by Bowes, K T
Hana’s white, fluffy clad feet were the least of the problems in school. In fact, so minor were they in the grand scheme of things that no mention whatsoever was made of them, even by the administrative director. By interval, Hana had shuffled around in them without comment and decided they were the comfiest work shoes she had ever worn. “I think I might wear them tomorrow,” she told Sheila.
The final dress rehearsal for the joint production between the boys’ and girls’ schools caused mayhem throughout the whole building and no one seemed immune to the growing atmosphere of culminating, frenzied nerves. Raw fear permeated the air, actors fled from toilet to Great Hall and back again clad in their costumes, gaudy and surreal, wigs akimbo and bare feet slapping on the parquet floor. Boys wearing eyeliner and lipstick hung around in the corridors alongside girls who looked strangely similar. Clearly this was a new take on ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Hana wondered whatever happened to the classic version she liked.
Dobbs paraded loudly around the entire site, parting couples that looked a bit too cosy between scenes, becoming more and more agitated. Adding to the flagrant disregard of school rules, which stipulated that the hanging around of students in corridors during lessons was strictly prohibited, teachers also leaned casually against walls, blocking walkways and fire exits. The volume was up as staff discussed last minute changes to scripts and waved their arms around like windmills in an attempt to make their point. Amidst all the bedlam, Hana’s fuzzy feet hardly warranted notice, especially when a WAGG student spat cola down the front of her co-star’s costume by accident, after being yelled at from close range by Dobbs for standing too near. The tension was appalling.
Obviously with the floorshow downstairs, the student centre was eerily quiet and offered some peace and solace for Hana. She got on with the jobs that often got neglected, tidying the brochure racks and files. After interval, her phone rang and she was greeted by the dulcet tones of the policeman who attended the emergency call the previous evening. “I’m going to send someone out to the house to fingerprint the vehicle, to see if he can identify the two men. It’s a bit of a long shot but...I don’t know what else to suggest.”
Hana, feeling sick again, agreed they could call after work, remembering too late she was stuck there until the others were ready to go.
Wandering through the staff room in her fluffy slippers she looked for Logan, as Peter North had been absent from the office all day. She spotted Pete laid across a couple of chairs on the deck outside the staff room, fast asleep. He snored loudly and a row of giggling faces peered through the common room window as the Year 13s came in for their study class. Hana noticed a line of spit-balls lying around North on the deck, still glistening in the sunshine. Obviously he was the entertainment in the previous study class although fortunately for him, slightly out of range.
Hana negotiated the round tables and obstacle course of hurriedly exited chairs vacated by bottoms late for class after interval. To her surprise, she came to the snoring figure of Boris sat bolt upright on the gross orange couch at the back of the room. Whatever was wrong with everyone today? Hana nudged Boris’s leg with her furry toe and he disturbed slightly. She leaned forward and shook his shoulder roughly, starting to worry that something was badly wrong. “Boris wake up. Are you ill?”
Boris snorted and wiped the dribble away from his chin, trying to rouse himself. As he pushed away sleep, he caught sight of the staff room clock and uttered a loud expletive. He held his hand out to Hana for her to pull him up from the low sofa he was embedded in, whilst muttering, “I am bloody late for ze class!” He clambered upright, almost pulled her over and then hobbled off, bent almost double; nothing like his usual supple self.
Wondering if she should try to wake up North, Hana decided against it. His head lolled uncomfortably over the side of the chair and a long glob of spit had formed a track from his open mouth down to the floor. Other bits of saliva intermittently travelled down it, making it look like an escalator. Faces still peeped underneath the blinds in the common room and as Hana went back to her office, muffled giggles came from the back corner of the room. The study teacher, completely unaware of the attraction, made her way towards the boys armed with a wad of detention slips. On seeing the approaching green pad there was instant silence and impressively straight faces. Just like magic.
