by Bowes, K T
Going outside, Logan secured his bike, which Boris had driven over from Angus’ without question earlier. The truck was in the garage next to the Triumph and Logan made sure they were out of the way of where the others parked. Throwing a blue tarpaulin over the older vehicle and weighting it with a block of wood over the seat, he locked up and left. Bumping along the driveway in the Honda back to the main road, Logan stopped at the end and looked back at the villa which had been a safe place for him for a few months. He ran as happily towards it as Angus had run from it, both shedding hurt and memories too painful to walk through.
It was time for a new start and Logan intended to make that happen, even if it turned out to have been a dreadful mistake. The likes of Ethel Bowman were bound to believe it was. Logan shrugged to himself as he lingered, staring back at the villa. Who cares? Logan thought to himself, I’m happy for the first damn time in my life. With that certainty, he turned left to follow the back roads to Culver’s Cottage.
Just before the intersection with River Road, Logan’s phone chirped in his pocket. He fished it out awkwardly and put it to his ear. Bodie’s voice came out of it and he almost dropped it in guilt. “You driving?” Bodie asked him astutely. Logan fumbled around, managing to jam the phone into the cradle on the dashboard and pressed the button to put it on loudspeaker.
“It’s fine,” Logan answered, glad the policeman hadn’t seen his driving offence. “Speakerphone, go on.”
Hana’s son had a number of issues to discuss with the man he hardly knew, not least, an insightful snippet of information he gleaned from an old contact. “They’re still looking for the man Mum identified. It seems he’s gone to ground. He’s a nasty piece of work. He went to jail for a number of offences all involving actual bodily harm. Usually it’s other guys he damages though, not women. He’s apparently handy with a switchblade so Mum was doubly lucky. He works for other bigger fish and the word on the street is that he’s been boasting about his latest line of business being something lucrative, but clever. It’s something to do with someone who’s died. They left a particular item of value behind. Apparently.”
Logan picked his words carefully as he travelled past Turangawaewae Marae and down into Ngaruawahia. “Could...your father have left the...something behind?”
His question was met with silence from the other end of the line before Bodie answered, his voice clipped and curt. “He left many things behind, but actually nothing illegal.”
Logan exhaled slowly and tried to stem the rising annoyance brewing inside him. He was exhausted and found it increasingly impossible to believe anything but running away from the area in the middle of the night, was going to allow Hana to be safe. His mind strayed to the hotel. Nobody would dare to come after her there.
At Bodie’s heavy sigh crackling through the phone, Logan’s conscience pricked at the knowledge he was getting secretly married to this man’s mother the next day. Something told him the cop was not going to like the union and their currently cordial relationship would instantly change to hostile and suspicious, especially if Bodie started digging in the system for information. Logan gritted his teeth and tried not to lose his cool, choosing instead to think about it from the younger man’s perspective. Bad enough to lose a father without some jerk suggesting he was a crook almost a decade later. Instinct told him Bodie had already gone down that line of thinking anyway, probably dreading the possibilities more than Logan ever could. “Any suggestions?” Logan asked as the phone bounced in its cradle, as the Honda bumped over the railway tracks on the road to Waingaro. “I’m all out of ideas.”
“Na, not really,” conceded Bodie. “Try to keep safe. This guy will be picked up eventually. Without knowing who the other one is though, we’re pretty stuffed. I had a whinge and moan at one of the plain-clothes sergeants I know from training. He’s promised to keep a better ear open for incidents relating to you and Mum. He attended the assault at the house, but she won’t remember him. The other clowns should have listened better and made the links, but didn’t. I can check up on specific jobs online, but they’ll only tell me so much by asking. I won’t lie to you, Hamilton is stumped, although they are taking it a bit more seriously now. Someone from outside knows what’s going on though and they’re watching more closely than we think.”
“What do you mean ‘outside’?”
“This new cop’s turned up from Auckland. Real quiet and buttoned up. Plain clothes. He’s been given an office downstairs on his own instead of with the other detectives and everything to do with Mum’s case is now going straight to him. But when I tried to see him, I just got blown off like it wasn’t what he was interested in.”
