by Bowes, K T
“Collins wouldn’t go through all that damn drama!” Sheila scoffed. “He’d have just killed the thing. These science teachers are too sensitive with all their conspiracy theories!”
The Year 13 biology class attempted to keep the saga going, demanding a full funeral complete with Chaplain, for the deceased Fluffy. They came to class sporting tissues and vapour rub, which they put near their eyes to make it look as though they had been crying. Paul Mannings was not amused and assumed Fluffy had gone into the dustbin, courtesy of Larry Collins. In fact, Fluffy returned to the laboratory next-door, retrieved by Sunita, the thrifty lab assistant and was put into the freezer along with the other specimens. The other biology teacher unwittingly used Fluffy in many dissections for some time to come. Infamous as Fluffy had been, nobody seemed to notice and if they did, perhaps it was thought better not to mention it.
The next time Hana bumped into Logan, literally, was a few days later in the corridor outside the common room. She peered into one of the brochure racks, trying to work out how to retrieve the banana skin from inside a shelf without getting covered in it. Exasperated with boys who clearly couldn’t make it to the dustbin only a few metres away, she stepped back in frustration and landed squarely on Logan’s foot as he came up behind her. She wasn’t heavy, but knew the stiletto heel must have hurt. “I am so sorry,” she said with genuine feeling, using his arm to right herself. “I feel terrible now.”
Logan winced and brushed it off like a gentleman, smiling down with those intense grey eyes. “It’s fine,” he reassured her, closing his long fingers over hers without breaking eye contact. His full lips opened as though to say something else. The study class he was supervising broke out into raucous noise and laughter as they crowded around a knot of boys and Logan shot Hana an apologetic glance. “Sit down!” he said with quiet authority. He didn’t shout or threaten like the other male teachers, but the boys scurried back to their desks in instant obedience. The hidden steel in his voice brooked no opposition and Hana watched power exude from the man like a physical thing. He seated himself and laid a pad of green detention slips on the desk with minute precision, shifting them until happy with their position. Silence descended on the room as one hundred boys turned back to their work.
Realising she stared openly, Hana forced herself back to work. She managed to dig out the banana skin with a fork from the kitchen and squirted cleaning spray down into the shelf. When the bell rang at the end of the period she was stuck in the post room being whinged at by one of the art teachers, who missed the closing date for sending boys on a course at the local college. “They needed to go on this course. There isn’t another one for six months,” the woman berated Hana.
Hana smiled with practiced calm. “I understand how inconvenient that is, but the forms went out to you at the end of last year. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Well, that’s just plain unreasonableness,” the woman bristled and Hana walked away. In the women’s toilets she shook her head at herself in the mirror and washed her hands, imagining her delicate fingers throttling the stumpy neck of the arrogant art teacher.
“Bad thoughts!” she said to her reflection. “Stop it.” She smirked at the idea of twenty-eight boys sitting in a tutorial full of girls from WAGGS, who had grabbed most of the places.
“What’s funny?” asked Lorrie from the tuck shop as she washed her hands alongside Hana.
“I’m just imagining a Photoshop lesson at Wintec, where our boys have to sit next to girls from up the road.”
Lorrie snorted. “Would Dobbs allow that? He’s so archaic. He’d insist on going with them and using his ruler to measure the distance between them!”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Hana smirked, drying her hands on a towel.
“Remember the play last year? Hamlet wasn’t it? All those girls with attitude and sassy hair. And the lead actor came on stage with incredibly long and glossy straight hair.”
“I know. He had that curly Afro for four years, narrowly escaping numerous hair detentions and then he arrived on stage having been ‘straightened’ by one of his female co-actors.”
It looked so bizarre to his class members, the final, most touching scene was overshadowed by snorts and giggles.
“Hilarious,” Lorrie giggled. “See ya at morning tea.”
By the time Hana made it back to the common room, all that remained of Logan Du Rose was the heady scent of his expensive aftershave and the aura of clear mountain air, which seemed to permanently surround him. Hana suppressed the flicker of disappointment and chastised herself. Stop making a fool of yourself, you stupid woman!
