Her neighbour, Mingyu, stood in the hallway, her perfectly oval face creased with concern. There followed an uncomfortable pause.
‘Hau, Miss Carla, you fine? You not look so good.’
‘Yes I’m fine,’ Carla said irritably. ‘Thank you.’
Mingyu stepped back out of the reach of Carla’s breath.
‘What is it?’ Carla asked.
‘Is two o’clock in the pm. I’m worry because your garbage is not outside. The truck, already he come. I think maybe you are sick, no? You up very late last night. I see your light.’
‘No, I’m not sick. I just slept in.’
The petite woman craned her neck to see past Carla, her eyes narrowing on the empty vodka bottle on the floor.
Irked by her neighbour’s nosiness, Carla made to close the door when Mingyu smiled and quickly said, ‘You like cup of tea?’
Carla hesitated. Her first impulse was to decline. Something stopped her. Perhaps it was the thought of the door to her duplex closing once again to leave her alone with just her damaged thoughts for company. Perhaps it was the fear that she would reach for another bottle.
‘That sounds nice,’ she managed, careful to enunciate each word.
Her neighbour grabbed her hand excitedly. She had very delicate, cool hands.
‘I’ll just put on shoes.’
There was a neat row of footwear outside Mingyu’s door, so Carla removed the sandals she’d just put on.
Her neighbour’s apartment had the same layout as hers, however being a corner unit, got more sunlight. The chrome light fittings and black-leather furnishings were not to Carla’s taste, yet were strangely comforting in their difference.
It smelt different too – of people, and apples, and real living. And the windows were open, so the air felt new. There were three large red apples in a wire fruit bowl on the bench top, a cloud of fruit flies proof that they were not ornamental. A radio played softly and a dishwasher sloshed and gurgled in the background. In the middle of the living room stood an ironing board, and beside it, a plastic basket piled high with crumpled washing. Carla took it all in.
A pressure cooker started to whistle, startling her. The steam released was sweet and meaty.
‘Mmh, smells good,’ she said, feeling almost hungry. ‘What are you cooking?’
‘I make leek and pork soup,’ Mingyu said, beaming. ‘My baby, she start to eat solid and like very much.’
As if on cue, they heard a little grunt coming from behind the laundry basket. Carla peered over to see an infant laid out on a sheepskin rug. It was a baby girl, her features as delicate as an orchid in first bloom, her hair a wispy black mohawk. She was sucking her toes and pulling on a mint-green bra, which was hanging over the side of the washing basket.
‘Hello, little one,’ Carla said, bending down to tickle its feet. The baby’s skin was the colour of toffee. ‘How old are you?’
The infant’s face puckered, her bottom lip quivered, and then she let out an almighty wail.
‘Six month on Friday,’ Mingyu said, hoisting her up and smothering the child in kisses.
Carla drank in the scene before her – the splodgy sound of lips on skin, the smell of baby shampoo and talcum powder, the little feet and dumpling toes. Then her heart was racing and panic was climbing up her throat. She needed air. Needed to get out of this place. It was too confronting. She had to get back to the security of her own apartment. Back to where her emotions could be kept in check.
Her eyes swept around the room and out of the window to her own kitchen. It was strange to see it from this vantage point. She half-expected to see herself standing there beside the bench, sipping a mug of tea.
But the room was dark and empty.
She didn’t want to go back.
Not yet.
‘Green tea or English Breakfast?’ Mingyu asked, touching Carla lightly on the elbow. ‘I’m not good at make coffee, sorry.’
‘Green,’ Carla said without thinking. She hated the taste of green tea, but she’d been distracted by the fingers on her elbow, the brush of another’s skin, the imprint of warmth.
Mingyu covered the dining table with a white lace cloth and poured tea into willow-patterned bone china cups.
The tea was unexpectedly bland at first, each sip amounting to nothing, yet the amalgamation surprisingly satisfying. Carla had two cups and three almond tuiles. Everything was so delicate and genteel; she felt quite grotesque in comparison.
‘You not happy.’
She was caught off guard by her neighbour’s directness. She hadn’t been prepared for anything more than light, courteous chatter.
