by Bowes, K T
He let himself out of the door and it clicked behind him. Hana lay and thought about what he said for a while, letting it sink into her consciousness. It grew darker outside as she peacefully snuggled inside her cocoon of duvet and blanket, abdicating from life temporarily. A clatter against the door marked the arrival of both Logan and Miriam, bearing soup, bread and fresh drinks. Miriam’s eyes were red rimmed and puffy and Logan gave Hana a look behind his mother, which begged her not to ask.
Miriam fluffed around shutting the curtains and straightening things while Logan sat the tray of food on Hana’s knees and encouraged her to eat. It was nice soup, chicken with sweetcorn and freshly baked bread. Hana began slowly, remembering she hadn’t eaten since breakfast and finished the bowl easily. Miriam seemed pleased Hana took such pleasure in her food and took the empty tray downstairs. Once she was gone, Logan lay down across the end of the bed with a huge sigh. “You chose the right afternoon to sleep through!” he exclaimed.
Hana sipped her tea, listening intently to the saga of how Miriam cried on and off for most of the afternoon, still bewailing her ‘poor Barry’ as Tama sat in the kitchen and tried to pick a fight with Michael, through a series of the usual jibes and digs. “I got really fed up and stood up to leave. Then Mike lurched across the room and picked Tama up by the throat and rammed him up against the wall. Tama looked terrified; idiot went too far as usual. Michael leaned in close to his face and hissed, ‘I loved your mother, do you hear me? I loved her. She chose that dick of a father for you. She chose him, over me!’ and Tama burst into tears like a big sooky baby.”
“Oh goody,” Hana sighed and snuggled under the blankets. “What a shame I missed all that.”
Logan snuffed a laugh without mirth. “Wish I bloody had. I pulled Michael off and Tama slid down the wall bawling for an hour, getting underfoot. Geez, I dunno what this whanau’s coming to. They all need a drop kick in the head. But on the bright side, it gave Ma something else to worry about so she stopped crying over Barry.” Logan smiled at Hana as though he genuinely thought it was a good thing. She furrowed her brow and rolled her eyes underneath the safety of the sheet.
“Is he still down there?” she asked, peeping out cautiously. She knew her dislike of Tama was awful but she couldn’t seem to get past it. Logan yawned and shook his head.
“Na, Michael came back in and got him. They went off for ages and then I think he took him home. Probably the most time they’ve shared together without smacking each other up. Maybe it’ll be ok.”
“Who gave him the black eye?” Hana had to ask, “Was it Michael?”
Logan lifted himself up onto one elbow, shaking his head. “He told Ma someone called Ivan did it, up north.”
Hana raised her eyebrows. “That’s Anka’s husband.”
The whole thing was a complete mess. She pulled Logan’s head onto her chest and stroked his hair, praying their marriage would survive the coming tests. She kissed his forehead and squeezed him tightly, wishing they could stay like this forever, frozen in time. To not have to face the world, the guys chasing them or the fear of a new life causing baby havoc in their already disordered world.
They lay for a while, comfortable in each other’s company. The thread of recognition unravelling in Hana’s brain suddenly ordered itself with a click and she saw the root of her trouble. The little metal box that fell from her handbag when she hit Tama came from her garage at Achilles Rise. It was magnetic. Bodie said it wasn’t his. What if it was underneath her car, fixed on where Logan saw the scratches? Possibly the box could be opened and something found inside.
Hana resisted telling Logan her theory. It sounded ridiculous from within her own head, let alone if she told someone else. She needed to find it first.
Hana Du Rose
Chapter 21
They ended up staying at the hotel until Sunday as Hana worked her way steadily through Liza’s abandoned stash of casual clothes. It was a half hour visit that lasted five days and Hana thoroughly enjoyed it, much to her surprise. A couple of calls to Maihi told them all was well back at Culver’s Cottage and Hana began to remember what it felt like to be safe again.