Outside it began to drizzle and the slippers wouldn’t cut it on a journey over to the English department so Hana phoned Logan in his classroom to see what time they planned to leave work. She could potentially venture on the bus, but people in the real world might not view her slippers with the same lack of interest. The phone in the English department office rang for a while, eventually answered by an old faculty hand known as ‘Blow Fly.’ His name was actually Bob Green, but it seemed he was both irritating and hard to get rid of, hence the name. “When Du Rose turns up, I’ll pass on the message,” he assured Hana, slamming the phone down after dropping it twice.
Hana worked conscientiously for the next hour, well into lunchtime. She hadn’t bought any food so there was no real point stopping. About half an hour into lunch break Logan appeared looking wasted with his hair sticking up around his head like a halo. North staggered in shortly afterwards with a spit ball on his forehead and sat in his chair with his head resting on the table. He and Logan shared the barest of grunts at each other.
“The cops rang me,” Hana began to explain, “I’m just wondering what time you’re all leaving,”
North stood immediately to his feet. “Now. Let’s go now.” He looked completely disorientated and Logan put his hands on Pete’s shoulders and made him sit back down and return to his slumber.
“One of us will drive you home. What did your son make of the situation when you called him?”
Hana looked distinctly guilty. “He was actually quite busy so I couldn’t give him all the details,” she admitted, fending off Logan’s surprise with irritation. Before she could get properly cranked up onto her high horse Logan beat a hasty retreat, leaving Hana feeling stupid and unkind. North woke up temporarily to stumble out of the office and disappear as usual, possibly to a teaching engagement but then again possibly not.
Towards the end of lunch the whole school readied itself for the performance of a lifetime. ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ chez a group of spotty hormonal teenagers - many of whom were no longer acting, but living their part wholeheartedly. That was the trouble with single sex schools. It resembled the diet fanatic avoiding chocolate. It never ceased to exist and should the unfortunate dieter get locked in a chocolate factory, it had the potential for a not-to-be-forgotten binge session. Tomorrow would bring forgotten promises and broken hearts.
Hana’s slippers went off with the actors having been requisitioned for the balcony scene, although in what capacity was never explained. They appeared to be playing individual roles as some sort of family of furry nondescript animals, but when fame came knocking who was a mere slipper to avoid the call of stardom? The thought of sitting still in the hall for a couple of hours filled Hana with loathing and so she went periodically from the office to the back of the hall to watch bits and pieces of the play, answering the telephone as her excuse, not to mention her bare feet.
One of the calls that afternoon was from Bodie. Somehow he had got wind of the incident log from the day before. Despite being four hours north, he still had many colleagues and friends in Hamilton and unlimited access to a huge and all-encompassing computer database. It seemed the whole issue was something of a brain teaser which had got everyone down at the station talking; including talking on the phone to him. He was annoyed with his mother. “How come I have to hear it from someone else, Mum?” he whinged.
Hana had no suitable answer. “You were...busy...with your date. I didn’t want to bother you.” Explaining it all was too hard and still a little sensitive. She apologised and asked after his date. Bodie became coy, reminding her of when he was a little boy excited about some gift that he had made at school, like the toi
let roll holder still clinging precariously to the wall in the loo. She felt a rush of pleasure for him, at the thought that he might have found his soul mate and became nosey. Asking questions of a man trained in interrogation techniques was fruitless; she learned nothing extra about his date other than the woman’s rank and name and that she was a colleague. But Hana detected dissatisfaction in her son and thought it unlikely he would repeat the experience somehow.
The conversation turned quickly back to her recent one-woman crime wave. “Logan thinks it’s something to do with some scratches under the truck.”
Bodie racked his brain, trying to remember if there were any scratches, back when he and his dad used to hoist it up to change the oil and do other routine jobs. Then he asked the inevitable, “Who’s Logan?”
Hana fudged the question, not wanting to admit to her monster crush on a colleague.
Coming to no useful conclusion about the attacks, Bodie rang off and promised to visit on his next shift rotation. Hana was left holding the phone and wondering how to escape work, early and barefoot, without being spotted and unfortunately, without a vehicle.