Carla pretended to misunderstand. ‘No, the tea is lovely. So, how long have you been in New Zealand?’
Mingyu fixed her with a no-nonsense stare. ‘You are pretty lady. Too thin, but pretty. Why you live alone? Why no one visit?’
Something in Mingyu’s childlike, uncomplicated concern cracked Carla wide open, and before she could stop it, the flotsam and jetsam of her life gushed out.
For a long while she huddled in the crook of her neighbour’s arm, crying quietly, while Mingyu rubbed her back and murmured foreign words that soothed and calmed.
Chapter Twenty
BEN
Jocko was about forty-five. He had a red face, brassy-yellow hair, and a belly that hung over his belt distorting the tattoo of a serpent. He didn’t talk much and sucked his teeth continuously. When he did talk, it was with a fast rise-and-fall Scouse accent. He was also in the habit of keeping the television on full volume till lights out. On the plus side, at least Ben had scored a cellmate with a TV.
Jocko, however, was not as content with the match. He cussed and complained for days before finally settling into a sulky resignation. The first thing he did was draw up a list of rules, which Ben was warned to abide by if he didn’t want to cop a hiding. Rule One dictated that Ben face the wall whenever Jocko was using the toilet, this ordeal sometimes lasting for up to an hour. Ben was also forbidden from climbing off his top bunk after lights out, which meant he had to relieve himself in an L&P bottle if the need arose.
The cell, with its pitted concrete floor and metal bunks, was pretty sparse, except for Jocko’s few posters of semi-naked women. One small basin, discoloured by a yellow stain where a non-stop drip had left its name, hung off the back wall beside the toilet with its broken black seat. High in the wall was a small window that sometimes let in cold stripes of sunlight – the warmth long since sucked out of them.
Ben barely slept his first night on East Block. For one, he couldn’t get warm. A guard told him he could put in a special request for an extra blanket if he wanted, or get his family to bring in warmer clothes. But it wasn’t just the cold keeping Ben awake. He was scared … of the next day … of the bash … Being a member of the DOAs didn’t feel quite so cool any more. Those long empty days at home had never looked so appealing.
He’d been awake forever when the morning buzzer finally sounded and a wave of clanging metal moved down the corridor as the guards conducted their first muster of the day. Inmates spilt noisily out of their cells into the passageway.
Ben decided against a shower, unsure whether the rumours about what happened in boob bathrooms were true. Instead, he swung over to the trestle table where breakfast was being served. The porridge smelt good. He collected his bowl and plastic spoon and looked around for somewhere to sit.
‘Back to your cell. Lockdown again till eight,’ barked a huge Samoan guy sporting a tall chef’s hat.
So Ben settled himself back on his bunk with his breakfast. The porridge slipped easily into his stomach. Five spoonfuls and it was finished.
‘Seconds?’ Jocko burst out laughing, his mouth wet and red, his swollen belly stiffening as if about to burst. ‘This ain’t no holiday camp!’
At eight their cell was unlocked again and Ben joined the queue of East Block boys as they were led through a run of gates into an exercise yard.
The sunlight wa
s a rude shock after a day inside. Ben rubbed his eyes and looked around. An almost invisible ceiling of fine wire mesh covered the yard. It was so fine that if he closed an eye the roof of the coop disappeared into the cloudless blue. Contraband thrown from Grafton Road met a wasted fate here. Fifteen-metre-high walls topped with rounds of barbed wire bordered the space. Snagged T-shirts and punctured balls hung like trapped insects in the web of wire.
The inmates broke off into small groups.
Ben headed for the benches at the far end, trying his best to look nonchalant. The morning heat helped, soon melting his tight innards. But he still kept a skittish eye out for what was going on around him.
‘Yo. Nice trainers.’
Ben squinted into the sun. Then the light was eclipsed.
‘Roach sends his compliments.’
Ben turned to walk away.
A hand hauled him back. ‘He don’t much like being ignored.’
Ben shook off the heavy’s grip.
‘He’d like you to join him behind the privacy wall.’
