by Alan Duff
But then that was unrealistic, she knew from bitter experience. Of her friend the chief of her sub-tribe, Te Tupaea, who had come amongst the Pine Block like a Maori Jesus, preaching at them, but for them; for their failed pride and self-dignity gone into a beer bottle is how he put it, teaching them chants and hakas and getting them motivated so they built their own community hall, but now in disuse with the graffiti taggers covering every square inch of outside wall with their markings; the lesson of, in Charlie’s words, not being able to take the ghetto out of the ghetto dweller’s thinking. Then the chief died suddenly and soon it all just fell apart, Beth’s total involvement in trying to make Pine Block a better community was useless without enough community support. And when Mavis Tatana, her best friend, succumbed, nabbed by her upbringing, a woman fallen from her pedestal, teaching the youngsters how to sing. It was then Beth started opening her eyes to what had been going on around her but she was denying: that these people, with a handful of exceptions, were never but never going to change.
At the same time she saw the light in Charlie Bennett’s eyes as meaning what she thought it did, even if the physical side turned out to be a disappointment. (So what?) A person’s sexual lovelife takes up but an hour or two a week. He more than made up for it.
So life now was unrecognisably better and more interesting. But a mother who has lost two of her children, she never fully recovers. Never. And now, she knew it, she was inwardly preparing for another of her children to become tragedy, all her instincts were screaming this. Which is why this night she got quietly out of bed and took herself into Polly’s room: Move over, sweetheart. (Your Mum’s here.)
EIGHTEEN
MORE LLOYDS INSURANCE loss demands in the post. Another chunk of land being carved off for the housing developers. A wife who’d stopped sleeping with him (just goes to show her regard for money, her desire to continue quite unrealistically in the circumstances, our lifestyle). Gordon Trambert especially bitter, perhaps getting his wife’s reasons wrong, on that one. The ignominy of pulling Alistair out of his last year of private school when one could simply not pay the fees; as well the resentment that for all the money spent on the boy’s education he remained the same person: lacking in confidence, overly sensitive, easily irritated and quite frankly a bloody self-pitying, inward-looking lump. For lump he was, this misshapen happenstance of the worst of each parent’s genes, his father’s shapeless legs (and yet I could run like the wind in school cross-country), his mother’s narrow shoulders for the size of his half-Trambert, half-Heatherington head with an exaggerated hooked nose of his mother’s slightly so — face it, the boy was little different to a sheep any farmer would have culled from his flock, rid from his breeding lines. (Yet he is my son and I have a duty to make his life the very best I can.) Gordon Trambert had to fight with himself over the issue of his son since the boy might, he did concede in his gin-affected moments, reflect the true failure he, his father, was. Gordon could hear his own father warning of that, of no young person to be considered a failure until he had, well into adulthood, demonstrably failed. It is adults who fail, Henry Trambert would have said. Adults who fail their children.
He was awaiting word — with an accompanying usual huge lawyer’s bill — on the outcome of his letter to his Lloyds agent instructing not to put his cover in any mass employee health claim, he had even (reason for hope) specified in writing that under no circumstances was his risk to include any potential asbestosis claim. Word from other Names had it that the letter might just be his out from this never-ending nightmare. And on that ray of hope one had not sat around idly, hell no; Gordon Trambert was looking at a franchise business selling, of all things, barbecued chicken.
The figures sent out by the franchiser looked most attractive, another carve-off of land would pay for it (and that would be about it as far as remaining equity in the farm proper went. God, how quickly even inherited equity goes if one makes mistakes). It was a matter of getting used to the idea that he might, effectively, be in an apron dealing with the kind of public his life had only ever touched on at Saturday rugby games as a fanatical spectator of the game and its better players. But never closer than that. He was more worried about telling Isobel that this was almost certainly his next plan, dream — God forbid, selling pieces of barbecued chicken — him! Of telling her yet again of another sure-fire escape from these financial woes — selling fried chicken, albeit! — and expecting her to accept the subsequent (much) lowered social status. Isobel was big — though she denied it like she denied she was big on having money — on social status. It was she who had insisted they buy the Range Rover back in — when was it — 1989, when they were hardly over the new Labour Government’s axing of supplementary minimum payments to the nation’s farmers as a (government bribe) subsidy on their livestock. But wasn’t owning a five-year-old Range Rover a sign to the very people she thought it would impress that they weren’t doing at all well? But no, she’d rather have that than a cheaper late model Jap car which wouldn’t give the show away. And, what the hell, from his end, being a four-wheel drive, it was a tax deductible farm vehicle even when it wasn’t. (Can’t be scratching the paintwork now, old boy.)
