I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales

by Lawrence Patchett

  ‘Okay, I withdraw,’ I said. ‘No hologram, no application.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I swear,’ I said. ‘Look at all these witnesses. Everybody’s heard.’

  But the ghost looked at nobody else. ‘This is your promise,’ she said. And again she whispered in my ear, projecting her voice without leaving her spot. ‘You and me, Michael—this is between us.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, flapping my hands now. ‘Please get down.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get down.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Come back now. I’ve made my promise.’

  Smiling, she toyed with the brake lever, enjoying the effect on my face. Then she reached on her toes and slammed it upward, hard and all the way to the top.

  Immediately the train squealed and passengers were thrown from their seats, one woman tumbling into the aisle while bags crashed down from the overhead shelf. In the chaos I saw the ghost swinging on the pole and laughing maniacally. Then the train slowed more gradually, and a conductor came slamming through the carriages to check each of the emergency brakes. I saw his eye light on the up-tilted lever Maud had activated. In a flash, the ghost was sitting one seat along from me, and as the conductor’s eye fell on her she turned and solemnly pointed.

  ‘He did it.’

  With the last momentum of the train, we plunged into a tunnel and stopped. It was the second tunnel south of Paekākāriki, the highest point before the Pukerua Bay station.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said someone, as the tunnel closed round the carriage.

  ‘It wasn’t him,’ said a woman near me. ‘It was her—she pulled it.’

  ‘Tell him you did it,’ Maud whispered, again not moving from her seat. ‘I can make this much worse.’

  I moaned, rubbed my ear, and put my hand up. ‘It was me,’ I said. ‘I did it.’

  The other woman gasped, then stared at me, shaking her head.

  The conductor surveyed us. ‘Stay right there, both of you,’ he said. ‘I’m coming back.’ Then he swarmed up the remaining carriages and into the driver’s hutch.

  I glared at Maud; she smiled contentedly back.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ I said.

  Maud just smiled and watched the people around us. One was claustrophobic and threatening to puke; others had their phones out and were trying to text employers and mates, then cursing as they realised the tunnel had cut their reception.

  Without moving, Maud whispered in my ear again. ‘Just imagine what I could do if you really annoyed me,’ she said. ‘Just imagine how I’d mess with your head.’

  ‘But you promised,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair.’

  Playing the lady again for the other passengers’ sake, she patted her hair and smoothed her dress. ‘Then you’ve learnt something today, haven’t you dear? It’s an important lesson in life.’

  I glared at her. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Never negotiate with a ghost. It just doesn’t work.’

  I moaned and closed my eyes, calculating how late I would be for work. I’d never been late for a council meeting in my life. For years my strategy had been to make up for what I lacked in passion for local government admin by being conscientious. As a result I’d never got far in career terms, but was largely trusted at work, and left to myself.

  The conductor returned to take my name and details. ‘I’m afraid the police will be contacting you,’ he said. ‘Wellington Central are insisting.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘How long will we be stuck here?’

  ‘Ages. We’ve thrown the whole Kāpiti Line out.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get such a roasting at work.’

  ‘And perhaps you should have thought of that before apply-ing the emergency brake,’ he said. ‘Contact address, please.’

  Still standing above, he wrote my details while the other passengers looked, and I sat with my face burning.

  Maud leaned across. ‘Sounds like you’d better lawyer up, asshole.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said.

  She smiled at the conductor, then again at me. ‘I said, You’d better lawyer up, asshole.’

  Still writing in his pad, the conductor said, ‘Please keep your comments to yourself, madam. It’s not helpful.’

  ‘I’m just telling my husband here—’

  ‘If you’re having a domestic,’ he said, ‘please keep it to yourself.’

  ‘She’s not my wife,’ I said. ‘We’re not—’

  He held up his hands. ‘That’s not my business. Whatever floats your boat. But you—the pair of you, whoever it was—shouldn’t have applied the brake. You’ve got a big fine coming up.’

  I waited till he was writing again, then hissed at the ghost. ‘Very classy, Maud.’

  ‘Sir, please,’ said the conductor.

  ‘By the way, that was an Americanism, Maud,’ I said. ‘Plus it was anachronistic. You can’t insult me with an anachronism. Lawyer up—Jesus.’

  Maud smiled annoyingly across.

  The conductor shook his head and went off.

  I checked my watch and groaned—I would be horrifically late—but the sound of Maud’s giggling brought me back, and I glared at her, furious.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Am I disappointing you, Mr Hunt? Am I not being a good Fabian lady? Are you cross?’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ I said. ‘You can get off at the next station and go back.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll need help. I can’t get back.’

  ‘But I bought you a Day Rover. It’s good until midnight.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d need help to find that lane again. I’d get lost.’

  ‘But you’re a ghost! You said you’re omniscient.’

  She just shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ I groaned again, louder this time, and more passengers looked my way, openly showing their distaste.

  ‘In this form,’ said Maud, pinching her forearm, then her leg, ‘I can’t orientate myself. I have no sense of direction. You’ll have to dub me back on your bike. After your work.’