Logan taught her to shoot with the little pistol he bought. She wasn’t very accurate and found the kick back hurt her wrist, but she got the machinations of the gun, understanding how to reload and click the handle to flush down the air. After a few days, Hana was shooting to within 30cm either side of the drinks can, which Logan used as a target. He, on the other hand, blew it consistently off its wooden stump first time with one of Alfred’s guns and on one occasion, split it right open. “You’ve ruined the game now!” Hana complained.
“No I haven’t,” Logan laughed. “I’ve got another can, look.”
“I don’t want that one, I liked the other one!”
“It’s the same!”
“Nope. Definitely isn’t. I’m not playing anymore.”
“Get back here, woman!” Logan caught her around the waist and tickled Hana until she almost barfed.
They rode out again a few times. Hana accepted the little pony and grew to adore her as Logan showed her the furthest reaches of the property and told her stories about his life growing up on the mountain. He seemed relaxed and happy there, almost carefree. Yet Hana noticed how he could affect the farm workers with even a look and instinctively felt the authority he wielded on the property. Hana was wary of that silent, brooding part of him, fearful one day he may turn it on her. Logan made requests quietly to the men, but they jumped to obey so quickly she knew another side of him lurked beneath the surface. She tried to ask him about it again one afternoon as they lay in their favourite paddock overlooking the distant ocean, her head in the crook of his arm.
He shrugged. “Some of them messed Dad around, after Barry died. Taking advantage really. Him and Mum kind of lost the plot totally. I wasn’t home from school much but when I was, I had to sort things out. I was fourteen dealing with grown men. I learned how to make them take me seriously. There’s no room for error out here. I needed them to know I meant business. Michael was never really interested. Jack was amazing. He can’t hear or speak but he makes it pretty clear what he wants. I learned a lot watching him control the drovers. At uni I came home more. Then when I qualified and worked in school, I spent holidays and weekends here. I think the other bits of my life were so crap I was probably less patient here than I could have been. They pushed me, especially as a young adult. Thought I was going to be the pushover Dad was.”
“How did they push you?” Hana asked curious, but it was obvious Logan was shutting down. She inwardly kicked herself for ruining the moment as he started to move as though to get up.
“Just…ways!” he said, irritation burgeoning in his tone.
His grey eyes were the colour of dark, storm-laden skies and Hana reluctantly left it alone. But she heard the question come out of her mouth before she could check it. Realising it came out like an accusation, inferring he wasn’t being honest with her, Hana could have bitten her tongue off. “How could you come home at weekends? I thought you lived with Caroline.”
Logan stopped tightening the pony’s girth and looked at her. His eyes narrowed and his face was hard. “How about,” he said slowly, “my past life staying off limits to your curiosity for once?”
Hana was stung horribly. First anger rose in her chest and then dismay. “I want to go home,” she stated coldly.
Logan turned back to the saddle. “We are,” he replied and his voice was level and calm sounding, making Hana hate him violently at that moment.
“Not your home!” She said nastily, “Mine!”
Logan whipped round, surprise and hurt etched into his face before the mask of control forced it back inside. Hana mounted the pony, pushing his offer of help roughly away. She set off at a walk, forced to wait for his lead because she didn’t know the way, but squashing with difficulty, the urge to gallop headlong in any direction away from him. A myriad of thoughts rushed through her mind,
hate speak which must never be spoken aloud coursing through her brain and whipping her up into a frenzy. The pony picked up speed, becoming careless with her footing as she sensed the frightening emotions coming from the rider who was plugged into her consciousness.
Spooking at a blowing leaf, Hana was slightly unseated, hanging on to mane and saddle but losing her reins. Logan grabbed the bridle from alongside, holding the mare until Hana got settled again. He let go reluctantly and Hana took up her reins and directed the pony in behind his horse. She refused to look at her husband’s face, denying the possibility he may look sorry and enjoying the power her anger and sense of rejection bred.
