by Bowes, K T
She inched along slowly, watching her footing and felt a switch under her fingers on the left after a set of double doors and architrave. The switch was old fashioned, a rounded metal circle with a sharply angled lever coming out of it. She put her finger over the switch and then stopped. What if it wasn’t a light switch? What if she set off the fire alarms or some kind of call button for the hotel staff? Hana hesitated, trying to remember what the light switches in the bedroom looked like. What had Logan said about the wiring once; that part of the house was due to be updated soon? Hana stopped and waited for a moment, listening for anything that would help her get her bearings in this private part of the giant house. Then the sound came to her in the silence, the gentle rumble of voices.
They came from behind the double doors Hana had skirted a few seconds ago. The doors were old and made of solid, elderly wood. Hana felt the grooves and knots as her fingers brushed over them. They fit so snugly, not even the tiniest chink of light escaped from underneath. Hana wondered if she dared knock on the door and ask for directions to the kitchen, the one place she felt sure she would find her husband. Hana raised a tentative hand and her knuckles almost grazed the wood, stopping as her body tensed in surprise.
Hana heard his voice, distinctive, unmistakable, softly spoken and yet powerful. A wave of relief washed over her and then confusion. Logan was inside the room. She heard him only because he raised his voice abruptly, in irritation. “It needs to be taken care of,” Hana heard him say, “I’m liquidating my assets. It’s all gonna change.”
Hana heard another voice, softer, more muted, but the tone of it was beseeching, like a low whine. She didn’t hear what the voice said.
“Circle Line is not a lolly jar - you need to pay it back and quickly,” Logan’s voice was sharp in reply.
Hana wondered for a moment why her husband would be talking about a London tube train line. And what did the person have to pay back? At the same time Hana realised she needed to move. It would be awkward if they came out and found her hanging around outside eavesdropping. Hana shuffled carefully on but faster. Avoiding an armchair and occasional table, she swerved to the other side of the hallway and found a switch, identical to the other. She took a risk and flicked it.
Light flooded the space and it all became instantly recognisable. Reassured, Hana went to the end, past the rope marked ‘Private’ and turned right, bringing her back onto the corridor with the kitchen on the left. She knocked on the heavy door and pushed it open with relief, hearing the bustling noise even before she saw it; the sound of crockery being moved around and the clatter of heavy saucepans. As Miriam turned and smiled welcomingly at her, Hana had a moment of revelation. Not Circle Line, but CircleLine. It was the addressee on the post she sent back; CircleLine Holdings Ltd. Now, what did that have to do with her husband?
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 13
The kitchen was visibly being downgraded from ‘bomb site’ to ‘slightly messy’ by the time Hana wandered in through the heavy fire door. All offers of help were refused.
“No, no, you sit your nono down over there and I’ll be with you in a while,” Miriam said with a smile, directing Hana towards the large kitchen table.
The industrial dishwasher gurgled and hissed as the last of the huge pots were dried and stacked away. The chiller door opened and closed behind Hana with a hiss, disgorging plate-laden women with various left overs and ingredients from the guest meal. Miriam wiped down the steel counters around the sink area and in what seemed like no time at all, the kitchen was back to its usual ordered self.
Hana looked away as Miriam paid her staff in crisp bank notes and tried not to wonder if it was a tax-free payment. It was none of her business. The two women thanked Miriam, waved to Hana and left quickly. Both women looked amused and Hana’s heart sank. Logan said the hotel was a hotbed of gossip and she was today’s serving, as much for her lost knickers as her surprise pregnancy.
Miriam gave a huge sigh which smacked of great satisfaction and refilled the kettle in the corner. “Hungry?” she asked Hana.
Hana thought about the enormous lunch she enjoyed a few hours earlier. “I shouldn’t be,” she said, a confused expression alighting on her pretty face, “but actually, I am.”
Miriam laughed loudly. “That’s what happens when youse eat for two. Then they spend the next eighteen years taking the food out of your mouth!”
Hana smiled with knowing but Miriam turned abruptly, looked hard at her and said a little too roughly, “Not Logan though. He’s a good boy. He was always different.”
Hana’s smile faded. She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of different. It had such varied connotations. It bore the potential to mean odd, strange - special. It was a sentence much used in the newspapers all the time. ‘The man killed his whole family for no apparent reason. Neighbours said that he was always a bit different.’
