One Heartbeat

by Bowes, K T

  The traffic slowed again and Logan watched the elderly couple walk back to their car. The woman talked animatedly, holding onto the man’s arm but his shoulders slumped like someone who’d been kicked in the head. Their smart white sedan screamed rental and Logan glanced in the mirror again at Hana. He saw her wipe her eyes on her sleeve and memorised the registration number of the couple’s vehicle, driven by an inexplicable need to fix everything.

  Logan drove his wife to their home in the Hakarimata hills as she remained eerily silent, but for the occasional sniff.

  “Are you back at the school boarding house on Monday?” Tama asked and Logan nodded.

  “Yeah. It’s better than it was and I do less night duties now, but it still sucks to stay on site on my weekends off; there’s always some disaster.” He sighed and watched Hana in the rear view mirror again, seeing her take deep, fortifying breaths and run a hand over her face. “When do you go back to college?” Logan indicated and made a turn, missing his nephew’s look of misery. “I’m proud of how you’re doing there,” he added, compounding the teen’s agony without realising. Tama had inherited the Du Rose good looks and an ego to match, but his colour faded in the blanched look which overtook his handsome Māori features.

  “Next week,” he answered and Logan nodded. Tama turned to look at Hana with concern etched on his face. “You ok, Ma?”

  Hana nodded imperceptibly. Tama turned around again, worry etched into his face as instinct screamed of impending disaster and he dreaded it, as one familiar with emotional turmoil. “You sure?” he risked again as the metal security gates at the bottom of the steep driveway rolled aside. He turned his body so he could get eye contact with her, saddened by the tear tracks on her face and how she moved her head to avoid his gaze.

  “Stop asking me, please.” Hana shook her head from side to side, not wanting to explain. Tama reached his long, muscular arm around the seat behind him and took her hand in his. Her fingers felt freezing. She’d mothered him more in the last six months than he’d ever experienced and her pain drove a stake through his heart. He narrowed his eyes and sought to make it better. “I love you, Ma.”

  Tama felt Logan’s sideways glance and stiffened, sensing the mistrust cross the centre of the vehicle. His uncle said nothing but Tama removed his hand and sat round, seeing Logan’s jaw work through his cheek. As Logan made a tight turn on the incline, Tama saw his own name inscribed into his uncle’s bicep, nestled next to Phoenix and Hana’s in a cursive script. It offered a flush of pleasure but also warning. Logan loved the teenager, parenting and funding his brother’s unwanted bastard despite Tama’s keen interest in older, married women. He couldn’t afford another screw up.

  The Du Rose men were renowned for taking what didn’t belong to them, the fact hanging over the family like a curse. ‘Get it where you can,’ was Kane Du Rose’s motto. Kane wasn’t Tama’s father, but gave parenting a reasonable go, instilling into the boy the traits of selfishness, egotistical altruism and violence he possessed. The result was not pleasing.

  Tama peered behind him and caught Hana’s eye, receiving a tentative smile through eyes filled with tears and a face which wobbled under his scrutiny. He felt an irrational anger for whoever or whatever caused her anguish, balling his fists in childish loyalty.

  Logan stopped the car at the top of the driveway and Culver’s Cottage loomed in front of them. It was magnificent, restored beautifully to its former glory as a 1900s villa. It started life elsewhere, but enjoyed seeing out its days on a mountain overlooking the Mighty Waikato River at its convergence with the clay filled Waipa. Behind it, native bush spread out against the blue wintry sky as far as the eye could see, a fantastic backdrop of every green imaginable. Hana stepped out of the vehicle and sighed as she breathed in the fresh air, convincing herself she could smell the altitude. Tama lifted Phoenix out, still in her car seat. He winced at the towel over her chest where she vomited up the sickly ice-cream on the journey home, watching her slumber in her fullness.

  “You can sort her out when she wakes up with belly-ache,” Logan muttered to the teen and Tama smirked, knowing Logan would willingly pace the floor with his precious daughter.

