by J. P. Pomare
Jim’s gaze slides towards the door. ‘We moved here. Just take this,’ he says, pocketing the coins and holding out another note.
‘You’re not up the hill, are you? In the old wooden place with the flat roof? The lodge.’ The light coming through the entrance darkens as a cloud passes before the sun.
Jim draws a long breath. ‘We’re in a bit of a hurry.’ He turns his head; his eyes say, What’s her deal?
‘What do you mean “the lodge”?’ I ask.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘just a nickname for the old place. Had a cousin lived there a while back.’ The woman licks a pair of stamps and presses them onto the envelope. She takes the note from Jim and hands the change back.
‘Kate,’ he says. He has broken his own rule. He should have said Evie. ‘Come on.’ Taking me by the wrist, he pulls me towards the door.
‘See you around.’
Outside, as we cross the road, he casts a furtive glance over his shoulder. ‘Shit.’ He runs his palm up his forehead and over his trimmed head. ‘It slipped out. Did you see the scars?’
‘What?’
His sarcastic expression makes him look ugly for a second. ‘You didn’t see the scars up her neck, under her jaw?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I saw them.’
We are walking along the footpath beside the beach.
‘Oh, wait here a second, I forgot something.’ He rushes back to the shop, disappearing inside.
I stare out towards the deepest part of the estuary that divides the main beach from a tongue of sand that runs down towards the next point. There’s an old broken structure of bricks and a group of boys is standing on it, shirtless, arms folded and shaking with cold. One launches himself off, curling his body so that when he hits the water a spray of seawater explodes up over the others. One by one the others follow him in. I shiver just thinking about the chill.
Jim returns and we set off walking again. ‘We’ve got to be more careful,’ he says. ‘You told her we were from Melbourne. It wouldn’t be too difficult to put two and two together. What would you say if someone asked about us – I mean who we are and what we’re doing together over here?’
‘Um, I’m not sure.’
‘What you say is this: I am your uncle. I am looking after you. If anyone probes you, tell them you would rather not talk about it. Some people are human lie detectors, they can spot a lie just by how you answer so it’s easier to avoid the questions altogether.’
‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘Don’t start this, please.’
‘But why here?’
‘It’s hidden away. I can barely get coverage for my phone. They won’t find us here.’
I swallow. It feels like I have an apricot pit lodged in my throat. Heat rises in my cheeks. He is still talking.
‘You can’t keep me forever,’ I say, low and harsh.
His eyes narrow. He drops the groceries there on the footpath, snatches my wrist and pulls me close.
‘Don’t you fucking push me,’ he says. He’s twisting the skin of my wrist. I pull away but he just tightens his grip. He looks about him, then releases me. ‘We’re both damaged, you and me. We’re stuck in this together. Just think about what they’re going to do if they find us.’
We are silent for the rest of the walk. His face is gaunt and grey with anxiety.
•
The following morning he sends me up to the letterbox. He’s waiting on mail from the bank, a new card for his New Zealand account. He wants to hire a trailer and buy some new things for the house.
I see a glossy folded edge poking out of the letterbox. Us. The one from the shop. No stamp or envelope. Someone left it. There is also a letter for Jim.
Shoving the magazine under my hoodie, I go back inside, drop his letter on the kitchen bench and walk straight to my room.
‘Anything?’ he calls from the deck. He’s holding the binoculars up to his eyes, scanning the bay.
‘There’s a letter for you.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Nope.’ As I say it my heart slams against my sternum.
‘No magazines?’ There’s laughter in his voice. ‘Don’t worry, Kate. It’s a treat. I don’t mind.’
I fall on my bed clutching the magazine to my chest, breathing in that clean new smell. I hear him walking across the deck, down the steps, and a few minutes later the rhythmic knock of the axe rises from the yard. I let my imagination run loose and see the axe striking the back of his head. The thought makes me cringe, and for a moment I feel sick. Keep it together, Kate. Perhaps when the impulse to hurt people weaves itself into your brain you are changed forever.