Temporarily distracted by the appearance of a plate of food set carefully in front of her, Hana turned her energy to sampling the hotel cooking instead of painting her husband as a mad axe man. Roast beef with mashed potatoes and four sorts of home grown vegetables steamed luxuriously on the plate. “Wow, thank you,” Hana said gratefully to her host.
The door burst open and Alfred appeared like a tall, thin tornado. His dark hair stood on end and his huge fluffy socks flapped empty at the toe, where they had worked themselves off his feet as he shed his boots. He went straight to a small sink in the corner of the room and washed his hands with soap. A sign over it said ‘Homai kia rima –mo nga ringa ma!’ Hana translated it loosely from her smattering of Te Reo Māori, ‘High five for clean hands.’
Using a paper towel to dry his fingers, Alfred sought out his busy wife and kissed Miriam gently on the cheek. It was like an unspoken signal she had been waiting for and instantly she turned to dish up her husband some food. She failed to notice the sideways look of consternation he gave her through narrowed, worried grey eyes. Alfred caught Hana’s gaze and winked at her with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes, masking his true feelings.
At the earliest opportunity while his wife busied herself plating up his dinner, the old man scooted over to the cupboard and dragged out the blister pack of tablets. He placed them clumsily on the bench top near Miriam’s rapidly moving hands and looked sideways at her, eying her like a venomous snake requiring an approach with extreme caution. He had none of Logan’s persuasive finesse.
Hana ate slowly, chewing each mouthful with care. Indigestion threatened as her abdomen swelled and her stomach constricted. Miriam had piled her plate up as though she ate for a crew of road engineers and Hana didn’t want to become distracted and find she had eaten it all, knowing she would pay for it later. She chewed a baby carrot with an expression of concentration.
Miriam eyed the pills but ignored them. Alfred fiddled with the kettle, getting cups ready for tea. He kept moving the blister pack towards Miriam who waited a few beats and then pushed it out of the way. Back it went and then away again on a pretext of reaching for something - the potatoes, the gravy, the salt. Each movement sent the pills further away from Miriam, scratching the surface with an irritating scritch. Hana grew tired of watching the little dance and concentrated on her tender roast beef.
The door opened quietly behind Hana and strong hands grasped her gently on either side of her shoulders. “Hey gorgeous.” Logan massaged the tension out of them lovingly and kissed the top of her head. For a moment, he observed the ‘moving of the tablets’ game, still going on in front of them and then in four long strides he was across the wide room, seizing the offending packet from between them. Miriam jumped and her eyes opened wide with guilt. Alfred looked relieved.
Logan popped out a shiny pill and it skittered across the bench top as though fleeing from certain doom. He eyeballed his mother as he snatched a glass from the counter; half filled it with water and thrust it into her hand. It slopped over the rim and dripped down her wrist and onto the tiled floor. “Take it!” H
e indicated the tablet with a slight movement of his head and after a second’s resistance, Miriam reached across and picked the tiny white ball up between her thumb and forefinger. She caressed it gently with her fingers, pushing it around the palm of her hand before popping it into her mouth and taking a noisy slug of water. “Where are the others?” Logan asked, watching his mother carefully. She shrugged and tried to turn away from him.
Thinking it was all over, Hana stabbed a roast potato onto her fork. She had it halfway between the plate and her mouth when Logan stepped quickly and quietly into his mother’s personal space and towered over her, just as Miriam swallowed loudly. His jaw clenched tightly and three words emerged, stilted and sharp. He enunciated each one as though it was the only thing he would ever say. The tell-tale tick in his neck screamed his impatience to Hana. “Stop. This. Now!”
Miriam took another swallow as Logan’s breath moved her fringe and Hana wondered if she had kept the tablet in her mouth somewhere after the first gulp. Logan’s grey eyes were the colour of smoke and controlled temper radiated off him like a pulse. The potato on Hana’s fork gave up its bid to cling there and slipped off into the gravy with a plop, sending shiny brown streaks across the table. Hana looked down and decided to eat as much of the perfectly done beef as she could to boost her iron levels and then call it a day. Her appetite fled with the arrival of the tension.
