The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

  But her excitement was short-lived, the weeks that followed seeing him again broody and resistant. And the headway she’d worked so hard to achieve seemed to quickly slip through her fingers.

  She continued to take him in meals – risottos, lamb stew, bowls of minestrone – Ben accepting her food more easily than her instruction. The planning and execution of these dishes consumed most of Carla’s waking hours, providing her days with a focus, and her own body with the sustenance and nourishment it had been starved of for so long. With every meal she made, her spirit and body grew stronger.

  After some months, though, she realised that the cooking theme had palled, and she was forced to explore new and relevant ways to engage her now twenty-one-year-old pupil.

  She thought back to Jack’s schoolboy years, to when he too had shown little interest in reading. With a dearth of books suitable for boys, she’d had to trawl through second-hand bookstores and libraries searching for stories that could compete with catapults, river crossings and tree huts. Now she was similarly determined to keep her student’s interest ignited.

  This meant sometimes spending their allocated hour just talking about what was happening in the prison. Over time the stilted question-and-monosyllabic-answer sessions gave way to more spontaneous dialogue, in which Ben permitted her glimpses of his world – what incident had ‘gone down’ in the yard the previous day; which inmate was most likely a ‘nark’. It was a world so foreign to her, and yet at times strangely familiar. She had reared a son, after all, and ‘boys’, whether in prison or out, pale-skinned or brown, were not very different. She still thought of Ben as a boy, even though he was now very much a man. Despite all their interactions, the picture she held in her mind was of the teen she’d met on that March night – the night when time had stopped.

  If she felt dubious about their progress, Haslop was ever encouraging. Staff had noted definite changes in Ben’s behaviour – he had become less aggressive, calmer, more motivated. And while he continued to pretend he was indifferent to the lessons, he apparently got very upset if anything or anyone got in the way of one.

  Carla held onto these tenuous threads of hope, paring back her expectations and tempering her impatience. She was committed to success, whatever that was.

  They were four months into the lessons, when she started to read aloud to Ben from Life Is So Good, about the man who’d learnt to read at the age of ninety-eight. She reserved the last ten minutes of every session for this.

  As the story progressed, Carla found that she looked forward to this brief pocket of time, the act of her reading and Ben listening importing a new intimacy between them. She’d chosen the story to demonstrate to Ben that he was not alone in his struggle, and that it was never too late to learn. Yet reading aloud George Dawson’s insights and reflections on the hardships of life, affected Carla deeply too. That this man who’d suffered at the hands of entrenched racism could still be so positive about humanity stirred something deep within her.

  Now, she tore off a piece of Chelsea bun and tossed it towards the cockerel. A flurry of dust and feathers erupted. Mynah’s dived, the rooster squawked, and sparrows shot through the mayhem.

  She leapt up, spilling her coffee and dropping her bun in the dirt, where it was instantly devoured. Shaken, Carla dabbed pointlessly at the unsightly brown stain on her blouse. She couldn’t possibly go to the prison like that. She’d have to go home and change.

  Forty minutes later, she found herself out of breath in the familiar visiting hall. Their usual venue for the lesson, the meeting room beside the chapel, was unavailable. The authorities had become a lot more relaxed; Ben had proved himself and was no longer considered as much of a risk.

  Carla looked around, recognising some of the faces. The big fellow with a facial moko was there with his now very pregnant girlfriend. They both smiled in greeting.

  10.40 a.m. She smoothed out her linen skirt. Several months back it would have slipped right off her, but with all the cooking and baking she’d been doing, was now quite tight at the waist. Even her shrunken breasts had swelled and pushed out against her grey silk blouse.

  10.45 a.m. Ben was late.

  It was Tuesday. Usual time. Perhaps he had not been informed of the change in venue. Perhaps he was ill or had been hurt by another inmate. Maybe …

  Then with relief she heard the recognisable clang of steel on steel.

  Ben walked in.

  She gasped. His right arm was in a sling.

  ‘What – what happened?’

  He sat down and fixed her with a stare.