I draw another long breath through my nose. Was it a test? Did he place it in the letterbox to see if I would lie? I must earn his trust. I think of the girl at the shop, the way she looked at me. I finger the knotted flesh of my thigh and bite my lip softly as I open the cover.
SEVEN
THERE IS NOTHING poisonous in this country, Jim had said. No snakes, and the spiders are harmless. Last night a mouse rushed out from behind the wood box and ran beneath the fridge. Jim heaved the fridge forwards, but he couldn’t find the mouse; he couldn’t even find a hole. He placed mouse traps in the dark recesses of the house, in cupboards and crooks where a mouse might hide. He bought a yellow box of rat poison and scattered half of it around the fridge. There is nothing poisonous in New Zealand except us.
Jim is out in the night collecting a desk for him to work on. It’s going to sit beneath the map near the corner of the lounge. While I wait to hear the car crunching down the gravel driveway, I do as he asked. I sweep the wooden floor, then fall on my hands and knees to polish it with a cloth.
In the kitchen I see the old landline hanging from the wall. This could be my chance to contact someone from home, to find out if he is telling me the truth. He doesn’t want me on the internet because I could be traced, but he hadn’t mentioned the phone. I glance once up the driveway, then take the phone to my ear. I dial the only number I ever learnt by heart. It doesn’t ring. A voice in a New Zealand accent tells me that the number I dialled is incorrect or disconnected and to try again. I need to dial Australia, there must be a code. I pull the drawers out in the kitchen and search under the sink for a phone book, for anything. I check the hot water cupboard. I find stacks of old newspapers, yellowed and bent. Then my hand grips something thick: Bay of Plenty White Pages 1998/1999. It’s old and faded, dusty with age. On the bench I open it out and flick through the pages before finding what I am after.
Dial out international prefix: 00
Codes by country:
Afghanistan 93
Albania 355
Algeria 213
Scanning down the list I find Australia.
This time when I dial the phone number I add the codes and the phone begins to ring. I hold my breath listening, my heart speeding faster and faster with each ring.
‘Hello.’ I’m surprised to hear a woman’s voice.
I can’t move or speak. I can’t think.
‘Who is this? I can hear you breathing.’ I slam the phone on the hook and step back, palming my chest, waiting for the phone to ring again. Surely they couldn’t trace the number back to our location. I try to allay my fears with reason. It could have been a telemarketer or a wrong number. No one would go to the trouble of tracking down a call and even if they did, what could they do with this number? Would she guess that it’s me? I put the phone book back where I found it. Suddenly the room feels cold.
I go out to the yard to chop kindling for the fire. I hold the axe by the throat, just as Jim had shown me. It reminds me of the shape of the land here: valleys are cut as though struck by a blade, opening up the earth for native fern and bush to erupt. The bush is so wild and so swift that old bicycles and broken fences in yards are quickly swallowed up.
I knock thin tinder from the wedges of wood and stack them in the wicker basket. I try not to think about the phone call. Jim will be angry. Ji
m might hurt me but there is nothing I can do about it now. I go slowly at first, taking careful aim before each strike. Gradually I work faster, with more precision, each blow passing cleanly through the wood. Occasionally I hit a knot and the axe stops, sending a shock through my wrist.
There’s a memory like smoke in my fingers. It’s so close yet I can’t quite grasp it. I’m in the car alone, my head swimming, the wheels rolling silently beneath me. Is this a memory or a dream? What did I do?
Jim says the memories will break through, like grass pressing between cracks in the pavement. One strand at a time, making up patches of those lost hours. He says I need to remember the truth of how it actually happened. When I have remembered it clearly, only then we can formulate a plan and begin to move on. I remember gripping the wheel, the pull of the car. I can imagine it the way he says but not remember it. I didn’t hurt anyone.
Inside, I set the kindling in the fire ready to light. As the potatoes boil and the pot lid rattles, I sit and wait, watching specks of rain appear on the window. A fog is drifting down over the hills.