Pastor Allen once told her anger was exhilarating, which is why it was so dangerous. He also told her it was a choice. Hana pushed the wise words to the back of her brain, avoiding eye contact or conversation with Logan as they rode silently back to the hotel. He had ruined an otherwise pleasant few days, shutting her out as surely as if he bolted the door in her face. Hana felt sick inside at herself for many things, for starting it, for pursuing it, for demanding entrance into Logan’s inner person when possibly she hadn’t yet earned it. She kept hitting a brick wall when she least expected it.
They travelled back to Ngaruawahia in silence, the atmosphere tense and strained. Back at home Hana wished she could have the house to herself, to relax and let her frustrations out in private. Along with her mood, the weather seemed to have taken a turn for the worse, rain threatening from the dark clouds above. Tiger gave her the ‘bum’s rush’ for having been away, acting snooty and aloof towards her even when she filled his food bowl. Hana felt desolate and rejected, suddenly desiring Izzie’s easy company more than ever.
Realising she needed to get busy again, Hana made a short call on her mobile from the bedroom, going to bed early without bothering to eat, her heavy heart filling her chest and stomach in lieu of food.
Logan didn’t wake her when he came to bed and Hana woke surprisingly refreshed at six the next morning. His sleeping form clung to the opposite side of the bed and he didn’t hear her phone alarm going off under the pillow. Hana showered and dressed in the bathroom so as not to disturb him and was on the road by seven fifteen. A sense of freedom overwhelmed her and she almost cheered reaching the 100 kilometre sign on River Road. She put some of Bodie’s loud rock music on the stereo as the BMW’s capable wiper blades shepherded the sheet rain off its windscreen.
Feeling nervous as she parked in her space and walked into school, Hana fought the realisation that in a few short months her whole life had changed completely. She felt unguarded and vulnerable, waving to the staff in the front office with feigned happiness and avoiding the glare of the ferocious receptionist as she usually did. Sheila greeted Hana with such enthusiasm she felt needed and special in a curious kind of way. “I love your new hair,” she admired, “but how come you’re so thin?”
“I’m not,” Hana answered, brushing off Sheila’s concern. But later, measuring her wrist with her other hand, she thought she probably had lost weight somewhere along the line recently. “Worry and stress,” she whispered to herself.
Hana’s desk was a veritable junkyard of paper and mail. Nobody had attempted to clear it and there was a mess everywhere. Beginning with the furthest fringes of the room, Hana cleared and binned, eventually finding a cloth and some cleaner in the kitchen and resorting to wiping and polishing to find the table and shelves. She avoided Monday staff briefing, opting to carry on clearing up. The brochure racks were empty and she cleaned and filled them slowly, working away until morning tea. Sheila had boys coming in and out of her office all morning as she fought to catch up with the appointments she missed while she was away.
At one point she emerged, wiping her hand across her forehead in mock amazement. “Do you know what that stupid little man’s been saying?” she raged, referring to Peter North. “He told the Year 12’s not to worry about working really hard, but to treat it as a gap year! Thank heavens most of them ignored him. Uni’s look at the Year 12 results because it’s the last complete year! How did that man ever get a teaching qualification? Does he have any brain cells?”
Sheila retreated back into her office to deal with the next boy and Hana pottered along. Giving up on the shelves in the main room until another day, she set to ordering her desk. It seemed best to skim read most things and put them into piles, so she could assess what was urgent and what was not. She made a folder of items that should have gone to Sheila, noticing with dismay some were requests from parents for appointments and were weeks old. Hana found the wooden surface of her desk before lunchtime, having made a number of piles of paper on the floor next to her. She polished its laminate surface and heaved a sigh of relief.
A sudden click, a waft of air, followed by a crash as the rear door smacked into the cupboard marked the entrance of Pete. Before Hana could move a muscle, he walked over the neat piles of paper and scattered them underfoot, ogling her the whole time as though he didn’t recognise her. Still staring, he walked into the side of the filing cabinet and swore loudly, causing a little knot of boys queuing outside the office door to stop talking instantly. “That’s a decent haircut,” he remarked casually, catching the printer as it plummeted off the edge of the cabinet he devastated.