  Carla felt strangely awkward. He was probably preoccupied. Had been in a fight. Was … But his eyes. They were those eyes – the shut-up-cunt, fuck-you-bitch eyes. The eyes she had come to know over the previous six months were gone.

  She smiled nervously, her calm evaporating. Suddenly she felt ridiculously overdressed.

  ‘Your arm. What have you done to your arm, Ben?’

  He looked down, as though just reminded of it, then pushed back the white sling. She saw that his hand and part of his forearm were encased in an already grubby cast.

  ‘This,’ he said in a fierce whisper, ‘is because of you!’ He jerked the triangle of arm threateningly toward her.

  She jolted backwards.

  ‘You,’ he reiterated. ‘Don’t come here no more. You’re getting on my wick!’

  Carla sat completely still, the Tupperware container of lemon slice, the books, the other thing, at her feet. All at once she was again trembling on the farm floor.

  She pulled herself out of her stupor, hastily gathered her belongings and stood up. She had to get out, hurry back to her flat, put out two sausages for dinner, and then take a nap from one until two-thirty.

  The previous night she’d opened the door to the spare room, the hallway light trapping motes of dust in its pale beam. The room smelt of locked-away years and decaying mothballs. A cockroach scuttled under the cupboard door. She’d selected a box from the neatly stacked tower, and slipped a Stanley knife under the cross of masking tape. What would it hold? Lucky dip.

  A set of photo albums. Perfectly preserved.

  She’d dragged the box into the lounge, where she unpacked it, lining up seven photo albums across the floor. Tentatively, she’d opened the first, a red album with a faded filigree border, and pored over it. Then a hunger had overtaken her and she’d begun turning the pages faster and faster, snapshots of another time knitted haphazardly back into her life like dropped stitches … The kingfisher perched on a branch of the chestnut tree in the Taylors’ Christmas lunch photo … The rowboat moored on the lake edge. It was yellow inside and white out. She’d always thought it was all white. Russell trying to feed his cake to the cat at Jack’s seventh birthday party. Her sister-in-law posing with the Governor General. Mildred actually had quite thick ankles. Carla had never noticed them before.

  She’d finally put out the light just after midnight, and slept soundly, without even the rustle of a dream. On her bedside table lay a blue album.

  Now, a wave of heat surged through her. Would she never learn? She was cursed. Nothing could ever remain good for long.

  She kicked the Tupperware aside, sending it planing across the floor, then curled her fingers around the blue photo album and lifted it up like a placard.

  ‘Let me tell you what’s getting on my wick, you … you low life, good-for-nothing scum of the earth!’ Her voice plunged into the room, rage wound around each syllable, fury streaked through every word. The big guy and his girlfriend looked up, their faces all surprise. ‘You sit in this cage, as you call it, eating three meals a day, sleeping and exercising and demanding and defecating, while my son, my son, has been reduced to a canister of ash, and my husband lies in a box in the ground. You … you bastard! You took them away from me. How dare you!’

  The background hum in the visitors’ room evaporated into a gaping silence.

  Two guards approached.

  Carla ignored them
. ‘Look here!’ she screamed at Ben. ‘I said, look here!’ She opened the album and turned it to him. ‘My family are gone because you and your sick mate surfed through a night on drugs, satisfying the animal in you. You complain, poor boy, because the scabies you caught from the prison blankets is itchy and keeps you awake. Oh dear! While I still endure the crops of pus-filled blisters that burn my insides out, a sweet memento left me by your friend. What am I doing bringing you food and teaching you to read? Stupid, stupid woman! Well, good riddance. I hope you rot in hell, you illiterate …’

  She got up and strode toward the approaching warders, tripping over Life is So Good and ripping the cover.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  CARLA

  Carla lifted the book off the trolley, checked the number on the spine, then slotted the classic in beside Frame’s other works.

  ‘Carla, you haven’t taken a tea break yet,’ Diana, the head librarian, called after her. ‘I brought in a carrot cake for my birthday. You’ll be lucky to still get some.’

