Who Sings for Lu?

by Alan Duff

  ‘You wouldn’t believe my story if someone told you, would you?’

  ‘I hope the story includes what I went through. Does it?’

  ‘Well sure. I’m not saying I don’t feel for you.’ There it went again: spontaneity producing beauty. Then it was gone. A light switched off. ‘Just trying to put it into, like, perspective.’ Looked at Anna directly, quite unafraid, no trace of her mix of shyness and bold front. From cheap and common to beautiful once more.

  Lu said, ‘I did come here with stuff to say. Came to listen, too. But I can see you’re wanting to leave. Don’t blame you. This healing stuff is bullshit, you ask me. You got just about nothing to heal. One bad experience? That won’t get you my job, honey.’

  She meant role. Situation. And of course she was right. But damn her. It’s not about her — I’m the victim. This is utter bullshit.

  ‘I don’t remember applying,’ Anna said, steady-eyed herself, not a blink.

  ‘Nor did I,’ Lu said. ‘It just happened. As life does, eh? The one job we get no say in. Or do we?’

  She was amazed that Lu had slipped back to the side of beauty in how she looked without fear or doubt, without anything but a giving of herself. And was she saying life is what we make of it? Did further words mean anything now? No, they didn’t. This little chapter is over.

  Anna opened the door and walked.

  Chapter sixty-five

  He loved looking out the office window, even more so after Riley had it widened to give a panoramic view of his beloved animals, a big chunk of the farm, the saplings he’d planted in the early days that edged the main avenue and were now growing into sturdy trees. Those early days were long ago now.

  And there, Riley and Anna walking in Rai’s paddock: life that had got away on everyone was slowly being pulled back in.

  Didn’t seem it ever would after Anna met that Lu character. Came home quiet, subdued, wouldn’t discuss the meeting, not even with him, ‘Uncle Straw’. He and Claire thinking they had advised quite the wrong thing, it might even prove to have been a disastrous decision, if Anna reverted to that terrible state again. Straw knowing if he threw in a confession to Claire of a certain kidnapping of two young men, then everything would be over.

  But if it ended well, Straw would be a happy man. He looked away from the glare of the window to the desk and wrote out a cash cheque to Hennessy Family Enterprises. Enterprising was right. Sniper could match a black tracker in the bush, the way he found every one of the guilty quartet. A very handy family to know, the Hennessys.

  But no one was locked up now, even though the police had DNA samples and had started the court process of forcing the young men to produce their DNA for matching — till Anna let them know she had no intention of giving evidence, nor in trying to identify the pair found trussed-up in the Botanic Gardens. The matter, she told everyone, was over. End of story. That sordid story anyway.

  And it wasn’t all darkness. Brought the real Katie to the fore; you wouldn’t recognise her as the same kid — except I would. Knew she was just going through a stage, like a quality horse has to go through a difficult period. Her school work was now greatly improved; she spent a lot of her spare time out helping with the horses, had a much better relationship with her father, and kept a close eye on her big sister’s well-being. It was Katie who broke Anna’s black silence again. She told him she’d finally asked Anna about the meeting with ‘the rapist bitch’, as she called her.

  Anna had apparently broken down and said the woman was not what she’d expected. Anna had been angry, hadn’t made an effort to connect, had thought it a waste of time. But afterwards, once she’d had time to calm down, she had to concede that no one would want to have lived Lu’s awful life, and that it made her realise how lucky she was to come from a loving family, to assume her protected life was every kid’s right. She even had, well, ‘a mentor’ Katie said Anna had called Straw. Cripes, in private a man choked up on hearing that.

  And nearly choked up again when Anna came right here to this office, in tears, asking if Straw could please get hold of her father and tell him she forgave him and wanted him to come home.

  ‘Tell him: if I can start again, so can he. We can all do it together. Not as if we’re starting right at the back of the field, is it?’ she had laughed through the tears at the horse-race reference. A bloke with a few tears of his own.

  Could he get in touch with her father, she asked?

  Better, he’d bring him back personally, since Riley sent the occasional text to ask after Anna, his wife too, and Katie. Would have gone to the Hennessys, anyway, if no contact, got Sniper on the job.