Chapter 13
The bright sunshine promised a hot and sultry day. As so often with New Zealand weather, Hana wouldn’t discover until later that the promise was not to be honoured.
She spent Saturday cleaning at a leisurely pace, making sure every corner of the large two level house was buffed to her complete satisfaction, before heading into Chartwell Square on foot for the forty-minute walk. As her walk progressed, bright azure skies blinked under cloud cover and the day degenerated into awkward showers and an unpleasant gusting wind. Hana arrived, buffeted and blown and treated herself to coffee in one of the eateries in the mall. It was a pleasant change to sit comfortably enjoying a drink made by someone else, whilst watching the world pass by. It was a peculiar feeling of detachment for a woman who had been busy for years, as Hana watched other parents ushering along whingeing children who pointed back at the sweetie stalls in the mall walkway. The mall heaved with mother-daughter-duos, who browsed in the women’s clothing shops and emerged with carrier bags, wearing the shopaholics’ satisfied look of contentment. Husbands hung about obediently outside shops ready to collect the variety of bags, freeing up their women to proceed into the next glitzy store and repeat the process, denting their wallets in a credit crunching weekend ritual.
Hana sipped her latte slowly, putting off the long walk home. The aerobic workout seemed like a good idea back at the house but became less attractive as she listened to the rain slamming into the mall roof.
“Can I join you?”
Before she could answer, the tall frame of Logan Du Rose slid into the seat opposite, clutching a metal rod with the laminated number forty-three clipped to the top. He saw her near empty cup and leapt to his feet again, heading off towards the till where he ordered her another. “Got you a latte,” he smiled as he seated himself again. “I don’t want to sit here on my own.”
He pulled a cane sugar sachet from the cute pottery dish on the table and fiddled with it, bending the long stem so the contents ran up to one end and were trapped. He’s a fiddler, like Bodie, Hana thought to herself, waiting for the inevitable moment when the wrapper gave up and the sugar spilled everywhere. When it happened, Hana smirked and looked away. She glanced back as Logan finished collecting the granules in his palm and tipped them into an empty cup on the next table. He made a snuffing sound. “You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?”
Hana smiled, feeling at ease. A natural conversation began, interrupted by the arrival of the drinks, delivered by a sullen teenage girl. She slapped the order on the wobbly table, possibly wishing she was elsewhere, unconcerned by the amount of coffee residing in the saucer. She snatched the numbered spindle from the table and returned to the counter.
“Do you think we were like that at her age?” Logan mused.
Hana thought back to her days at university when she spent the summer working in the Belle Vue Hotel on the sea front. It was hard work for unattractive money. She went back to Aberystwyth on holiday with Vik and the children once, many years after they left the university. They stood outside the hotel restaurant.
“Come on, let’s eat there.” Vik wanted to treat Hana and she nursed grand ideas of bossing waitresses around and ordering difficult cocktails, but as she gazed through the windows, she felt the click of time moving on.
“Nobody will remember me!” she scoffed. The few staf
f remaining from her day would hardly remember a pregnant bar maid from way back and if they did, apart from a few platitudes and an appearance of being interested in her life, it would feel hollow. So she satisfied herself with using the toilet and noticing the wallpaper was still the same. Hana’s children were unimpressed by the novelty of seeing where their mother had spent some of her youth and the meal was never ordered. Only Vik seemed disappointed that Hana hadn’t wanted to do the Lady Bountiful act.
Hana blanched remembering the stares and pointing in class and at work. “Fancy getting pregnant in your first year,” they had all whispered. “She just made life harder for herself.”
“Hana?” A light touch on her hand made her jump and her drink slopped. Logan mopped up the mess with a serviette, but to Hana’s surprise, didn’t let go of her fingers. She shucked off the stressful memories. Had there been moments in that busy hotel full of annoying and demanding holidaymakers, where she had wanted to spill coffee into the saucer and snatch the table marker away? Definitely.
She forced herself back to the present, liking the warm hands over hers far too much. Hana extracted her fingers and smiled at her handsome companion. A woman in her late thirties walked by and stared at Logan, undressing him with her eyes. She smiled at him with unspoken invitation and he ignored her.
