by Bowes, K T
Hana sipped her drink as Gwynne nodded. She sought self-control like a drowning fisherman seeking air. The couple with the baby left and Hana turned her thoughts to the brick through her windscreen.
“I think this is related to the other night.” Gwynne broke into her reverie, pausing mid-sentence and observing Hana. “Not that I want rake over things.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” she said with a sigh. “Who did I upset? Maybe the police will come to the same conclusion and sort it out.”
Gwynne raised his eyebrows and Hana saw, her heart sinking. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “They don’t fill me with much confidence either. They said they were having problems with the boy you caught but haven’t contacted me since then.” Hana’s fingers fluttered to her throat and back to her lap.
The green corduroy chairs felt comfortable and safe in their unashamed simplicity. As Hana stared at the fabric, she registered the stains and crumbs thousands of people had contributed to. She closed her eyes and wished she could step out of her life and into someone else’s for a while. Her mind wandered to safer places and Gwynne cleared his throat, pulling her back to the stark reality of her life. Hana jumped and her jarring movement slopped chocolate from the white mug onto the arm of the squashy chair.
“Damn!” Hana fumbled for a tissue and dabbed at the sinking stain. “We should get back,” she said, guilt lacing her voice. “I left an hour ago on an errand for Sheila. She’ll think I’ve been kidnapped.”
Gwynne gave a small smile. “I wanted to ask you something,” he began and Hana looked away, feeling dread surge in her heart. Her cheeks flared pink and the teacher faltered, closing his lips.
“We should definitely get back,” she said, standing in haste. She placed her mug on the table and read the decorative sentences etched into the wood in different fonts, desperate to block out Gwynne’s question.
‘How is your day going?’ ‘Enjoy life - keep it simple’ the words said. If only, Hana thought to herself.
Chapter 9
By the time Hana and Gwynne returned to school, the last bell had sounded and the boys dribbled out to waiting buses, leaving the building and grounds silent. Sheila had raided Hana’s desk drawer and found her car keys. The truck stood where she left it that morning, sporting a brand new windscreen, courtesy of Sheila and the glass replacement company.
Donald, the formidable director of administration, was sympathetic rather than condemning about Hana’s desertion of her post, but Alan Dobbs was far from impressed with Gwynne’s casual abandonment of his notorious Year 10 class. “I had to take them myself,” he boomed, traumatised by the experience, “are they always like that?”
Gwynne refrained from commenting, standing placidly in the face of a fury he had encountered numerous times. Experience told him it would blow over once Dobbs realised he would not get an argument. Apologising twice, he left the deputy principal’s ultra-tidy lair as Dobbs became bored with his passive opponent.
As the media studies teacher sauntered from his room, Alan Dobbs watched his retreating back with frustration. After ten years of sharing the same air space, he was no nearer to understanding the quiet man with a passion for creativity, than he had been at the start.
Back in the student centre, Hana contemplated her ransacked desk. Sheila had located her car keys but only after burgling the desk. Files lay open on the floor and every drawer tipped out. Hana tinkered with the paperwork littered around the fringes of the mess, wondering how her life could have gone so wrong in such a short time. Was it a short time though? Perhaps it began the journey into disaster with the young constables, who clumsily broke the news of Vik’s accident to her eight years ago. The female officer was a probationer and cried for Hana’s loss, great tears of sadness rolling down blushing young cheeks. Maybe it had started then.
Hana made it to the ringing phone in her kitchen, just in time to stop her daughter disconnecting. “Mum, I love the sleep-suit. Elizabeth looks so cute in it,” Isobel gushed. Whilst they chatted, Hana grappled one-handed in her handbag for the photograph she had fought so hard to keep and decided it was worth the cuts and bruises. Her beautiful daughter smiled up at her from the creased picture, cradling the newborn in a possessive embrace. Elizabeth, meaning ‘the fullness of God,’ was a few months old and had already brought such joy to the family and church which Marcus pastored in Invercargill. Her name countered the frail understanding of people who would always view Elizabeth as incomplete, her Down syndrome making her half of an able person to them, instead of the complete, but handicapped person she was.
