! She wisely kept her thoughts to herself, not wanting to lay extra burdens on Logan. The journey home was uneventful and they arrived at Culver’s Cottage to a pan of hot soup simmering on the stove, courtesy of Maihi, their wonderful Māori neighbour.
Hana became tenser as the evening progressed, knowing Laval would come for her again, jumping out like a dreadful jack-in-the-box and scaring her witless. Because he did scare her.
“I won’t bother to unpack,” she whined. “I’ll wash everything at the unit. We’ll go back to living out of suitcases until we can go home.”
Logan noticed how on edge she was and clasped her round the waist as she folded clothes and thumped them into the suitcase. He ran his fingers up the side of her neck, overwhelming her with his sex appeal and feeling her still under his spell. “Hey, babe. I’m sorry you don’t want to go back on site. I hate how unhappy it makes you to be trapped there, but unless we live separate lives, it’s the only solution.”
Hana grunted and accepted Logan’s hug. Besides which, Logan reminded himself, he needed to keep his wife close. ‘Something’s going on,’ Odering said in the brief phone call on Friday night. ‘Don’t let her out of your sight.’ He watched her troubled inner wrangling and agonised.
“Can’t I stay here?” Hana pleaded, pushing her face into his shirt. “You’ll only be away one or two nights; I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Logan replied, settling his lips on hers to stop the conversation escalating. Phoenix snored as he undressed his wife, distracting her from the whiney protests and making her need him. “I have to live on site,” he whispered as Hana reached breaking point in their lovemaking. “So you’re coming with me.”
She groaned and conceded, knowing he’d played a dirty game and won, but needing him to finish what he so cunningly started. “I hate you,” she hissed as she reached her climax and heard Logan snuff into her hair.
“No, you don’t.”
Next morning they were up and showered early. Tumbling out of bed felt miserable, but the showering didn’t go to plan either. The hot water heater failed, spraying Logan with freezing cold jets of water. “Bloody hell!” he swore and jumped out, naked and shocked, only to have to get back in to remove the shower gel.
“I’m not going out without a shower!” Hana protested.
“Get one at the unit!” Logan argued.
“No!” She stubbornly climbed under the freezing jets and pretended not to care. “You’re a big baby,” she mocked, taunting Logan for his squeals of anguish and colourful diction.
Hana sent Maihi a text on the way into town, thanking her for the soup and begging her to ask her builder-husband to fix the heater and leave the bill on the kitchen table. “Ugh!” she said in the car, piling cold wet hair into a high pony tail. “It feels disgusting on my back.”
Logan drove the Honda through the back entrance of the site and parked it outside their unit. Two empty spaces marked the absence of the builder’s trucks. The front of the unit had matched the one next door, the window frames freshly sanded and painted. The front door shone with a coat of red and as Logan unlocked it and pushed it open, it didn’t make the dreadful creaking sound. “Wow, this is different,” Logan sai
d. “Doesn’t look like the same place.”
“Feels like it though,” Hana grumbled. “It’s still a shoebox.”
Logan held the baby in one of his strong arms and inspected the bedrooms. Hana stood next to the suitcase with a disgruntled look on her face. A note on the kitchen counter from Amanda, explained she’d helped set the furniture out and hoped it was right. It was a carbon copy of her unit next door, with slight differences in the curtain material and sofa colour.
Hana sighed as Logan handed Phoenix to his wife, kissing the tiny face before leaning in to kiss Hana on the lips. “I’ve an eight o’clock meeting with Himself,” he said, referring to Angus. “I’ll unload the car before I go.” He turned, dragging the car keys from his pocket. “Hana...” he stopped and bit his lip, “be careful, hey?”
Hana knitted her brow and looked frightened, cocking her head as her eyes demanded explanation. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Her face froze in a look of defiance, shaking her head and pretending she didn’t understand.
“With the court case coming up,” Logan said, “we need to be extra careful. We don’t know much about Laval or what influence he can exert from remand prison.”
Hana’s jaw worked furiously in her efforts to keep control and Logan regretted putting the suggestion into her head, especially when she already showed signs of vulnerability. “It’ll be fine,” he said and kissed her forehead. “The old guy didn’t even look like he could tie his own shoes, let alone come after us from behind bars.”
Hana stood where he left her, feeling abandoned and afraid. It didn’t matter whether Laval Senior could get to her from prison or not. Because he didn’t have to.