The magazine sits open on my lap. I flick through the pages, looking at photos of celebrities and reading about the affairs of the rich and the famous. In the middle, the magazine folds abnormally at the seam; some pages have been cut away.
The landline rings. I turn and stare at it hanging on the wall of the kitchen. It rings and rings and my stomach is up in my throat. It could be them. Someone could have traced the number and maybe they’re coming for us right now. As suddenly as it began, the ringing stops. Slowly I release my breath. There is silence. Then the ringing begins again. I walk over and place my hand on it, feeling the vibrations of the sound. I pick it up and just wait and listen.
‘Kate?’
I don’t speak.
‘Kate! Stop playing games.’
‘Jim?’
‘God, what took you so long?’ Jim’s voice is tight with frustration.
‘I thought you didn’t want me to answer the phone.’
He breathes out down the line. ‘I’ve pulled in at a service station, the rain’s getting heavy down here and I don’t have a cover.’
‘Oh,’ I say, eyeing the potatoes boiling on the stove. ‘Will you be long?’
‘I need to keep the rain off the desk. Servo’s closed. I’ll just have to wait until the rain’s eased. Is dinner on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good girl. If the rain looks like settling in I might have to haul the desk off and come back with a tarp. But I don’t really want to leave it here; someone might grab it. Can you light the fire?’
I ball the newspaper and stuff it into the open grate; outside the fog has settled around the house. Good quick-burning tinder, Jim had said. I’m beginning to see how proficient he is as an outdoorsman. I had helped prepare the fire but had never lit it. There’s an art to those simple things we take for granted, those things that we grappled with for millennia.
Building a tepee with each individual piece of kindling just how he showed me, I lean over and ball the newspaper at the heart of it. When I strike a match, the newspaper burns too quickly and the kindling doesn’t catch. I try again and again. Finally the fire spreads and the flames grow and slide up the wood’s edge. I blow at the base of the fire, driving oxygen into the burgeoning flames. I stack more kindling in and then a larger wedge of wood. The fire gnaws at it.
The rain has cleared. I wait for him. Even if I knew where I was and had a plan to escape, what could I do without money or a passport? Out in the cold and dark I wouldn’t get far at all. Would anyone help? Certainly not those locals with fierce eyes.
When he opens the door, the wind tears it from his grasp, slamming it against the wall. ‘Quick, give us a hand.’
The desk I can only describe as grand. Scrolled feet, hand-tooled trimming. Jim shuffles it to the back of the hired trailer. We lug it to the front door.
‘Alright, let’s get it inside.’
We lift it through the door onto an old towel. He gets in behind it and pushes while I pull from the front.
He encircles the top with his arms. When he has enough purchase, he heaves it up. His arms bulge in his sleeves. He drops it down in the corner.
I can’t tell if his face is damp with sweat or rain or both but without his glasses framing those green eyes and with the stubble on his head, he looks like a prisoner himself. He is all power, a compressed spring.
He sits on the arm of the couch, frowning down at his hands.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve got to duck back out.’
I step closer. ‘Why? Did you forget something?’
‘I almost hit something,’ he says, glancing up at me.
‘What?’
His eyes lose their sharpness. He’s looking through me. ‘A kid was out there on a bike. He rode in front of the car and I think he slipped at the bend. I couldn’t stop in the wet with the weight of the trailer.’
‘Did you . . . did you hit him?’
He sighed. ‘No, I didn’t hit him. He flew past me and over the bank at the road’s edge.’
‘Did you stop?’
‘No. I –’ he sniffs and pulls his lips to one side ‘– I couldn’t stop. I mean, I slammed on the brakes but I couldn’t just stop in the wet.’
A familiar chill washes down my back. I have a flash of my dream again, in the car, but the vision passes. ‘Where?’
‘Couple of hundred metres down the hill.’
I stare at him.