Hana’s voice wobbled as she tried to pretend nothing had happened. The pretty brunette lingered by the confectionary stand, ogling Logan without shame. “One busy Saturday, I tripped up a step coming into the bar area and emptied a full bowl of tomato soup over a man wearing a cream safari suit. The hotel paid for his dry cleaning and the owner was really angry with me. He spent the next year threatening to take the cost out of my pathetic wage. He never did though and his wife gave me an expensive yellow scarf when I left.”
Hana went quiet for a minute. Paying her way through uni being heavily pregnant was difficult and the older woman had been much kinder to her than to the other staff. Vik worked at the local supermarket in between classes and Hana smiled as she remembered how he only used to iron the front of his shirts, claiming his overalls hid the rest. Until the time he had to take it off to collect trolleys outside. Hearing Logan clear his throat, Hana looked up feeling embarrassed and disloyal. Why did this man invoke memories of her past?
Logan’s sparkling grey eyes fixed on her face with a look of curious longing. Vik had been gone for years and yet Hana still couldn’t throw off the ill-placed guilt of unfaithfulness, which rose into her chest whenever she thought about Logan. A slender, sun kissed hand strayed to the space over her heart and Hana bit her lip. Silence hung over the couple like a shroud and Logan’s nervousness returned. “Wanna go for a walk?” he asked, peering out from under his long lashes, the trace of a stammer making itself known.
Deciding Vik’s spirit couldn’t deny her friendship, Hana walked around the mall companionably with Logan until he headed off to the hardware store for some particular type of bolt that he needed for a fix up job at his place. Hana moseyed around the card racks in the $2 shop and moved onto the bookstore next door. The rack of politically incorrect cards caught her eye and Hana decided to have a quick glance at a few whilst nobody was looking. Some of them were genuinely funny and she snorted and giggled to herself. One was of a little girl with her nose screwed up and a disgusted look on her face. Inside it read, ‘Monica couldn’t stand her own farts – Happy birthday’
It was random and deliciously funny, but highly inappropriate for Mabel at church. It was typical that she should be reading that particular one when Logan appeared behind her and read it over her shoulder. Hana felt his closeness and the heat from his body as he leaned over and her heart fluttered in betrayal. Feeling chastened, Hana put it back in the rack and tried to lose her smirk.
Logan shrugged at the caption and grabbed another one from the stack. “I like this one better,” he sniggered “I sent it to my sister in Auckland.” He put it back, adding, “She didn’t find it funny.”
The cover sported a black and white photo of a nineteen fifties couple and the inside was…well unrepeatable but hilarious. “Schoolboy humour,” Hana remarked sanctimoniously with a twinkle in her eye. She sauntered towards the nice flowery cards with lovely poems about friendship.
“Boring,” came Logan’s remark behind her as she walked away.
Hana picked a card with red poppies in a field scene, which looked like a Monet print and paid for it. Logan nosed through the cards and sniggered intermittently following her out when she left. Hana felt irrationally pleased that he wanted to stick with her. “It sounds really bad outside,” she said, frowning. These late-summer storms blow up from nowhere, don’t they?”
The atrocious rain hammered on the mall’s tin roof above them as if to reinforce her point. Hana pulled a face and looked upwards, not that there was anything to see on the underside of the second level.
“I dunno. The weather forecast has been pretty accurate. Let me give you a lift?” Logan asked, adding “Please.”
Hana wavered for a moment before accepting, wondering how his little Triumph managed in the wet without a hood. Her heart pounded in her chest with abandon, refusing to be stilled at the proximity of the stunning male. A taxi would have saved her heart failure.
They left the mall, staying largely under cover as far as they could until the extended parking spaces further up. The day was grey and dirty looking and the rain came down in sheets. “Wait here, I’ll fetch the car over,” Logan insisted and ran off into the rain, shielding his dark hair with his jacket.
A minute later, a maroon Toyota Hilux pulled up and the driver beckoned Hana to get in. She was slow off the mark, watching instead for the Triumph and hopped in as traffic backed up behind them and another driver hooted his horn in annoyance. She felt foolish, but Logan didn’t react. The windows misted up from their wet clothes as they set off out of the car park and the noise of the air blower made conversation redundant. At the exit, Logan half turned to Hana. “Would you like to come and see my place?”