Every evening of late he played his Russian choral music with a gin and tonic twice the normal strength, thinking of Lloyds losses, the Black Hole making all the other routine monthly accounts each seem an added nightmare, thinking about the loss of the family land inheritance bit by inexorable bit, of letting the side down but yet never giving up hope — (never!) Nor a night going by (they had got worse) without thoughts of — well, of one almost forcing his wife to have not just sex again but, while he was at it, in charge once and for all, jazzed up sex, kinky stuff (without going overboard) without the leather and whips but plenty of exotically fragrant body oils and, ah, perhaps some experimentation. (Actually, just ordinary sex would do, you inexplicable woman whose body was once at one with mine, for years we enjoyed each other as if there was no tomorrow.) And now the shop was shut, he stared his nights away into the fire, getting quietly sloshed to the company of rather sombre Russian choral music, while Isobel retired to their bedroom earlier and earlier, hardly talking when she was downstairs, leaving a man another night alone to contemplate life as a seller of barbecued chicken and accompanying pottles of peas and mashed spuds (for God’s sake).
SHE DID LIKE that song he played over and over again at this time of night. ‘Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart In Peace’ sung by Nicolai Gedda. Sitting down there staring into the fire, his head swimming in gin, debts, financial failure and he, as she imagined, bobbing along singing desperately (or sadly) but, give him his dues, sometimes with magnificent fightback, except his fightbacks never worked, they always had flaws in them, the new grand plan, the latest financial blueprint. Listening to him hum-wording along with that song since it was in Russian so his words just in-tune noises. But very much in tune (unlike he is with business life. I’m afraid he just doesn’t get it, how it all works.) Though she was quite sure this composition’s inspiration was not taken from financial failure. Not last century Russia when most of the far-flung populace must have lived lives of basic survival, not having the indulgence of infinite choice of monetary adventure — or disaster. Nor one thing of this supposed to be better times, better lives, continued upward social mobility as they called it. But then again, everything is relative.
She wondered what Alistair thought of his father’s music. Poor Alistair: born under a bad sign. A genetic mistake. In his bedroom most of the time like a self-imposed prison sentence playing that dreadful punk rock music or worse, the headbanger cacophony. He might even have mental problems. Thank God Charlotte was out of this. Though a mother did worry about her daughter living in another city going to university — with another new boyfriend so she proclaimed! with exclamation marks in her last letter home — if she was all right, if her life was not going to be one too troubled or fraught with major event. Naturally, a mother worried about her childre
n, if they lived in the Caribbean with millionaires she still would. (I’d worry that she did something socially that would give her away as not of the rich set. Hahaha.) Mrs Isobel Trambert could still laugh at herself.
The times when Alistair was exploding at nothing and everything, and Gordon was floundering in his loaded gins and hardly any tonic and pile of bills with that Russian choral music still going, it made her smile at the irony: of it all seeming like another secretly dysfunctional (upper — we’re both third-generation) middle-class family Like a month ago when Charlotte was back on term break and expecting her father would find her paid work on the farm, and when he explained that things weren’t so good financially she’d got all morose about that, spent the two weeks moping around the house, sleeping late, looking dowdy instead of the beautiful nineteen year old every young man wanted, you’d think the money losses were all down to her. Which is what a mother told her: Anyone would think it was you who had signed on as a Lloyds Name. Though Charlotte’s biting counter was, her father’s problems were only compounded by the Lloyds thing not the cause. And, anyway, where did that leave her, in need of money to continue the university year — I shall give you some — no, loan you — of my own, Isobel had had quite enough of this what-about-me when Charls was only here for term breaks, she didn’t have to live with it, feel her physical desire for the man she loved, had two children by (and would have been more if Gordon had wanted that), that physical desire slowly die on her; Charlotte didn’t have to live with a man she was losing respect for, which is what was putting paid to the love life when it had always been, well, rather good to say the least.