  The tea room was empty. Carla flicked on the kettle, cut herself a slice of cake from the remaining wedge and sank into a lime-green chair shaped like a pudding bowl.

  It had been seven months since her last visit to the prison. So much had happened since the day she’d sped away from the grey monolith, her hands trembling, her tears mixing with outrage. When she’d stopped off at the library to return the book she’d borrowed only that morning, Diana was there behind the desk.

  ‘That was quick, Mrs Reid. Any good?’

  Carla had burst into tears, causing quite a stir and leaving the astonished librarian no option but to usher her to a backroom, away from a gathering of curious eyes. An hour later, and Carla’s story told, Diana was offering her a temporary position assisting at the library.

  ‘We’re very short-staffed,’ she’d said, running a finger down the weekly roster. ‘One librarian is away on maternity leave, another on extended sick leave. It’s only for a few months, but should keep you out of mischief and us out of a tight spot.’

  Carla was signed on for two mornings a week, but turned up for five. She loved being there, the large windows that invited the outside in; the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books; the buzz, the energy, the purpose.

  Her new colleagues – Diana, Zoe, Bunty, and Paul – were good people, and gradually, Carla dropped her guard, allowing easy friendships to flourish.

  She banished Toroa from her mind. Yes, she’d made similar resolutions before, but this time was different. She wondered whether a fatal bond existed between them. Sometimes it felt as if an invisible thread kept them orbiting each other, with ever the promise of another collision.

  She had not seen his latest outburst coming. The Geoffreys and Veras would no doubt have said, ‘I told you so!’ and ‘When will you learn?’, reminding her that Ben Toroa was rotten through and through, and beyond redemption. Yet things had been going so well.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  BEN

  Trays of lamb chops spat and hissed behind the hot yellow glass; spirals of steam twisted towards a giant range hood, as if caught in a powerful rip; and mammoth stainless-steel pans of sliced pumpkin rested on a bench waiting their turn under the grill.

  Ben stood peeling the last of a mound of potatoes, his paring knife removing a thick layer of yellow flesh with each peel. His hand had been out of plaster for months now, but he was still clumsy with the fine work, his last two fingers clawing permanently into his palm. The surgeons had recommended daily physiotherapy. Like that was going to happen in prison!

  ‘Prisoner Toroa.’ Lawrence, an ex-SAS guard, put his head round the door of the galley kitchen.

  Ben’s nickname in prison was Bull, while the guards called him either by his number or surname. It was really only Haslop who’d ever used his first name. Sometimes Ben almost forgot that he was Ben.

  He laid down the knife. ‘Hey, Skunk, can you put the spuds into the oven in five, if I’m not back?’

  As far as Ben was concerned, kitchen duty was alright. It could get noisy and explosively hot when they were working full ball to get a meal out. But he liked the perks that came with the job; kitchen hands were treated differently. The screws trusted them more. They had to, considering the guys were working with knives and boiling water every day. Anyway, you didn’t need to be able to access the kitchen if you were after a weapon; most were fashioned from the unlikeliest of things – pegs, paperclips, toilet flushers. Inmates were a resourceful bunch. A toothbrush filed to a point could inflict as much damage as any knife if rammed under the ribs with enough force.

  The kitchen guys wielded a different sort of weapon. Food. With little to break the monotony of every twenty-four-hour day, what was on the menu and the size of a prisoner’s portion were serious matters. Kai was a currency for trade and stand overs, coming in a close second to contraband.

  Lawrence handed Ben a long white envelope. ‘Your transfer.’

  ‘Transfer?’

  ‘Ngawha, Friday.’

  Ben was bewildered. ‘What? How come? Suddenly, after how many fucking years?’

  ‘Maybe they moving you closer to your whānau or something?’

  ‘Whānau? Yeah, right!’ Ben laughed. What family did he have? Even Lily hadn’t visited in months. She must have finally realised he was beyond salvation.

  Lawrence shrugged. ‘I’m only the messenger, mate. Anyway, you should be stoked. It’s a holiday camp up there. Cushier than the real world, I can tell you.’