‘I’ll head back down now. It’s probably nothing. But I better check to make sure the kid’s okay. I should have stopped and got out, but the rain . . .’ His hands are shaking. He looks gruff, worn, with stubble covering his cheeks. He tries to smile. ‘The car is fine.’
He rises from the armrest of the couch and heads for the door. I follow him.
‘Stay here.’
‘I just want to see.’
‘It won’t be good for you; it might trigger something.’
He closes the door behind him.
I wipe the desk down with the towel, then use a rag to polish the top. I get the plates out and set the table. I’m too young to be a wife, but that’s how he treats me.
It can’t hurt to have a look, just a look, that’s all. I pull a steak knife from the cutlery drawer and walk outside. The gravel of the driveway is cold and sharp on my feet. The roar of the sea sweeps over all the rustling sounds and the rising wind in my ears, but I keep moving. He is lucky that he didn’t hit the boy. It’s easy to imagine what the weight of a car could do to bones and organs.
When I get to the top of the driveway I can see him up ahead; he is a smudge of darkness. In a nearby paddock, sheep are grazing. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I see that a group of people has gathered near the bend in the road.
The steak knife is tight in my fist. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips and quivering away in my chest. The wind drives up the road again, bringing the chill and sharp beads of rain. Someone aims a torch beam at the road, then the beam rises. I press myself into the bushes near the roadside. Silhouetted by the light, Jim holds up a hand to shield his eyes. I can hear his voice but not his words. He steps closer, extends his hand. The torch stays on him. The figure doesn’t accept his handshake. I see now that it’s a woman and the rest of the group are children – it’s a family. Please don’t make him angry.
She says something that is stolen by the wind before it reaches me. I need to get nearer. I move forwards. Leaves crunch. He is speaking again, murmuring an apology. I hear evil you have brought. At least, I think I hear it, but the wind is still whirling around me and my blood hums. The chill has numbed my skin, my feet, hands and ears. I can no longer hear the sea.
A child has fashioned a sling out of his T-shirt. Is that blood running from his head? The child swings his foot at Jim, but the old woman yanks him back by the collar so his kick barely grazes Jim’s shin.
Despite the chill, sweat rises under my arms, d
own my back. Jim speaks again. Just a murmur from here. He offers his hand once more but they all just look at it. The woman holds the child and gestures wildly at the others to retreat.
Jim draws himself up. I know that stance. The primal hunch of the shoulders, hands clenched into fists. For a few heartbeats, no one moves. Then they all turn away and the family walks back down the hill in the damp evening air. I’m sprinting back towards the house before Jim has a chance to turn and see me.
Off in the distance, through the patter of the raindrops, I hear something. It sounds like someone shrieking; it might be the wind. I turn back to look. He is walking with his head lowered.
Inside, I drop the knife in the kitchen sink and fall onto the mat near the fire, my knees pulled up to my chest, my arms wrapped around them. Then when I’m too hot to sit I get up and wheel his filing cabinet in beside the desk. It has nothing inside but empty folders. I put his penknife in his penholder, the silver handle winking at me in the firelight. I’m opening the oven to dish up dinner when he enters, closes the door behind him and slams home the deadbolt.
‘The boy hurt his arm,’ he says. His expression is grim.
He sits down at a stool and leans forwards, his fingers splayed on his thighs.
‘Was he badly hurt?’ I say.
‘Does it matter?’ He eyes me, his patience evaporating. ‘I don’t know. He had a knock, he’ll survive. Shouldn’t be out in the wet riding around.’
‘Was he a local?’
‘What difference does it make if he’s a local or visiting from Mars?’ he says. He forces a laugh. ‘There was an old lady there.’ His eyes wander from mine to the fire. ‘Nice enough people, accepted my apology, shook my hand. That’s all I could do.’ I watch his face for a hint of the lie but he clamps his lips closed and walks down the hall. ‘What’s a boy doing out on the street like that, though? These people need to accept responsibility. It’s dark and wet. It’s plain stupid.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, because there is nothing else I can say. I almost feel bad for him.