Hana wasn’t sure immediately how to answer. She did want to go somewhere other than her deserted home but perhaps going to his would turn out to be awkward, especially as she would be reliant on him for a lift home again. A honk from the car behind panicked Hana into a choice, as Logan stopped in the middle of the junction, patiently awaiting her decision. “Yes. Please.”
Logan moved left and waited at the exit, while the other driver made rude gestures from his vehicle before turning right. Logan saw and his eyes narrowed, but he chose to ignore it. They took a gap in the traffic, travelling cautiously through the torrents and into the north end of town. Driving for fifteen minutes through heavy traffic, Logan eventually headed out towards Gordonton and open country. It hadn’t occurred to Hana to ask where his place was and she began to have misgivings. Apart from a pleasant evening and some quick conversations at work, she probably didn’t know him well enough to in his car on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of nowhere. As she opened her mouth, hoping some sensible sentence would emerge to ensure she was taken home immediately, Logan indicated left and pulled into a rutted track off the main road. The post box at the end was an old red paint pot with a slit cut in its metal lid. It looked as though it had seen better days. The rutted road went on for some time and the vehicle bumped and smacked over pools and puddles that would have shaken a lesser car to bits.
“How old are you?” Hana blurted, with unexpected force. Her cheeks pinked with instant embarrassment.
Logan smiled. “Old enough to drive a car.”
“You can drive at fifteen!” Hana remarked, sounding like an irritated teenager.
“Older than that then,” Logan smirked, his eyes narrowing with mischief and his top teeth grazing his lower lip.
Hana turned to face the window, humiliation making her emerald eyes flash. Strong fingers settled over her right hand and she glanced across to meet Logan’s earnest gaze. “I’m thirty-nine. Forty this year.”
; Hana looked down at his brown fingers entwined against her porcelain skin. They were littered with white scars as though he had put his hand through a broken window. Her thumb smoothed over one of the soft ridges, her mind in turmoil. She exhaled slowly. Five years difference seemed like too big a gap to bridge. You’re a grandmother, she lectured herself. Behave like one!
Logan withdrew his hand, leaving Hana’s fingers feeling the lack of his warmth. The jolting stopped as the road culminated in a large open gateway and they crunched onto a gravel drive and up to a beautiful colonial villa, nestled amongst native Nikau palms. The exterior wooden panels of the building were white enough to have been recently renovated, whilst the roof was the original green corrugated metal. A period veranda and decorative wooden mouldings wrapped around the structure like an embrace. The place was picturesque despite the sheet rain and the Hilux crunched as near to the steps as it could, facilitating the mad dash under cover. Logan ran round and opened the passenger door, offering a hand for Hana to climb down onto the runner. She took it gratefully as the runner turned out to be more slippery than she anticipated. Logan’s hand was steady as she gripped it tightly, not wishing to hit the floor face first in front of him. Hana felt a flicker of something run through her body, like a low electrical current. It surprised her even though it wasn’t the first time but if Logan perceived it, he didn’t react, helping her down and sheltering her under his coat as they ran up the front steps to the door.
Hana shook out her jacket as Logan pushed open the unlocked front door. Taking off her shoes and adding them to a surprisingly large pile to the left, she stepped inside onto the stripped rimu boards that graced the entrance hall. The house was spacious and had heaps of character with high ceilings and wide doorways. The smell of frying bacon greeted their hungry stomachs and Hana felt uncomfortable and unnerved.
She hovered in the hallway as Logan walked straight ahead and into the kitchen, instantly conversing with someone inside. Hana delayed, hearing a female voice and feeling awkward. She looked around for somewhere to hang her wet coat and settled on the banister rail. It brought back memories of childhood; hanging coats on banister knobs. Often if she was the last one in, Hana brought the whole collection down on her head and had to hang them all up again. Sometimes her brother would loosen them on purpose to get her into trouble. Her mother had hated it. Despite her inability to hear or speak with any clarity, Judith McIntyre would sign with frantic fingers that it made their modest Lincolnshire vicarage look untidy.