  This was clearly a lie, but now I just wanted her to shut up. ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe you, but whatever.’

  ‘That lane where you found me is my access point,’ she said. ‘I can’t exit from any other site. By the way, your stepson was right. It is a place for ghosts. He was right when he said that—and there is a book about it. I watched him while he looked at it in the school library, then put it back on the shelf.’

  I stared at her. ‘Christ, you’ll nose into anything, won’t you.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she said, smiling. ‘You’ve read my letters, and they were private.’

  Shocked, I looked away. It was astonishing to be confronted with this. ‘Anyway, leave my stepson out of it, please.’

  She idled a fingertip into a moth-hole on her sleeve. ‘Can you get me into the debating chamber? At your work?’

  ‘What? No.’

  She sat patiently. The train hissed, clunked, and groaned forward at last. One passenger gave a sardonic cheer; the rest just shook their heads.

  ‘Well, of course I can get you in,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to. Not after this.’

  ‘I won’t cause any trouble,’ she said. ‘I promise. That’s over now, because you’re withdrawing your application, aren’t you. You will withdraw, won’t you. You did promise.’

  Leaning forward, I rested my head on the seat in front and nodded sickly. ‘I did mention that it will cost me thousands to do that, didn’t I—plus my reputation will be shot to bits.’

  ‘That’s right, you promised,’ she said. ‘And there’s no reason why you can’t escort me into the chamber. It’s a public forum, I dare say. Besides, you owe me that courtesy, at least, after all the mileage you’ve got out of me, and my husband—’ she hesitated ‘—and my daughter. Her ... relationships.’

  ‘All right. But I can’t e
scort you there. I’m so late now that I’ll have to run just to get to the meeting. I’m the clerk—they can’t start without me. This is going to be a major embarrassment. So I can’t chaperone you there, and that’s your fault. You’ll find your own way, thank you very much.’

  She smiled and sat back.

  ‘I’ll be watching you very closely,’ I said. ‘So will security. I’ll tell them to watch out.’

  For answer she just smiled as Plimmerton curved up.

  By the time we made Porirua the meeting was due to start. I sprinted from the train and through the shopping centre to the council. From my office I grabbed the laptop and dashed out again, running straight to the chamber and through the public and the councillors to the clerk’s desk. The councillors were milling about the centre circle with long-finished tea and coffee cups, stretching out their pre-meeting refreshments. At my arrival the chief exec and mayor both came up at once.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘The trains. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  The chief exec’s face was tight, but the mayor gave an expansive laugh.

  ‘You’ll be here at sparrow fart, once the bypass goes through.’ He nudged the chief exec. ‘Eh? The bypass will fix that.’

  The chief exec smiled out the side of his mouth, and I felt bad for him. He’d once let me off the hook when I exceeded my at-work internet allowance so badly and publicly that the matter found its way to his desk, the story having leaked to the local press, courtesy of someone in the IT department.

  Now the mayor laughed again at his own joke and went to his seat. I raced through the laptop set-up and meeting log. A number of people were up the back in the public seats, showing confusion about why we’d not started yet. In seconds snatched from the laptop I glanced at the mayor to see how much time I had left, and saw he’d begun the laborious process of putting on his ceremonial mayoral chains and, as usual, got himself tangled in lifting them over his head. And, as previously, he tried to disguise the mistake, casting a furtive look at the public up the back, then at me.

  I abandoned the log notes and came across to help. As I fished among the silvery links and shields his coffee breath feathered my face.

  ‘We’re very late kicking off,’ he said. ‘Any late apologies, Mike?’

  ‘Just Rajen,’ I said, guessing. I hadn’t had time to check for overnight emails or phone messages.

  ‘No, I’ve seen Rajen,’ he said. ‘He’s just slipped out. He’s in the bog, I think.’

  ‘No apologies, then.’

  ‘All right.’ He brushed me away from his chains and flipped them adroitly into place. I stared—they’d never been really tangled. He’d manufactured the entire problem for my sake.

  ‘Thank you, Michael,’ he said, waving me off. ‘All fixed now. Good lad. Get the agendas handed out—it’s all right.’

  I plunged back to the laptop, finished the set-up, handed out the extra agendas someone else had printed. Rajen came back and the mayor called the meeting to order. I raced against him to check my inbox, finalise the log, and keep track of debate sparked by the previous minutes, the matters arising flaring into some peacock activity as the councillors responded to the presence of more members of the public than usual, plus a local reporter, and Maud at the back.

  In the council chamber we’d finally had refurbished, after several years of budget wrangles and local media debate, Maud looked elegant but outmoded and overdressed, and some of the older male councillors began to expand on their points for her sake, showing off. For her part Maud merely watched the proceedings with her head slightly inclined, her eyes darting between speakers, and I felt a spurt of shame that the council couldn’t supply her with a higher class of debate. In her time she’d been exposed to the best. She’d sat in the gallery at Parliament; later in London she’d hosted Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells in her own house. Embarrassed, I buried my head while debate droned on about the minutiae of the minutes I’d typed last month.