  Inside the house, Hana kicked off her shoes and stalked to the master bedroom, throwing herself on the stunning four poster bed. She lay on her side and snuggled into the clean duvet, feeling the weight of grief in her breast. The old man’s face entered her inner vision like a rerun, older, more humble than she remembered. There was no doubt it was her father and she wondered if it occurred to him that Jas might be his great-grandson, while only metres away, her shame stuffed McDonald’s between his lips. Lovely Bodie, her policeman son was the unborn child the pompous vicar ridiculed and humiliated her for carrying. “You missed it all,” she whispered to the empty room. “Life and death and I did it without you.”

  Hana curled into a tight ball as she remembered her father’s ravings, posturing and screaming while her delicate mother sat at the table trying to read his furious ramblings. Hana cried and repeatedly apologised, seeing her mother’s confusion in her peripheral vision. Her last memory of her mother was looking back as her overbearing brother shoved her and her Indian boyfriend into the street. Judith McIntyre gave her a tiny smile, tears rolling down her frail cheeks as she stood up, not comprehending the violent scene in her kitchen. Hana meant to write to her later and explain the mistake she’d made, but the pain of being expelled from the vicarage overshadowed all else until the baby arrived. Then it was too late.

  Her perfect older brother with his perfect wife and perfect children threw Bodie’s father bodily from the house, punching and kicking him in a show of uncharacteristic violence. Hana was devastated and Vik philosophical, not holding it against her in the fifteen years they shared before his death. Had Hana not been five months pregnant, she often wondered if Mark might have turned his rage on her too. Her father pushed Vik towards the front door but Mark waded in with his fists, making a huge, unattractive scene in the small village street.

  Hana squeezed her thumb and forefinger over the bridge of her nose, trying to dispel the awful headache brewing. When Bodie was two months old Hana felt the lack of a mother, the relentless assignments for her degree seeming always to be handed in late in between juggling a new baby and keeping the awful bedsit straight. Mark’s card arrived, embossed with the funeral director’s logo and a watercolour painting of lilies on the front. Inside it stated, ‘Mum died on Tuesday. Funeral is next Monday. Don’t come. We don’t want you. Mark.’

  Vik comforted her when he arrived back from his lecture but there was little he could say. Their Sikh marriage was founded on a one night stand and accidental pregnancy and he accepted his responsibility. To the end of his days he attempted to see it through. Almost.

  The shock of seeing her father again reduced Hana to the status of a child, a naughty, disappointing infant. The loss of her mother hit her hard again like peas removed from the freezer – as fresh as the day they were frozen. Hana denied herself the luxury of crying more, knowing it served no purpose but to suck her further into the abyss and make it harder to climb the ladder back. Hana heard Logan put Phoenix to bed in her room, his footsteps treading back along the hallway to the kitchen. Then she heard the gentle strum of his guitar, soothing and strained across the distance as he waited for the kettle to boil. She recognised the tune, an old Māori song he often played. She imagined him standing in the kitchen with his foot on the seat of a chair, balancing the guitar on his thigh as he played left handed. The song made her feel grounded, connected and belonging. “This is my home,” she muttered. “I’m an immigrant, an Englishwoman by birth with a Scots father and Irish mother, married to a Māori.” Hana recalled the cry of the kuia karanga, calling her onto Logan’s marae and welcoming her as whānau, family. That was her place now, not the silent vicarage with the bigoted father whose homage to forgiveness and grace was nothing more than lip service.

  Hana slipped off the bed and her jac
ket rustled.

  “Nga iwi e! Nga iwi e!” came the sound of her husband singing softly, “All you people! All you people!” It was a song his birth father taught him, posing as a guitar teacher in an elaborate charade. Reuben Du Rose went to great lengths to spend time and instil something lasting into the favoured son he was denied.

  Hana stood outside the kitchen door, watching her husband’s long fingers stroking the strings.

  “Did Poppa Reuben teach you that?” Tama asked softly and Logan nodded.

  “Yep. Gave me this guitar too.”

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “In the storeroom next to the kitchen. Alfred hid it there; he discovered my mother took me to see Reuben for lessons and robbed me of even that small contact.”