  When Straw turned up in the dive where Riley was staying, he found a man nowhere near ready to forgive himself — but to hear that Anna was asking for her dad was enough to bring him home. He promised to be a changed man. I’ll believe that if his womanising slate is still clean in five years’ time.

  It was one awkward scene, the home-coming, more so between the couple. Kids move on quicker. Least it wasn’t a tear-fest: Straw couldn’t have stood that.

  Best fifty thousand he’d ever spent — and his own money too. His way of saying thank you to the family that treated him so well. Who would have thought a gentle lot like the Hennessy clan would have a property with a lock-up cell like they did out Berowra way? He’d actually paid half the twenty-thousand dollar fee to the heavies old man Hennessy contracted, even though they blew it nabbing the Deano bloke. Trouble when you put your foot in the underworld, it costs to extract it.

  But what the hell, like Anna said, all behind them now.

  The next cheque he had to write stuck in his craw, though. Not because it took the last of his savings — he couldn’t care less — it was who he made it out to, being one S. Tulloch. Okay, it was nothing compared with the cheque Riley wrote for the same man, but Tulloch drove a hard bargain to get not only all his original investment back but a million more from the Chadwicks. And there was his insistence that as Straw had failed to give Tulloch the fidelity owed to his employer, he demanded a $200,000 ‘costs and inconvenience’ charge. Straw would cough up to be rid of him for ever, but a man should contract the Hennessy mob again.

  No, it was a small price to pay for a reunited family. Only had to look out that window to see Claire and Katie out walking a foal. Anna and her dad with Raimona, still bristling with attitude at his majority owner. And that was the real Riley out there, connecting with his daughter, and his wife and other daughter heading his way. A man could get emotional if he took in this scene too long.

  Chapter sixty-six

  Talk about a kid wet behind the ears: had to tell her straight, girl had no idea. Saw it in her face, the trembling round her mouth every time she spoke, even though, give her fair dues, she kept those beautiful blue eyes steady.

  Eyes are not the mirror of the soul, or I’d reflect my weird sense of hope, the opposite of my old despair that nothing would ever be joyful. Now I have a life growing inside me — our kid, mine and Rocky’s — it will be joyful all right. Anna’s eyes didn’t give away her true thoughts either.

  Rock says he sees in my eyes ‘this amazing person about to jump out and wow the world to bits’. Yeah, right. Though I do feel like that, sometimes, as if I have something more, or better, to offer. If I’m just kidding myself then that’s okay too. Have everything to offer this kid, don’t I? This one or the next one we have when I get out of prison, if Anna turns dog. And she wouldn’t really be guilty of that and you the li’l Miss Innocent, now would she, Lu?

  And what you gonna do, prison warders, put me in jail? Lu’s been locked up her whole life. You can’t hurt me. The hurt’s been used up, it expired ages ago.

  Girl, kid. Anna. You came to meet me for the wrong reasons. Whoever advised you it was essential for the healing process talked rubbish. Sure, they meant well. But meaning well and doing it is not the same thing.

  I didn’t mean that night to turn out like it did. Why would I, of all people, wan
t you to experience what I have, even on a single, mad occasion of wanting you to suffer? Honey, I’d never wish my past life on anyone. But I stepped over the line into the dark side. Some people get to. Some get no say in it — just has their name written all over it like their sordid destiny.

  When I came out of the bedroom with my own share of trembling and saw you? Oh, lovely girl, you looked exactly as when I first set eyes on you: more than beautiful. Better than stunning. I think, now I do, it was your naturalness glowing, growing up on that stud farm or whatever it’s called, allowed you to keep hold of your innocence. Come to the big smoke, little Miss N for naïve, and it’s like you needed to be shown another reality. That’s where my head was at then. Till Rocky came out of jail. Till meeting your mother. But then there was Kev the cop. And always Uncle Rick. The guys I thought were my loyal mates — and still are, has to be said, even if they let me down regarding you, Anna, and I never want to see them again as a result. I’d never dob them in, but. Never.