His first thought was to run, but where? He was locked in to this space till eleven. He shot an eye up to the bridge where the screws kept lookout. The windows of the tower were made of one-way glass, so he couldn’t even see if anyone up there was actually looking his way. He figured if he just stayed in full view, nothing too bad could happen.
From nowhere, a huddle of bodies materialised and quickly surrounded him. They were so close he could smell their sweat. They chatted and fooled among themselves – an innocent gathering to the onlooker’s eye – as they jostled Ben toward the prefab privacy wall.
Behind the wall were two toilets. Sitting on the lid of one was a scrawny guy covered in ink. His most striking tattoo was on his forehead – a dagger dripping blue blood onto his right eyelid.
‘The noob with the trainers,’ was Ben’s introduction.
‘Just get the fuckin’ shoes.’
Ben turned to gap it, but his breath was stolen by a king hit, and by the time the guards saw his body poking out from under the privacy wall, the pack had long since scattered.
‘Code One, remand yard! Code One, remand yard!’
He spent eight days in the sickbay with a broken nose and a cracked jaw, sipping meals through a bendy pink straw. When an enquiry into the incident was lodged, he said he’d tripped and hit his head. He didn’t need any survival guide to know this was the correct answer. And the Nikes fitted Roach perfectly.
Beyond
The inmates took something of yours, Benjamin. They stole your shoes, just as you stole a life not yours to take, and just as your ancestors were robbed of their land by white men with muskets. You tried to fight back. Your fellow inmates were stronger and you succumbed. Life throws up such patterns all the time.
Why do I continue to watch over you and feel the pain of your lowly life when matters of the flesh are no longer mine? I am at one with this universe, with the silent coves of the Marlborough Sounds, the golden grasslands of the Aoraki, the shimmering waters of Kaikoura’s coast. I am the call of the weka and the cry of a morepork. I am the shudder and boom of thunder. The sound and the silence of this earth and sky. I am complete.
My answer is simple, boy. I watch over you because you are a part of me and me of you. The same thread binds us, earth to earthling, sky to soul. We are different phases of the same. And though you have been cut loose of this connection, I stay, for a reason that goes beyond you, into the future. You see, if you remain cut loose from your culture, so will your descendants, and so will theirs.
Back then to my story. 1840. Beside the River of Waitangi where the Treaty I was telling you about was so hastily drawn up. A pact between the English and your ancestors, and signed by many Māori chiefs in the belief it promised cooperation and respect. But … Yes, there is a ‘but’. There were two versions of this seminal document – two translations, two understandings. Two misunderstandings.
Chapter Twenty-One
CARLA
Kevin had his back to the door when Carla walked in. He was finishing his lunch and the smell of fish pie clung to the walls of his cubicle.
‘My darling,’ she whispered, kissing the top of his head. His hair hadn’t grown back over the scar – the purple fleshy ridge rising up like a railway track between his sparse greying bristles.
He looked up, bemused. ‘I’ve had enough. Take it away.’ As Carla lifted the tray, her elbow accidentally toppled his pink plastic mug, flooding the leftover mash with redcurrant cordial.
‘Now look what you’ve done, you silly woman!’ he burst out. ‘You’ve got no business working here if you can’t do the job properly. What’s more, I know you’ve been fornicating with Mr Meady in Room Twelve. He told me. You’re just a whore.’
‘Stop it, Kevin! Stop! It’s me, Carla.’ She fought to keep her voice steady. ‘Me! Remember the farm? The Willows? Rangi and Rebecca? Do you remember our son, Jack?’
Some days he was lucid, other days so confused. And lately, it seemed that he was having more bad days than good. He had so little reserve, that any ailment – a simple urinary tract infection or even just a head cold – could tip him into delirium.
‘Pah!’ he exclaimed, fiddling furiously with his dressing-gown cord.
‘They’ve put the thugs away,’ she said slowly, sitting down next to him. ‘The ones who did this to you, my darling. Fourteen years for one. Nineteen for the other.’
It was the first day of the rest of their lives, she told him. They had to grasp what had been given them, accept it, and move on.
Kevin rubbed his nose roughly and stared ahead.
‘Look what I’ve brought,’ she said after a time, delving into an old Farmers plastic bag to retrieve two scrunched balls of tissue paper.