Chapter 18
Anka ferreted Hana out of the student centre mid-way through the afternoon, worried because she hadn’t seen her all day. She raised an eyebrow at the sight of Hana’s bare feet and returned later with a spare pair of shoes for her to borrow.
“I can’t wear those thanks,” exclaimed Hana trying not to seem too ungrateful, “I’ll break my neck. How do you walk in them?”
Anka held out the practically flammable, bright red, pointy toed stilettos, characteristically refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. “Just try them on. They’ll look awesome.”
Hana reached for the right one, silently praying they would be too big but suspecting that they would fit perfectly. Which they did. “I can’t walk in them,” she giggled. Hana teetered round the office tripping over empty boxes and fallen brochures whilst admiring her feet. The shoes were very much Anka’s usual style, glitzy, debonair and loudly coloured. Hana, dressed conservatively in fitted blue slacks and a white blouse felt as though she embodied a version of the British flag. The red shoes glinted out wickedly from under the hem of her slacks, daring her to naughtiness. “You could kill someone with these pointy toes!” Hana giggled and performed a dainty pirouette before kicking her right leg out forwards.
Anka laughed out loud but too late, saw the door open inwards as Hana kicked. Peter North ambled into the room, looking behind him and shouting abuse at a Year 13 in the common room. He took the full brunt of the pointed kick right in the crotch. With a huge roar, he doubled over and fell to the ground where he rolled around in agony. Hana quickly withdrew her foot but mysteriously the shoe was not on it. Pete lay on the dirty carpet where hundreds and thousands of sweaty feet had trod since it was laid in 1982, making an odd grunting sound and squirming.
Anka, like a loyal friend, bolted out of the back door leaving Hana wearing one bright red shoe and palpitating. She didn’t know how to help poor Pete. She had absolutely no intention of rubbing his crotch better, no matter how guilty she felt. As poor Pete rolled over onto his other side, hands gripping his crotch, the moans grew in volume with a twang of hope resonating in there somewhere. “In your dreams, boy,” Hana muttered. She spotted the shoe tragically squashed next to him. Hana grabbed her bag, logged out of her computer and snatched up the shoe, shoving it onto her bare foot as she hopped away. She trotted quickly and inelegantly through the common room. The study teacher rose to his feet, shooting alarmed looks at the student centre door. “Pete’s not well,” Hana muttered as confidently as she could, “belly-ache.”
She looked back from the stairwell. The teacher stared after her and then at the sound of more moans, strode towards the door. Hana ran clip clopping down the stairs and into the reception. She felt like everything wiggled and wobbled as she teetered out into the car park, remembering then that she had no car. Clopping out onto Maui Street, she turned left and started walking.
Fifteen minutes later, which was ten longer than usual, Hana arrived at the rest home on the corner of Powell Street. She nodded to the matron, who sat quietly at the front desk doing her endless paperwork. Hana wobbled her way down a long corridor until she came to Room 28. The space outside the door seemed dark and gloomy with only the light from the overhead bulb and the aroma was a mixture of cleaning materials and the scent of the elderly. Once she knocked on the door and entered, the light was stronger in the room and the smell of coal tar soap and aftershave met her. The smells were comforting and safe and the layout of the room had not changed in eleven years. The single gentleman occupant sat in the corner of the room in a metal-framed wheelchair, facing out of the window onto a sunny garden. His face enjoyed the warmth, but his blind eyes saw none of it. He was dressed smartly in a black shirt and the dog collar he insisted on wearing looked stark and clean against it. Hana clopped into the room and with an enormous sigh, sat down heavily on the hospital bed which occupied most of the room. The clean-shaven, wrinkled face turned towards her with a smile betraying the heart of a gentleman. “What ails me girl then?” his gentle Irish voice intoned.
Hana shrugged. Even though he couldn’t see her, she knew from experience that the old man could tell how she felt. His blindness had finely tuned every other sense in the aging body. She could hide nothing from him. And so she didn’t even try.