But what Gordon didn’t know was, his wife took her eyes out their bedroom window at those rows of two-storey houses, at the closer single-storey hideosities of new, working-class subdivision, for her reminder that life wasn’t so bad and that upper-middle-class dysfunctional was those people’s impossible dream just going through a hiccup. What Gordon didn’t know of his wife was, she appreciated what life had given her and her family, had learnt her lesson from that terrible morning of the girl hanging herself on the oak Gordon’s maternal grandmother had planted at the turn of the century (something symbolic in that which I can’t put my finger on).
When Gordon informed me, I was in the bathroom. I heard the quaver in his voice and thought it might be Alistair. I have long expected my son to take, or attempt since there is a distinct difference, his own life. The boy was born miserable. I saw Gordon might go to pieces or at least show a lesser side that I should not wish children or self to see. So I took over, but in that quiet way, as my own mother had taught me of this world seemingly ruled by men. Let them make the money, and let us control the life around it. One of Gordon’s problems: he never let me take control of it so we could have the best of both worlds, the money and our held-together lives. We didn’t have to make fortunes, just build as best we could on the small one of both our inheritances.
It was Alistair I was worried about. Though naturally my mind was in turmoil that a stranger — or at least we presumed she was; Gordon had said a Maori girl and as we, well, didn’t know any Maoris other than Gordon’s former employee Harry whatshisname — was hung on our tree. Both of us knew that if Alistair was denied this witness he’d dump it on us forever and a day as our indication of lack of faith in his strength. And if we allowed him the sight he’d blame us for traumatising him, or something ridiculous. So I told him straight, the choice is yours. And in that way that even I, his normally attentive mother, had no time for the smaller event of Alistair troubled Trambert. Not when outside on our back lawn was a girl who had hung herself. And outside we went. But Alistair stayed inside.
It was an aptly miserable, grey day. There can be no sight more shocking than seeing someone hanging, from a length of rope, from a tree. I felt my legs threaten to buckle underneath me. I felt, though, a terrible anger that this child had been no longer able to endure life’s circumstances; and as I walked — stoically — forward I asked myself what could a teenage girl go through that would make her do such a thing. The first thought to mind was sexual abuse. The next was an ended love affair. And, yes, it did cross my mind even then that there might be an illicit connection between the girl and my husband. He had long hinted, even when our sex life had been long satisfactory, that he wished for more. Well what more can a couple do than we do — or did? Whips, chains and leather? Wife swapping parties? Good grief. Half his trouble: he’s never quite satisfied.
Her face was a deep ruddy colour. The eyes protruding. (God, they were grotesque.) I observed this with a necessary super-objective steel in me; I figured the deep red was from the blood constricted in the head when she had, um, jumped. From the branch. Bough rather, since it was sturdy and thick with its age, nearly a hundred years and now (God help us all) hanging with the ended life of a girl no older than, what, fifteen. But I did have to regather myself, as well give but again necessarily objective glance at Charlotte, who was open-mouthed, naturally so but still somewhat of a surprise as she was born with a certain hardness. My husband had a hand pressed hard against his forehead, but he was not going to lose control.
The tongue was clenched between the teeth, that was the worst part; for it symbolised most of all how her voice had not been listened to, her cries for help not heeded. That final physical characteristic of death, of tongue and therefore voice, means to communicate, caught between her own teeth summed it up for me. Later that day, alone, I sat down and played several times over a hymn from Gordon’s Russian Orthodox Choir, by a woman lead, ‘Bless The Lord, O My Soul’. Her voice seemed to be on behalf of the hung child, it was asking, beseeching but in a controlled way. And at least it had an answering chorus back, as well an assumed listening God for the times when no one else is listening. So who hadn’t listened to this poor Maori girl?