“Do you feel like your mother’s being used as bait?” Logan asked perceptively and heard the cop inhale.
“Yeah,” Bodie replied and Logan’s heart felt cold in his chest.
Logan heard Bodie sigh as he steered the Honda over the Waipa Bridge and turned right. “Are you ok to do that thing I asked?” Logan inquired, to which Bodie replied he was fine.
They said goodbye, agreeing to keep in touch, but as Logan reached out to press the red disconnect button on the phone he heard Bodie call out, “Please keep her safe. I’m relying on you.”
“I promise,” he said, his tone sincere. Logan rang off as he reached the driveway up to Culver’s Cottage. Checking the road behind before he turned and slipped through the gates, he was relieved to see his vigilance had paid off and no other vehicle was on the Hakarimata Road. Beginning the steep climb, the Honda disappeared from sight of the road and glided into the bush which marked the lower part of the property. Negotiating the final, tight bend, Logan was startled by an unknown number ringing his phone. He pushed the button displaying a little green telephone and then had a conversation with the bed delivery company, who had mixed up the time the shop agreed and were less than an hour away.
Forty minutes later, Logan sat at the kitchen table nursing a particularly nasty cut on his index finger, incurred during his hasty dismantling of Hana’s old bed. He needed to empty the furniture from the room and take it quickly into the spare room, which was now the double guest room. Stripping the sheets off in a hurry and frantically dragging the mattress through had been the easiest part. Unbolting the heavy wooden bed was a nightmare. The spanner slipped as he worked in haste, having already buzzed the lorry through the gates and Logan slashed his hand on a sliver of wood sticking out from underneath the footboard. He wondered superstitiously if it was Vik’s jealous stab at him from the grave and dismissed it. There was no way the bed would go through the doorway, so he had been left with no choice.
Logan was both annoyed and inconvenienced as he struggled to affix the plaster to his finger, knowing from experience it wasn’t going to stop bleeding. He went down to the room he spent the night in and used the nasal spray to help his blood clot, even as he heard the delivery van straining up the driveway and making its final run up to the house.
The new bed looked nothing like it did in the shop and Logan’s romantic dream bubble temporarily burst. It was in so many pieces it didn’t look like a bed at all. Swags of plastic wrap protected the larger panels, but it was entirely dismantled. Some of it was dumped in the hallway, other parts carried down to the bedroom. Logan insisted the two delivery men help him carry the large wooden canopy, cringing as they caught the newly painted doorframe negotiating it through. The spotlight cables trailed dangerously behind them as they transported it roughly and leaned it up against the wall. He hoped and prayed the screws and fixings were all there. “Hey, this came with bedding as well,” he reminded them before signing to accept delivery. One of the men, a sandy blonde haired man who looked little more than sixteen, slouched off to the cab of the lorry returning with a sealed bag containing the voile curtains, duvet and pillow covers. Logan panicked a second after they left, until he noticed the two matching bolsters lying on the floor near the living room door.
He spent the rest of the day reassembling the guest roo
m before turning his attention to the master bedroom. By the time Hana texted to say she was leaving work and could he please pick her up from Alder Dale, the four-poster bed was completely assembled. Logan made it up with its new sheets, hung the voile, replaced the electric blanket on the mattress and plugged in the spotlights. Logan unpacked his own clothes and placed them into one of the bedside tables, hanging anything of importance inside the freestanding wardrobe containing Hana’s dresses and trousers. Hana’s old bedside table went into the guest room across the hall and she would need to move her belongings later on. Thorough, to say the least, Logan also made up the guest bed with fresh sheets and pillowcases, making sure the room was ready to be inhabited at a moment’s notice. Hana would not have bothered, but Logan ensured the room was as perfect as could be with its sorry plaster walls awaiting their turn for decoration. He had his reasons.