Half an hour later, the priest asked, “So what’s the crack wit’ dis young man den? D’ya thinks he likes you as much as you like him?”
Hana turned to look at the old man, her mouth slightly open. She had recounted her story from a position next to him, perched on a visitors’ chair next to his wheelchair. Blindness did little to diminish the old priest and a game of draughts was his favourite vice. Hana sat beside him, balancing the board game in her lap, responsible for moving both her own counters and his, whilst giving a running commentary on what was moving where. Fading grid numbers aided the task, written by a fourteen year old Bodie in vivid black marker pen on each square. “Black 4 to C6.” She replied, ignoring the question.
“White 3 to A4. Taking two of dem lovely black draughts I do believe,” he chuckled, good-naturedly showing the crinkly laugh lines round his useless eyes and immaculate teeth for a man his age.
“Father Sinbad!” Hana exclaimed.
“That’s me. Priest of de sinful and de bad. How me mammy would have giggled if she could a seen me in dat pulpit wit me collar and me smock. What a name for a man of God, wouldn’t ye say? Sinbad. I ask ye.”
Hana couldn’t help smiling, but she had heard it all before, many times over many years.
“Aye, I know ye never tire of hearing me yarns but not today. Today I want to hear yourn. What’s occurring in ye pretty heart, Hana Johal? Humour me and tell the old confessor what ye feel.”
Hana thought before she spoke. There was no fooling a man who had listened to millions of confessions from behind a screen for the best part of sixty years. His blindness changed nothing in his ability to discern or read human emotion. “I miss Vik. I like Logan. A lot. But I can’t see a life with Logan because I am and always will be, Vik’s wife.”
She felt unbelievably sad once the words were spoken. It was as though she heard herself from the view of a stranger. The stranger would look at her pityingly, thinking ‘So this is her lot poor thing, destined to be alone until the end.’ Acknowledging it brought a sense of overwhelming loss, no longer just because her husband was dead but because she would never again know the comfort of waking in the night and hearing another person breathing next to her, or the companionship of recounting the mishaps of her day and sharing a laugh about it. None of those things. Just herself. Forever. It was a bitter and unfair second grief which caused a stray tear to roll down her cheek. She wiped it angrily away.
“Why won’t ye release yerself?” asked the priest, his voice soothing. “Even Jesus released de widows from their marriages and let dem love again. Why not
you, me darlin’? There’s no wrong in what your heart is feelin’. He’s a God of second chances, so he is.”
Hana’s sigh betrayed her to the old man as did her silence as she wrestled with herself. Finally she blurted, “I still have Vik’s things in my wardrobe. Not them all,” she qualified a little too fast, “but the things that he treasured most, his favourite shirt, his best shoes, the tie he wore at Christmas that played Jingle Bells. His things.”
She didn’t add that every Christmas she sat in the wardrobe, allowing herself the luxury of squeezing the thing that made the tie play the song and that every year she cried and promised herself she would get rid of it. She had to get rid of it. What would happen if she pressed it and it didn’t play, if it had died like Vik? She wouldn’t be able to cope. So every Christmas she promised herself that this was the last time. But it was still in the wardrobe. She felt both overwhelmed and ashamed.
The old priest went on in his quiet, reassuring way, his gentle but realist views having softened many an angry catholic heart or chastised a guilty one in love and compassion, the Father-heart of God in a man. “To love, Hana Johal, until death do us part…”
Hana put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear those words. She had mentally glossed over them on her wedding day; they seemed unreal and so far off. And nobody had said them out loud anyway. Not in the registry office and not at the Indian ceremony. As she had nurtured the fragile life inside her that was Bodie, Hana had eagerly run into marriage and not regretted it for a moment in the ensuing years. It had not always been picture perfect, but it had been real and their marriage grew with them, like a comfortably fitting glove. Until afterwards, that was.
Strong hands pulled her fingers from her ears and held them in a vice like grip; so firm for such a frail old man and yet so tender. “‘Till death do us part,” he whispered, “death, Hana and Vik is dead, him and all his promises.”