  When I next looked up, Maud was easing her chair back, discreetly making her way out. She smiled as people let her pass, one elegant hand resting on a chair back, and I admired her effortless grace. Then as she drew a grin from the security guard and slipped out, I leapt up, flashing with panic about where she was headed—towards which office, for what mischief. The mayor’s office? My own desk? In my panic I saw her logging into my office computer to hack Fabian Life and related sites. I covered my face and moaned. She was impossible, a terrorist.

  The mayor coughed and I turned. His eyebrow was arched. I was still standing, the laptop thrust back, the whole meeting halted while the councillors watched me. I sat back and resumed my work, but as the meeting continued my anxiety increased, worry about the ghost’s whereabouts eating me up.

  At last the meeting broke for tea and I ran to scour the building for her, with no luck. At the security desk I got a ribbing from the guards for asking them to watch for a strange woman, middle-aged and well dressed. Back at my seat I logged onto Fabian Life just as the meeting resumed and the chief exec caught me at it, his eyes growing wide in amazement. I cringed and logged out. In one day I’d done more—the ghost had done more—to ruin my reputation than since the at-work internet bust, but at least the website was still intact.

  The meeting ran late. As the councillors left I wrapped up and searched the offices once more for Maud, then raced to the station in time for the Waikanae Express. There was Maud on the platform, unperturbed, reading a handful of brochures in close type. I watched her from a distance, too exhausted to begin another argument.

  She affected not to see me at first, then glanced across. ‘Oh, there you are, Mr Hunt. I had a feeling you’d make this train.’

  I nodded and sat heavily on a steel seat. ‘Where did you get to? Or don’t I want to know?’

  She held up her brochures. ‘Parliament. It was in session today.’

  ‘But how did you find your way? Actually, never mind. I don’t care, to be frank.’

  She smiled and went back to her reading.

  I sat dully on the station seat, completely wrung out. Council meetings were exhausting, even straightforward ones.

  At length Maud held up a leaflet on select committees. ‘This is an innovation. Does it work?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I’ve only been once,’ I said. ‘The council made a submission about land transport. It seemed to go all right.’

  For a long moment she watched my face, renewing her assessment of me, it seemed.

  ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not discuss it,’ I said. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose some people are political, and some are not.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘If that’s your position, Mr Hunt.’

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘Let’s leave it at that.’

  The train groaned in and we boarded and sat down. I closed my eyes and leaned back, only to be jolted awake again at Mana station. It was just a five-minute nap, but it left me feeling a little more refreshed, and I rolled my head to watch the ghost as she read, her quick intelligence darting over the mass of brochures, order papers, and guides on how to submit to a select committee.

  ‘You could be an MP if you lived here now,’ I said. ‘Women are allowed. Imagine that.’

  She answered this with a curt nod, and went on reading.

  ‘You’d be so good at that,’ I said. ‘I’d vote for you.’

  She sighed pointedly and spoke without looking up from the documents. ‘Don’t talk about that please, Mr Hunt. That’s just idle imagining. I’d rather not indulge in that sort of pointless sport.’

  I made a face and shrank back. ‘It was supposed to be a compliment,’ I said.

  She ignored me, her face closed, apparently genuinely hurt.

  I sat looking out while the train rocked us side to side. Plimmerton went past, Pukerua Bay. I co
uld have let it go, but part of me wanted to provoke the ghost now that the work day she’d ruined was receding behind me, and I saw a chance to get her back.

  ‘Well that doesn’t make any sense,’ I said.

  She went on reading, her mouth held prissy and tight.

  ‘Because you couldn’t exist if it wasn’t for idle imagining, could you?’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t be here, or anywhere, in fact. No one would have ever read about you or your movement. You’d just be unimportant, like the rest of us—like any of those councillors today. Well-meaning, but forgotten and second-rate.’

  She compressed her mouth even tighter at this.

  ‘You couldn’t exist without people like me,’ I said. ‘That’s the facts of the matter, eh, Maud. That’s why the website is important. That’s why you didn’t hack it today, when you could have. My website keeps you alive.’

  This sat between us for a time, but finally she couldn’t resist.

  ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘one can make a great deal of change from outside Parliament. I did, for example. One doesn’t need to be elected to Parliament.’

  ‘Yes, but just imagine how things could have been different,’ I said. ‘You could have been a Minister here in New Zealand, the Prime Minister even. Imagine that.’

  Now she turned to face me directly. ‘It’s been a big day, Mr Hunt,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re very tired.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, grinning.

  ‘I imagine you are, in fact, Mr Hunt,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be provoking me so stupidly, like some six-year-old, about chances I worked for but never had. You’re just tired and irritated.’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I’m actually feeling quite fresh.’

  She lifted a hand towards me, all the while maintaining eye contact. The look on her face was faintly bored, as if dealing with an infant who wouldn’t give up. With her arm raised came a further puff of her scent.

  ‘Is this one of your ghost moves?’ I said. ‘It’s not very impressive.’

  She sighed, maintaining the eye contact. ‘You’re very tired, Mr Hunt.’