  Not saying you deserve for one moment what happened; though if you’d read my letter as you said, the first one I wrote your mother because Rocky got mad and insisted, you would have been different, talked differently to me. A strange feeling, telling someone else your life story, even in boiled-down form. It frees you, same time makes you realise there’s no escaping it. Or not the hard facts. But in writing, I started to own up to what I had done to you, even when I didn’t intend it. You should have heard me out. I came ready to talk, because I owed you.

  Sure, Rocky was the main factor, the influence who helped me grow up. My Rocky, a nugget of pure goodness with a convict record. Not right is it? My partner, father of the life growing inside me, who had me starring in my own friggin’ porn movie. He was close to killing the cop, believe it. But the outcome, Anna. How else were we going to get Kev nailed, demoted, sent off to the desert? We ruined the life of a bad man, Anna. So that’s worth being proud about. I learned how to shut off the other a long time ago.

  Meeting your mother, my God, it was like she grabbed me by the shirt front and screamed the TRUTH in my face. Right down to her angry spit spotting me. Truth. Funny, down here on Suffering Lane, we do it too hard to ever face real truth, as in self-truth.

  Sort of truth that old shit Rick can never face. Cops tell me through the old nudge-nudge-wink, they’re not trying too hard to pin the thing on me. Be difficult to prove at any rate, if I wasn’t there. He’s going down, but not taking me with him. With Rocky’s help I am working on forgiving him. So he never has a hold on me again. I’ll believe it when I feel forgiveness. Hear you want to move on too and won’t give evidence against Jay and Bron. Rock says they’ve disappeared anyway. Hope you’re okay, guys, I really do. Deano, I know you got taken by surprise. Be happy.

  Anna, Anna, Anna: no one should go through what you did. Rich, poor, whatever. Women suffer enough as it is. We all know that. Especially a total innocent who thought she was coming to my aid. But when we met and you didn’t ask, or offer me the chance to say just a few words on what I’ve been through, I started looking at you and your situation different. I mean, sheez, girl, even with my fucked-up life I always had time to let others cry on my shoulder. Or, since tears are rarely shed in our hard-arse world, least give the time to listen to others and the shit going down in their lives.

  Anna, you never once asked. You never once offered to hear my side. But shit does happen. And now you know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry a million times over, but, in the world I was living in, stupid, unthinking stuff was always going down. I-am-sorry. But.

  But if one terrible event can break your life, then you don’t deserve anything but a broken life.

  No! I can hear you in my mind. Yes. A single incident is not the entire life.

  Here’s the first plank of wood to build the bridge. And when it’s finished, guess who is going to run up on it and sing to the world? Lu is. You might even be beside me singing. Wow, that would be some closure.

  I’ll sing for you, Anna. A little lament, then a big, long happy song. You’ll be over it. We’ll shake hands, hug. Then who will sing for Lu?

  Why, guess I will, and why not? Who else should? Still plenty to sing about. Got the rest of my new life to sing for Lu. With a child coming, Rocky will sing too, with his funny flat singing voice. It’s the thought that counts. We all have to find something to sing for. Or what’s the point? Eh, Anna? No pain, no gain.

  Wish you the best. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. But part of me is not. One day you’ll see.

  About the Author

  Alan Duff was born in Rotorua in 1950. He has published seven previous novels (Once Were Warriors, One Night Out Stealing, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, Both Sides of the Moon, Szabad, Jake’s Long Shadow and Dreamboat Dad), a novella (State Ward) and three non-fiction works (Maori: The Crisis and the Challenge, Out of the Mist and Steam and Alan Duff’s Maori Heroes). Once Were Warriors won the PEN Best First Book Award for Fiction. This and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? were made into internationally acclaimed films for which he wrote the original screenplays. He works as a fulltime writer.

  Copyright

  A VINTAGE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand,

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  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

  Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group

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  First published 2009

  © 2009 Alan Duff

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 9781775530480

  This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Random House New Zealand uses non-chlorine-bleached papers from sustainably managed plantation forests.

  Cover design: Kate Barraclough

  Cover image: TRANZ

  Text design: Laura Forlong

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press