“I miss you all. Give Beth a kiss for me and I suppose you’d better give that errant husband of yours a hug. I know he’ll expect one,” Hana said. Isobel rang off giggling with her beautiful tinkling laugh, leaving her mother cheered and looking forward to a long soak in the bath, a well-deserved glass of wine and a novel.
As bubbles pumped into the hot water and the room assumed the lovely mist which accompanied the promise of luxury, Hana heard the ominous sound of the garage door opening by itself. The motor whirred, the hinges clanked and a car settled itself on the concrete garage floor, crunching over the plastic pegs she accidentally left as she flung the washing over the line. She grabbed at her dressing gown, fumbling to cover her curved nakedness. Voices sounded downstairs, echoing in the space and the garage door closed again with a whir and a grunt.
Bodie’s boyish face appeared around the stairwell, his short, clipped black hair and his smart policeman’s uniform making him appear even younger than his twenty-six years. He smiled and chatted over his shoulder to someone following him up the stairs from the garage. As they appeared one by one, four startled young men stared up at the unfortunate woman clad in the velvet brown dressing gown with the leopard fabric collar. Embarrassed, Hana pulled it closer round her body.
Bodie seemed unabashed, his dark brown eyes flashing happily. “Hi Mother-dear,” he greeted her and reaching her level, held out his arms for a hug. Mortified by her state of undress, Hana hovered nervously. But she felt relieved to see him, recognising a good sounding board for her current misfortunes.
“Mum,” he began, in that tone which as a boy, always signified the describing of some involved tale. It would usually be about his sister, or an excuse why his room, which he had been sent to clean and spent over an hour in, looked no different to the trained eye. “We’re here to look for something in the river. We could get a hotel or go into the boarding house, but I thought it might be ok if we bunked here?” At least the last part was more of a question than an assumption.
“How many are we?” Hana replied in a joking tone.
“Oh, just us four,” said the handsome young man who shared Vik’s Indian features and turbulent nature. Hana saw in his eyes he hoped the hastily suggested, bright idea as they sped down State Highway 1, would not blow up in his face.
Hana moved towards the bathroom to turn off the water and sort out her things. “Sort out who wants which room,” she called over her shoulder. “The beds are made up.”
As she shut the bathroom door, her son exclaimed, “Choice!” and sorted rooms and people. Hana smiled at the thought of having Bodie home for a few days. She sank into the steaming hot bubbles and soothed away the cares and bruises of the past few days. Hana shivered, deciding not to linger on the ‘something,’ her son would dive into the Waikato River to find, concluding it was more likely to be a ‘someone.’ She shook off the ghoulish memory of Vik’s grey face on the mortuary slab and immersed herself under the welcoming foam.
Hana woke next morning to the sound of male laughter as her houseguests showered and dressed for work, calling to each other from room to room. She emerged from her bedroom more upbeat than she had been for far too long.
After his colleagues went to bed, Bodie talked over the last few days with his mother, listening to her account of the attempted bag snatch and subsequent broken windscreen without interrupting. He said nothing until Hana had told him
everything. “I can’t think who I might have upset,” she mused. “But two incidents directed at me is strange.” Her pretty face clouded with confusion and Bodie shook his head.
“It sounds more than coincidental, but why you? Why now?” He made her describe her attackers again, but time had warped the memory and turned both of them into monsters and Hana found to her surprise, she remembered little of use.
Later on when the house was dark and closed up for the night, Hana heard him moving around downstairs in the garage, looking over her people mover and inspecting the window replacement. In the peace of the silent garage space, disturbed by the occasional night noises of passing cars or chirping crickets, Bodie nosed around the familiar vehicle turning over the story in his head, looking for the connection that was there, but hidden.