Hana smiled as generously as she could manage from her kneeling position, trying to make sense of the papers he scattered far and wide. Amazingly the piles seem to have slid into one another and were easily put back together. Standing up, Hana went over and took Pete by both shoulders, facing him toward the tower of paper. “Pete, please watch out for these. I am trying to make sense of the budget and invoices from when you were in charge.”
His eyes went big and wide like large lemons in his pale face. He shuffled well back from them, as though he might become contaminated, eyeing them with suspicion and fear. Clearly his time in charge was not a pleasant one. He smiled broadly at her, patting her on the back and then made to leave via the other door. Bumping into the head of technology, he bounded backwards rather like a squash ball which just hit a wall, before pointing back at the pile and telling the newcomer, in absolute seriousness, “Don’t touch!”
Then he exited with his loping stride and nodding head bobbing past the window, busily going off to nowhere-in-particular. Hana was left to sort out the technology budget problems with their owner alone, which was handy as he was keen to blame Pete for everything from the rain to the state of the nation and Pete wasn’t there to defend himself.
Hana kept working away, punctuated only by a happy Sheila bringing her a couple of drinks throughout the day and at lunch time rather generously, a pie from the tuck shop downstairs. During the last period, a steady hum of chatter in the common room next door ceased suddenly, causing Hana to look up expecting Alan Dobbs to be in the vicinity. It wasn’t Dobbs, but Bodie who caused a stir, standing in the doorway to the office in his uniform, complete with quietly muttering radio and navy blue anti-stab vest. His hat was off and in his hand, but he made a striking figure stood there watching Hana wrestle with a calculator and a pencil. Hana smiled. “Am I under arrest officer?” she asked, making a boy sitting at the round table in the corner stare unashamedly.
Bodie grabbed hold of Pete’s chair and brought it to sit next to her. “No Madam, but you have been reported missing by one very frantic husband, who claims,” he held up his pocket book, pretending to quote from it, “she isn’t answering her mobile phone.” Bodie snapped the book shut and remarked, “No surprise there. She usually doesn’t!” and sat back in the chair. “What is going on, Mum?”
“Nothing,” said Hana, trying to be casual, “I needed to come back to work, so I came.”
“So how come your husband didn’t know that’s where you were?” asked her perceptive son, “And why do I get this feeling you’re not telling me everything?” He looked at her more closely, “You’ve lost heaps of weight. Are you sick or something?”
The strong macho policeman suddenly looked like Hana�
��s frightened little boy and she ached to sit and tell him everything. It just seemed too hard. There was nobody for her to talk to. It was an isolating feeling. Forty-something years old and no good friend to confide in. “We had a row,” she said, as quietly as she could, knowing the radar twitched on the boy in the corner, “I asked him some stuff about his past and he got…”
Bodie’s eyes narrowed and he looked instantly on alert. “Did he get nasty with you?”
Hana brushed it off. “No! Definitely not nasty. Defensive. He told me to butt out basically.”
Bodie gave the smallest of nods as though agreeing in a man’s world, privacy was acceptable and the past was the past. “What did you want to know?” Bodie asked.
Hana gave a huge sigh. “You know, it really wasn’t that important. That’s the stupid thing. I thought he lived with his fiancé, but he said something that made me think he hadn’t so I was double checking…”
“Interrogating more like,” said Bodie smiling, “I used to tell you to butt out all the time, for what good it did me!”
“This is different,” responded Hana in a hoarse whisper, “I was trying to get things straight.”
Bodie shrugged and pulled a face. “For what purpose? Does he ever ask you about Dad? Does he want to know the finer details of what you did and where you did it? Probably not from what I’ve seen. So leave him be. Stuff always comes out eventually. Deal with it then.”
Hana could see the logic of what he was saying. Her own father always used an old and wildly inaccurate saying - possession is nine-tenths of the law - meaning loosely if he had it within his hands, it could just about be counted as his. Was she trying to possess and own Logan, Hana wondered, when he was already hers?