  The guitar’s uncovering pulled down a veil, revealing the hearts of both the gift giver and the man who hid it.

  “Kia kotahi ra Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa,” Logan sang, “Be united as one, like the Pacific Ocean.” It was a beautiful, melodious song about holding onto an inheritance. Hana recognised the cry of Logan’s heart, clinging to the truth of who he was and what he stood for to pass on as a legacy to his baby daughter. “Kia mau ra! Kia mau ra! Ki te mana motuhake me te aroha - Hold on firmly! Hold on firmly to your inheritance, and to compassion.”

  It was a precious moral and Hana loved to hear her husband play and sing. Phoenix often went to sleep to the sound of his guitar when she wouldn’t settle, but the words unnerved Hana of late. What was her inheritance? Just a legacy of hate and disappointment. It made her bitter and jaded her view.

  “Poppa Reuben whistled that tune all the time,” Tama continued unwisely and Hana saw the warning vein in Logan’s neck throb. “I guess he was thinking of you.”

  There was a twang as Logan let go of the string, his hand poised over the instrument’s bridge and his face a mask of shallowly disguised pain. Oblivious, Tama continued scoffing the rest of his cold McDonald’s. Red sauce coated his fingers and chin.

  “Sorry about before.” Hana clasped her arms around Logan’s waist from behind and held on, anchoring herself in this life and not the one before. He relaxed and ran his long fingers over hers, feeling the dead coldness of her skin.

  “Just making you a drink, babe,” he whispered, but Hana shook her head against his back.

  “I’ll walk over to see Maihi,” she replied, “if that’s ok?”

  Logan laid his guitar against the table with care. Battered and elderly, its age and experience put resonance into Logan’s playing. He kept hold of Hana, taking his leg off the kitchen chair and pulling her into his chest. Hana sniffed his shirt, calmed by the summer sweet scent of him like meadows, hay, horses and sunshine. “Phoenix should sleep for a while,” she said, guilt sparking at Logan’s concerned face. “There’s baby rice in the cupboard for when she wakes but just text me and I’ll come back and give her a breastfeed.”

  Logan nodded. A year of marriage to Hana taught him he couldn’t rush her. Pressing and cajoling forced her to run and he didn’t want that. He smiled and kissed the top of her head, infusing her with his love.

  Hana wrinkled her nose at Tama, objecting to his childish way of eating. “Dirty boy!”

  He waved the burger and stuck his tongue out. He still had food in his mouth and Hana pulled a disgusted face and went into the huge hallway. The men heard her shut the front door and chase her wellies around the porch. The burger stayed halfway up to Tama’s mouth as Logan raised a finger and shook his head. He watched from the long kitchen window as Hana walked around the side of the house and climbed the fence into the paddock, beginning the steep climb to the bush line and their neighbour’s house. Then Logan turned and leaned his backside against the sink and sighed.

  “What the hell was that all about, bro?” Tama demanded, shoving the limp burger bun into his mouth whole and standing to watch Hana’s climb. “She was distraught.” He finished chewing and wiped his olive-skinned hand across the back of his mouth. “What are you gonna do?”

  Logan shrugged. “It’s too late for my father to answer my questions, but maybe there’s still time for Hana. But will she thank me for interfering?” Logan flipped out his cell phone and dialled a number. His stepson answered and reacted badly to the request.

  “No man, no way!” the policeman said with determination. “I can’t check registration plates without good cause and I certainly can’t investigate potentially innocent members of the public.”

  “It’s important,” Logan said. “And don’t tell Hana.” He figured if she wanted Bodie to know he sat within spitting distance of his grandfather, she’d have told him herself.

  “Sorry and all that,” Bodie said, sounding smug. “But I’ve passed my next lot of exams and am on the list for a vacancy. I won’t get promoted for flouting the rules, so find another way. You nearly got me fired last year and I can’t risk it again.”

  “Ok mate, thanks,” Logan said, disappointed.

  “What was wrong with Mum?” the cop asked and Logan invented an excuse.