Hana was already at Angus’ unit having a glass of wine when Logan arrived, swinging hurriedly through the security gates and careering down the narrow lane between the properties. He neatly dodged an elderly lady pushing a Zimmer frame, but made up for the fright he gave her by waving and smiling. As it was possibly the only contact she’d had all day, she surprised herself by waving back, instead of utilizing the rude hand signal her great-grandson taught her at the weekend. Regaining her balance again, she tottered home to her two-bedroom unit on the riverfront, forgetting she began the laborious journey in the first place, to have her hair done at the Flagstaff Precinct. She only realised when she got home and saw her hairnet and scarf adorning her head in the reflection of the front door. She sighed and turned around to begin again, like a snail at the bottom of the wall.
Logan, driving more carefully round the streets with Hana safely in the front seat of the Honda, waved at the dear little old lady again for old time’s sake as he saw her struggling up the incline, clinging onto the Zimmer. He was alarmed to see her wobble against her walking frame as she stopped to lean heavily against it. He slowed down, but the smile froze on his face as she raised her hand and produced the most incredibly rude gesture, usually peculiar to teenage boys and gang members. Logan turned rapidly away, glancing at Hana to see if she saw. But she admired the pretty orange gingko tree at the entrance to Alder Dale and hadn’t seen the interchange. Thankful, Logan indicated left and risked the more obvious journey north up River Road, taking extra care to observe the other vehicles on the road behind them.
“Oh my goodness!” Hana was thrilled with the four-poster bed and how elegantly it matched the decorating she and Logan did together. “I can’t believe you sorted out the spare room as well as assembling the master bedroom! You didn’t have to do that. It’s not urgent. I’m not expecting visitors.”
Secretly, she was relieved not to have to sort it all out. After a hastily assembled tea of pumpkin soup and a shared loaf of fresh bread and butter, Hana set about moving her clothes from the chest in the spare room. The old drawers smelled of soap and washing powder and it felt funny transferring her underwear and socks into the newer, wood-smelling ones. Reaching into the long cupboard in the hall, she found a few packets of new soap and unwrapped them, stashing them around her undies. With Vik’s absence, his bedside cabinet had also become fair game. “Gosh, look at the crap in here,” Hana mused. His smaller clothing had eventually dwindled, given to charity shops or used for different things, leaving four attractively empty drawers. Hana couldn’t stand the void of their emptiness and after one final clear out of Vik’s old socks, she had filled them with odds and ends, batteries, torch, lavender bags made by her and Izzie for an Enterprise project and notable crap which had some use, somewhere, sometime.
The move to Culver’s Cottage had diminished the occupants of the drawers only slightly. Now they were in the guest room, Hana felt embarrassed at the thought of a visitor opening one and finding an old remote control, numerous batteries, some old certificates Bodie got from school and sundry other inexplicable items of salvage. Sadly, most of it went into the bin. After an hour, the drawers were empty but the dustbin bag was full. Hana hefted the bag down the stairs to the garage and put it into Logan’s wheelie bin, grateful she didn’t have to go outside.
She found Logan in the living room having built up the fire ready to light. He stood in a half glow, back-lit by the bare hallway bulb. Logan Du Rose was gorgeous and imposing and Hana’s heart fluttered nervously in her breast. Tomorrow they would be married and then she would have to let him see her stretch marks. Every part of him was honed to perfection and Hana bit her lip feeling inadequate. Apart from the scar tissue she felt under his shirt on his right side, there wasn’t a blemish on him. Doubt assailed her violently. He’s going to realise he’s made a mistake. I’m not good enough.
Unaware, Logan held the matches and debated whether to light it or leave it for next time. Hana came up behind him and put her arms around him tightly, feeling his solid muscular frame through his shirt and panicking inwardly. Logan rested one of his hands over her clasped ones and they stayed there for a while, her face gently nuzzled against his back, watching the lights across the river through the huge bay window and trying to settle her last minute nerves. “Last night apart,” she murmured into his shirt, “fight you for the new bed?”
Hana heard Logan’s smile in his words, “Na, you take it, it was my gift to you anyway.”
Hana tried to allow herself to feel lucky as she stood in the living room of her new home with her soon-to-be new husband. She finally felt as though she paddled the risky waters in the river of her life and no longer drifted along it like flotsam. She had to admit, it felt good.