Bodie leaned against the wall, gritting his teeth at the memory of the cut lip Hana tried to blank out with makeup and the livid red and black bruise on her neck, which moved into sight when she tilted her head to reach for her wine glass. “Two attacks in a short space of time,” his voice echoed into the cavernous space. “Something’s not right. This isn’t coincidence.”
Sleep proved a long time coming to Bodie later on as he lay in his childhood bed. The light blue paint gleamed in the moonlight and through the open curtains the stars winked in merry oblivion. “Geez!” He ran his hand through his dark hair and tried to distract himself from the morning’s ominous task, rendering the image in his head of the missing elderly lady; to just another emotionless job. Her fluffy white hair and sweet face wafted past his inner vision, blending with Hana’s injuries, her smiling face interchanging with his mother’s. “Stop!” he hissed into the darkness and put his hands over his ears, pressing his face into the pillow.
Breakfast was a jovial affair involving most of the contents of the fridge and pantry. Hana’s smiling, jubilant son made his usual brand of chaos in the kitchen as he served his colleagues a slap up breakfast, intended to sustain them through the entire day. The youngest police officer, Jarrad, was new to the diving team but the others, Bodie and Graeme had dived for a few years. “I can’t eat lunch when I’m diving,” Jarrad said apologetically to his hostess as she observed his piled plate. “It makes me throw up.”
“Right,” Hana said, not sure of the correct response.
“Yeah, it’s like that,” Graeme commented with his mouth full of bacon. “It depends how deep we’re going today though. It won’t be like that lake last week. That was pitch black. The river’s shallow compared to that.”
Bodie had dived all over the country, retrieving bodies and objects for over five years, following his two years’ probation as a beat officer. He hadn’t wanted to do anything else since his first day of diving in his outdoor education class at school, but his hurried transfer north had perplexed and worried Hana.
The other officer was an older man, a detective from Auckland referred to as Odering. He was blonde, smartly dressed and quiet, exuding efficient capability and eating his cereal with silent contemplation. There was an air of tension and expectation about the men, not knowing what the day would bring. Yet with it, there was a quiet resignation of horrors seen and dealt with, but not forgotten. Even this bright, clear day could deliver some grizzly discovery. The divers grew quieter as they mentally prepared themselves to enter the threatening Waikato and persuade it to release its secrets. “Right boys, into the breach,” Bodie said, rounding up the men. “See you tonight, Mum. Can we take you out for dinner?”
“Depends if we find her,” Odering muttered and at first, Hana thought he was referring to her. She acknowledged an involuntary shiver as she realised he was referring to the lost item in the depths of the Mighty Waikato. A woman.
The police car slipped from the garage, reversing onto the quiet cul-de-sac and alarming the resident of number 5 next door as she hustled the children out into the waiting people carrier. The two older children ceased their bickering, temporarily silenced at the sight of the smart police officers. They looked at their frantic, frazzled mother for reassurance as she stuffed the grizzling baby into his car seat. The children stared after the retreating vehicle, silenced by the automatic guilt a police car engendered. “Do you think Mrs Next-door has been arrested?” the boy asked and the girl shrugged. The poor mother, comforted by the sudden decrease in volume and remembering she left the baby’s milk bottle in the microwave, slammed the side door and scurried off up the garage steps to retrieve it. The baby wailed while its siblings pulled knowing faces at each other. Then they resumed their important dispute.
“Give me back my toy frog!”
“No! You threw it at me.”
Metres away in the upstairs kitchen, Hana finished wiping crumbs from the surfaces and tidying up. The visitors were largely house trained and cleared up their own mess. Bodie always enjoyed cooking; it was a natural talent with him as with Vik. Just like his father, he inherited the need to use every plate, cup and item of cutlery in his grand culinary masterpieces.
Hana cracked open the high kitchen windows to let out the cooking aromas, stealing a moment to admire the early morning mists shrouding the mottled hills of the Hakarimata bush many kilometres away. It promised to be a fine, blue-sky day with temperatures pushing back into the late twenties. Fulfilled and happy, Hana armed the burglar alarm and set off for work in the heavy traffic weaving its way like a fuming, metallic snake to the south end of town.