  “She forgot something important.”

  “Cool, is that all you wanted?” Pique crept into Bodie’s voice.

  “No,” Logan lied. “But you’re obviously busy so another time is fine.”

  He slipped his phone back into the front pocket of his jeans and Tama pulled a face. “Is he still moaning about all that stuff last year? You never even hit the guy and he’s still complaining about you involving him! What a big baby.”

  “Stop!” Logan said, his voice low but authoritative. “I got arrested and accidentally dragged him into it. Just let it go.”

  Tama went off to the bathroom grumbling under his breath and Logan stood at the kitchen window and watched his wife’s progress. She reach the top of the property and turned left, disappearing into the native bush and blending into her surroundings. His heart ached for her; he knew all about family pain and sympathised. In the absence of his favourite mare to gallop across the slopes above his hotel and free his mind, Logan took the baby monitor to the outhouse and chopped wood for an hour, wanting to make a decent fire for his wife’s return.

  Chapter 3

  Hana made the twenty minute walk next door in good time and only fell twice in the thick mud, exacerbated by the morning’s rain. She knew the route but stopped anyway to examine the hidden markers she and Maihi planted the year before as an escape route. The cloth strips were stained and tatty, blending into the rustic fence as though part of it. Hana wiped her filthy hands on a fence post and wrinkled her nose, knowing it wasn’t only mud but cow dung too.

  Maihi’s husband grazed huge tracts of Hana’s land in return for meat every time they home killed. The bulk of the beef herd grazed the higher slopes and Hana edged nervously around their paddock, reminded of the boys at school as brown eyes with designer lashes turned to follow her while chewing mouths continued their circular action. A city girl at heart, she sighed with relief when there were a few fences between her and the herd, beginning the treacherous descent to Maihi’s welcoming cedar wood house. The last rays of the late sun dipped below the range, leaving greyness in its wake. Hana dreaded a nightmare stumble home in the dark and knew Logan would be cross if she left it too late. She saw the concern in his face at the restaurant but felt grateful to him for not pushing. The quizzical look in his eyes told her he’d guessed already. “I didn’t lie,” she pleaded aloud, startling a nearby falcon feeding on a rabbit carcase. “I thought my father died years ago.”

  Maihi responded to the tentative knock on her back door with a hug and barrage of kisses. “Kotiro,” she cried, her brown face crinkling in pleasure. The word meant girl in Māori, but to Hana, it meant daughter.

  “Hello, Maihi,” Hana responded, kicking off her wellies on the porch. She allowed herself to be coddled and loved, fed tea and soup, satiating the craving for mothering which ate at a raw spot in her heart. Maihi warbled on with the latest news about her son’s family, chatting away as she buttered bread and pushe
d it towards Hana, sideways glances telling her all she needed to know.

  “Tiger!” Hana exclaimed with pleasure as her old black and white cat wrapped his body around her calves and pressed into her for a stroke. “How’re you doing, old man?” The feline purr filled Hana with inexplicable longing and she reached to pick him up, disappointed as he fled towards the smoky female by the fire. “Oh,” she said, her voice laced with pain. “He thinks I want to take him home.”

  Maihi chuckled. “You do.”

  “Yeah, I miss him,” Hana admitted. “It feels like a broken relationship.” She looked longingly towards the male as the lavender female licked his tattered ear and face with a rasping tongue.

  “Eat youse kai,” Maihi replied, jerking her head towards the bowl of soup in front of Hana. With obedience, she poked her spoon into the thick broth and tasted the meaty goodness, anxiety making it roil in her stomach afterwards.

  The visit spared Hana fretting for a while and the Māori woman told local stories which proved entertaining and hilarious. She relaxed and her panic receded to a distant ache until the older woman zapped her as usual. “So, my love,” Maihi said, plonking another cup of tea in front of Hana. “What’s eating you then? Tell me.” The old lady peered at her over her glasses, her fingers deftly chopping kumara and taro and dropping it into a roasting tin.

  “I saw my dead father this morning,” Hana said, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. “In McDonald’s in town.”