  ‘Not interested,’ Ben said, turning away and heading back into the kitchen. ‘I’ll see out my bid here. This is my crib.’

  ‘Gimme a break, Toroa,’ the guard said, exasperated. ‘Report to your unit manager at nine, Friday morning, cell packed, ready to go.’

  Ben stopped in the doorway. Coldplay’s song ‘Paradise’, was blasting through the clouds of steam. It had been nearly seven years. They couldn’t just move him. His heart started running in his chest, running away from the news. He knew the facility north of Whangarei was a cushy number, but his mates were at Pare and they were his whānau. There was no one else. He knew Pare, knew the rules. He understood the guys, who not to mess with …

  Sure, he sometimes complained, but it was a safe sort of complaining, with no expectation of change. Routine regulated his life, each day practically predictable. Now, without warning, they wanted to mess up everything.

  Something else was also bothering Ben as he stood there in the doorway chewing on his new fate, but he quashed the thought before it could breathe any oxygen.

  He stepped back into the stifling kitchen. ‘I thought I told you to fuckin’ put the potatoes on,’ he barked at Skunk.

  ‘What’s with you?’ the big guy replied. ‘It’s only five minutes now.’

  Ben’s eyes scanned the bench and stopped at the butcher’s block. The pumpkin knife lay there, glinting under the 100 watt bulbs, its grey handle thick and greasy.

  Ben moved towards the bench, towards his ticket to a longer stay, towards his handle on a different outcome.

  ‘You okay, bro?’ his mate’s voice echoed through the fog in his mind. ‘Something happen out there?’

  Skunk was a big fellow, a solid crate of flesh with a gentle teddy bear face and ears that stuck out at right angles. He’d worked for the council driving a garbage truck, before landing himself in prison. He was in for manslaughter, killing his cousin in a drunken brawl. It wasn’t hard to see how Skunk could have killed the bloke; he didn’t seem to appreciate his own strength. With a casual swipe of his hand he could easily drop someone.

  It tore Skunk apart being away from his five kids and all, but he’d ‘found God’ since being inside. He loved working in the kitchen and planned to get a job as a chef when he got out.

  Skunk was your model prisoner – repentant, motivated, always towing the line. The guy had even been granted special permission to use the workshop out of hours so he could build his youngest kid a go-k
art. And it wasn’t just any old go-kart; it was a sight to behold, with suspension, proper steering, and a jazzy purple paint job. Skunk really wanted to be a good dad. From what Ben could tell, he already was one.

  But Ben couldn’t be getting sentimental about his homie. Skunk wasn’t his problem. When it came down to it, it was every man for himself.

  He shook his head, trying to reshuffle his thoughts, but the tunnel in his mind kept closing in, until just one thought ruled.

  Skunk turned to check on the chops.

  Ben picked up the knife, his pinkie and ring finger curling around the handle with deformed ease, the other fingers quickly following.

  He moved towards the big man who was peering into the oven.

  They’d think twice about shipping Ben up north if he picked up another sentence.

  As Ben lifted the knife, Skunk spun round in a rap manoeuvre, his lumbering body bending in time to the music. He stopped, confusion streaked across his face. ‘Jeez, man?’

  Then something happened; the eyes in front of Ben were no longer Skunk’s but his mother’s, wide with fear as Ryan laid into her.

  Switch.

  They were the farm kid’s surprised stare when he spotted them crouching in the shadows.

  Switch.

  Now the Reid woman’s.

  Ben squeezed his eyes shut as if someone had put them out with a red-hot poker. Then he dropped the knife and ran from the kitchen, out into the quadrangle, where he spewed all over his feet.

  He hovered over the mess – strings of saliva hanging from his mouth, water dripping from his nose, his whole body shaking. Then he slid down the wall and dropped his head onto his knees.

  After a time he felt a hand on his shoulder – a strong, warm hand sucking up some of his pain. It was Skunk.

  Skunk didn’t say anything, but Ben knew the big guy understood. It felt as if Skunk was the Lord he was always droning on about.