Chapter 51
Logan’s face looked ashen as the Indian cleric bound the cloth around his hands, tying his strong olive fingers tightly to Hana’s small, light ones. He tied it so tight it made the blood thud in Hana’s fingernails. The Sikh opened his mouth to speak and out of the red and gold haze Hana heard her father’s voice. ‘Disgrace,’ came his words...‘disappointment...no daughter of mine...’ It echoed down the years, still causing the same clenching of heart and spirit. Then Logan’s face morphed into Vik’s and Hana knew she must scramble free, emerging into the day feeling cloyed by the misery and hopelessness of the dream.
Had it really been as bad as that? She was disturbed by how much she had blotted out her memories and replaced the bad ones with treasures; Bodie’s first smile, Izzie’s first tooth, the journey to New Zealand, their little family all together at Russell, glad to be on the white sandy beach next to the flat green ocean.
Hana lay still and thought about Logan. He was nothing like Vik. He would protect her, but he wouldn’t stand for her being an idiot about it either. Vik had been an earth scientist and engineer, which meant he was also a realist. Hana was fanciful, impulsive and creative. Logan related to that artistic part of her, but she felt he would have the logic and grounding to be able to hold onto her when she embarked upon some bizarrely unrealistic mission. Hana lay in bed musing, realising at the same time; her new marriage would never work as long as she persisted in comparing her new husband to her dead one.
“That’s the trouble,” Father Sinbad once told her, “with losing a partner before either of you were ready. Everything dey were is immortalised in a sheen of perfection. It never had a chance to dull or grow old and stale before dey were prematurely taken away. Age and life did nothin’ to dem; dey remained as youthful and vibrant as the day you last saw dem, despite the heavy tread of time on the stairs of life and the expansion of flesh and receding of hair in yer own world.”
Vik’s indiscretions were glossed over in a haze of perfection. It was true. Hana rolled over in the big bed, enjoying the softness of the mattress and the newness of the sheets. The duvet seemed thicker and squishier than normal and out of curiosity she undid one of the poppers at the bottom. It was not her duvet. It was new and pristine clean. Logan had made up the bed, but forgotten to remove the price tag from the new duvet. It had been clipped through the white label which was
stitched into the fabric, its plastic fixing still wedged firmly in place and the cardboard price tag dangling helplessly and somewhat bent from it. It was expensive, far more than Hana would ever have spent on herself and the washing instructions insisted it was ‘Dry clean only’ and made from duck down and fibres. No wonder she slept well. She lay back down and snuggled underneath the covers. Then she wondered if the pillows were new also but resisted the urge to check, partly because it was so chilly when she moved around outside the comfort of the covers.
Emotionally it felt as though she stood at the top of a mountain, having had a long and tiring climb up to the summit. The question was; would she run happily down, accepting the scrapes and falls on the way, or try to pick the safe path? Hana didn’t know the answer. Thinking about Logan was pleasurable. He was attentive and kind and clearly adored her. She felt he would give her the moon if she asked but detected underneath it all, a strong backbone made of metal that would possibly not bend or yield when pushed. Hana had yet to actually test his resolve. He was handsome and she was proud to be seen with him. The mental chant, you’re not good enough, returned and she needed to work hard to keep the anxiety at bay. Yet in those moments when he looked unsure of himself and flustered, that was when she loved him the most. She was very much attracted to him but terrified of their intimacy.
There was also the knotty issue of faith, which Hana acknowledged may well come back to bite her. And bite her hard. Although raised a Catholic, Logan seemed to have a lip service attitude to God. He respected her beliefs and didn’t obstruct or challenge her, but she was aware that to other Christians, she was allowing herself to become unequally yoked, which was tantamount to biblical disobedience. At some point, it could become a problem. But who was she to decide whether or not Logan was her spiritual equal? Well aware of her own faults and foibles, Hana felt ill-equipped to judge Logan’s credentials. On the other hand, when she thought about how he ran his strong fingers through his hair in that hesitant way and made it stick up at the front and how he kept eye contact with her in a crowded room, she felt powerless to put down the first real chance at happiness since Vik’s death.