Kevin looked on with eye-protruding fascination. Carefully she unwrapped them, smoothing out the creases in the paper with meticulous attention. Then she placed first one, and then another crystal glass on the side table.
‘I thought we could share a drink together, just like old times. Toast the future. Look at maybe getting you back home with me. What about it?’
Without waiting for a reply, she lifted out a bottle of sherry and poured two generous glasses. ‘I love you, Kevin. I love you, for ever,’ she said, handing him a glass.
He eyed it quizzically before tipping his head back and swallowing the liquor in one wet gulp. Surprise splashed across his face as the alcohol gushed unhindered down his windpipe, and before Carla had time to take a sip herself, Kevin’s swig had been rerouted and sprayed all over her clothes with a vigorous cough.
‘Oh, Kevin!’ she cried, dabbing at the sticky maroon liquid.
Kevin coughed again, and again, and again, his face turning puce, then dusky. He hauled himself up and stumbled around the room.
Carla chased after him, trying to slap him on the back as his coughing turned strangulated and feeble.
Panicking, she leant on the emergency button, before running out into the corridor. ‘Help! Somebody, quick! My husband. He’s choking!’ Kevin was prostrate on the floor by the time the two nurse-aides burst into the room, one carrying a large cylinder of oxygen. They knelt down beside him and tilted his chin upwards, forcing his mouth open to check for an obstruction.
‘It was ju-ju-just the drink,’ Carla stuttered, pointing to the bottle of sherry.
‘He didn’t choke on his food?’
Carla shook her head.
The nurse slammed an oxygen mask over Kevin’s blue lips and rolled him onto his side.
‘I must reiterate, Mrs Reid, that this sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable.’
Carla was sitting in Tracy Lomax’s office. The manager, a parrot of a woman with a tight blonde bun, was lodged behind her vast mahogany desk. She peered at Carla from around an oversized arrangement of fake magnolias.
‘The rules we have here are in place for a purpose. Our responsibility is first and foremost to our patients, all of whom, as you well kno
w, have suffered from some sort of head injury. With temperaments labile and reflexes impaired, alcohol is forbidden. Absolutely forbidden!’
‘I’m so sorry, Tracy. It’s just that I wanted to …’ Carla stopped.
Tracy arranged a conciliatory smile. ‘Fortunately, this has not had a dire outcome, but I’d leave Kevin to sleep right now; he’s had more than enough excitement for one day. The doctor will check him over a little later.’
‘Do you think—?’ Carla leant forward in her seat. ‘Tracy, do you think Kevin will ever be able to come back home to live with me?’
The hospital manager took off her glasses and fixed Carla with a sobering stare. ‘Mrs Reid … Carla,’ she said slowly, ‘I do not believe you would be able to cope with Kevin on your own. Not unless a huge amount of additional support was put in place, which would be incredibly expensive to sustain on a long-term basis. ACC wouldn’t cover a half of it.’
She paused. ‘Kevin is not doing as well as we’d hoped, especially following the second brain bleed.’
Carla scanned the woman’s words for hope.
‘Look, we are having a team meeting later this month with the doctors, physios and OTs. I’ll put it out there. My feeling is that you won’t manage on your own. He really has deteriorated. I personally don’t believe Kevin will be able to live independently again.’ Carla nodded robotically and stood up, muttering another apology as she backed out of the office.
‘I am obliged to file an incident report,’ Tracy called after her.
‘I understand.’
Carla wandered down the corridors, passing the open doors of other residents’ rooms – peep shows on broken lives.
She drove home not seeing the road, instead navigating the troubled highways of her mind, and it was only when she turned into the driveway of Willowlands Residential Park that she realised she had driven back to the farm and not her apartment.
Reluctant to reverse onto the busy highway, she motored on through the new subdivision with its schist pillars, landscaped driveway, and imported date palms. She came to a roundabout where the old barn had once stood. Distracted, she let the car veer towards the grassy bank, before suddenly overcorrecting. The wheels spun on the loose gravel and the car glided across the road, mounted the opposite verge and came to an abrupt halt.
The Last Time We Spoke Page 11