Chapter 10
The term proceeded with its usual hustle and bustle. Chapel services recommenced with their signature gusto, challenging the school towards a higher goal whilst subject classes raced along, pointing at definite earthly goals.
Sheila and Rory sported a fragile peace during working hours, although the grapevine told of intriguing battles behind the confines of Rory’s not-so-private front door. There were odd moments of tension when Rory rushed off to class in a hurry leaving the photocopier jammed and Sheila spent a whole period trying to un-jam it. She exacted her revenge by filling the printer drawer with A5 paper and hiding the A4 so an embarrassed Rory had to sit and sellotape a multi-page document in front of a parent.
Life was busy as the office flooded with information from colleges and universities. Bulletins popped up onto the common room notice board, got defaced and then popped off again and the weather pushed its way up into the unbearably hot. Summer engaged in its final fling before bowing out to the onslaught of a wet autumn. The girls from the Anglican school, chosen to represent their fair sex in the annual joint production, came in and out of the Great Hall. They caused mayhem amongst the testosterone and made use of the staff toilets, which resembled a hairdresser-come-beauty clinic. Romances flourished and lifted the atmosphere in the male territory and Hana constantly bumped into Logan Du Rose. He was everywhere she wanted to be, his dark eyes brooding and studying her.
His presence confused her. She hankered after seeing him and then when she did, all confidence ebbed away and she drowned in embarrassment. Something about him nagged at her as though she knew him from somewhere but the memory wouldn’t come. Her friend, Anka noticed him staring as Hana struggled through her soup in the staff room one lunch time, trying not to spill the liquid down her blouse and embarrass herself. “You’re very distant of late,” the South African accent lilted. “What’s wrong?”
Hana shrugged. “Just stuff, nothing major.”
“Logan Du Rose spends a lot of time looking in your direction,” her friend said sagely. “What’s that about?” Her voice sounded sharp and Hana looked up in surprise.
“I don’t know. I’ve seldom spoken to him.”
“Well don’t!” Anka said under her breath, avoiding the attention of their table companions. “He’s bad news. Stay away from him.”
In desperation, Hana went out for a walk in her half hour lunch break, joined by one of the laboratory assistants. Indian by birth, Sunita had lived in both England and New Zealand. She was of slender build with the beautiful dark skin of her kin
and knowledgeable enough to have taught the science students rather than wash the dirty test tubes left over from their classes. Hana missed her half Indian children and Sunita’s company helped the knot of pain in her stomach. The lunchtime walks happened most days and were sources of mild sanity, when the cobwebs of the school blew out of the women’s jaded minds for a short interlude and Hana avoided the scrutiny of the serious grey eyes, which set her heart pounding in an unnerving rhythm. It wasn’t like Anka to bad mouth someone so Hana took her advice and avoided Logan with a sense of purpose. When Gwynne asked her out on a date, she almost persuaded herself it would be good, but she knew she was using him as a distraction and declined with English politeness.
The day was already baking hot when the pair met in reception under the nonchalant gaze of the receptionist. “It’ll be baking out there,” Sunita commented, as they made their way across the courtyard, through the remaining strongholds of the property and out onto the main road. Outside the bustle of the school, the world seemed surprisingly normal and there was always a reluctance to go back in to the problems, the stresses and in Hana’s office, the underlying tensions festering away and eating at the delicate surface of civility.
“Shall we keep walking until we find a landmark and set up camp?” Hana joked as the women fought the urge to keep walking along the sunny tree-lined road and never stop.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sunita said with a smirk. “I’m enjoying staff briefing at the moment. That new English teacher’s worth being bored rigid by Donald Watson for. He got up and spoke this morning and he’s really hot.”
“Oh, what did he say?” Hana asked, “I wasn’t there.”
“No idea,” her friend replied. “I was too busy looking at his muscles. He must be over six feet tall and built like a Greek god. I hear he works out in the school gym.”