Rigor mortis, I knew from high school remembered learning, had come and gone. Her body was limp, not rigid as it must have been for the five or six hours it stiffens the body until the acids in the muscles are released, and with that the posture. I was glad for that. I feared it might be cold enough for the body to be sufficiently brittle, or at least less malleable, had rigor mortis been, to possibly snap a limb in taking her down. (Which we would of course leave to the police, this gruesome task.) The skin colour on her arms and legs was blotchy. We were glad there was not a breath of wind to move the body, I think it would have been a kind of last indignity for enough suffering, enough indignities, to be at the mercy of air she had deprived herself of.
We’d had a group of friends over that night for dinner, I had ordered in Italian from my favourite pasta shop to save myself the bother, and it went down very well. We are not wine buffs but Gordon had got a few special bottles from a wine shop as just an end of winter cheer thing. We were all right financially then. The evening had become quite merry by our normal rather quiet standards. I had enjoyed myself. Particularly the Edwards, Pete and Jenny, third-generation farmers like ourselves. Thoroughly pleasant, no side on, both with those innocent, cow-like eyes as though in exaggerated confirmation that spouses tend to reflect each other; and disarmingly frank about matters our circle would usually keep private. Like their second daughter’s schizophrenia. Jenny even talked quite openly of having difficulty having an orgasm. (That I should have such a problem!) And Pete was all attentive ears for any advice on this most serious matter, but clearly not affecting their marriage or they’d have said so. They were just the type who had guileless curiosity and question, as curiosity and question ought to be.
Gordon had too much to drink that night, and so when we got to bed, well, the performance and the promise were rather far apart. The thought that this — this child should be taking her own life when one had a sexually lifeless husband, giggling and pretending he was up to the task, all over me was awful.
Her bowels had emptied, the neck was a little elongated, I took in these details on instinct, knowing that if I faced it all in its gruesome reality I’d
be able in turn to take my children, my husband if necessary, through it. I also felt terribly guilty at my own existence, for I could see the clothes, how shabby and out of date they were. And I knew without needing to be later told by the police that she had come from the State house area from where we had often heard the singing from what we thought were happy parties. I knew from my golf-club cronies, those with nursing backgrounds, and teachers, that the parties were generally anything but happy affairs. For it was nurses who saw the victims of violence, saw the drunken car-crash bodies, the stabbing victims, the aftermath (to my astonishment, I hadn’t even given these things a thought) of bar fights, party brawls, sexual abuse — the lot. And it was teachers amongst my friends who saw the children who came to school hungry with failure written all over them. No books, no loving parents to read to them, no structured lives with set goals along the child’s way — Oh, I had my eyes opened all right. I found I had been living in this town of which I thought I played a fairly varied role, that I knew nothing but nothing of the lives the, uh, well the underclass lived. I knew nothing when I had assumed I was rather well-informed on life.
And now that I knew better all I had done about it — and intended to do, since I had given it deep thought — is look to my lucky stars that I was not to their manor(less) born. Since one could hardly cease being what she was born and raised as and become one of them. And nor was it likely many of them would have risen, or become, what we were. My mother, though frail, was still wise and sharp enough to tell me, if sadly, that everyone has to fight their own struggles on this earth.
I also dug around for information amongst my golfing friends, the women in my pottery class, the book club, of shop assistants; anyone anywhere and everywhere I’d find myself hinting on the subject of troubled teenagers, and then if I got a nibble I’d move it to casual reference to the Heke girl, in case I struck someone who knew her or knew of her. Finally I struck one who did, or she knew of the family as she lived in the same area, Pine Block — what a dreadful name. So hard and definite. Like A or B Block in a prison. Not that I know anyone who’s been in one — and so I found out that it was the father who had raped the poor child. That poor poor suffering kid.