Logan and Miriam remained standing in their battle positions, Logan’s dark eyes boring hard into his mother’s. Without looking, he reached backwards and grabbed the blister pack. He held it up between them defiantly, almost at the level of her face. Rock steady, he looked as though he might stay there all night. Miriam gave in first. Reaching up, she took the pills and slipped them into her apron pocket. She pursed her lips slightly and gave her son a small contrite smile. “And the others!” he told her. Miriam nodded.
Logan’s body relaxed, losing its towering, threatening height as he seemed to let it go, turning to sit down at the table with Hana. He leaned heavily in the seat and Hana sensed the pent up frustration in him. Evidently it was an old, well-worn battle.
“God give me strength,” he pleaded under his breath, making it sound like a genuine plea rather than blasphemy. Logan rubbed his hand across his face and Hana heard the bristles scratch his palm.
Hana pushed the last forkful of beef into her mouth and patted Logan’s hand in sympathy, realising immediately how feckless that seemed. Logan threaded his fingers through hers and turned her palm over. His eyes fixed on his wife’s face, pooling shades of grey that betrayed his upset. Their joined hands gave Hana an electrical buzz as Logan used their contact to ground himself. She smiled, glad of the secure feeling it gave her, shucking his grip and wrapping both arms around his neck. Logan pushed his face into her red curls and breathed deeply. Hana heard the clatter of Miriam with Alfred’s food and stroked her husband’s hair, feeling his hand slide sensuously over her bump. The baby was squashed into the table edge and not enjoying it awfully much. Little jolts and pokes dug into Hana as it protested silently but occasionally painfully. She moved back slightly, trying not to break the intimacy of the moment and Logan’s palm rested over a moving knot that felt like a ball of tiny fingers. The baby stopped wriggling like it always did when Logan stroked her stomach and Hana relaxed.
For a long moment, they sat in their bubble of peace while Hana wondered what drove Miriam to threaten her own destruction as a weapon against her family. Surely if she was sick, she should take the pills. Hana had concluded for herself that Miriam had a Bi-polar disorder and it wouldn’t take a medical expert to predict how depriving her body of the necessary chemicals might end. “Are you ok?” she whispered to Logan and he nodded, his fringe tickling her cheek.
“Yeah, we’ve been here before. Often,” he replied softly. His tone told her he dreaded a repeat of whatever nightmare it unleashed.
On anti-depressants after Vik’s death, Hana remembered that feeling of finally coming up for air, of being able to see some way through the devastation of her life and knowing it was time to come off them. She wondered if that was what Miriam felt periodically, a sense that she could manage without them, only to find hopelessly that she couldn’t as the promised manic phase detonated her life again. Logan’s hand slid into the small of Hana’s back and pulled her in closer. She felt the overwhelming desire to kiss him begin as an opening flower in her gut, stopping herself only because of a sudden wave of embarrassment. The kitchen was quiet and her cheeks flamed hot and red against Logan’s jacket. “Come up to bed with me,” he whispered in her ear. “I want to lose some more of your knickers.”
Hana gulped as Alfred plonked his plate loudly on the table and she sat up. She straightened her dress and looked cautiously around. Logan leaned back but shot her a look that betrayed the sparkle in his eyes and the little-boy-expression which got her every time. She smirked at him as he bit his lip, enticing her and she slapped his leg playfully under the table. Miriam still had her back to the room, doing something at the sink and Alfred shovelled his dinner into his mouth like his life depended on it. He finished his food and stood up to take his plate over to the dishwasher. “I need to get back to the stable yard,” he said with his mouth still full. Logan used the opportunity of Alfred’s turned back to bite Hana teasingly on the neck. She felt the huff of his breath tingle against her skin.
When Alfred headed towards the table with his pudding, he found Logan sat upright with a pained expression on his face from the shove his wife gave him in a delicate place. “I’m all good for food thanks, Mum,” Logan said lightly, standing up and pulling Hana with him. “We need to go and sort something out upstairs.”
Hana protested as he dragged her out of the kitchen. “I didn’t put my dishes in the sink,” she griped. “It’s rude!” Her unfinished meal sat congealing on the plate and she wanted to get the waste into the bin before Miriam saw it and drew inaccurate inferences about her cooking skills from its silent accusation.
Logan wouldn’t listen; kissing her on the mouth as she tried to complain and driving her mercilessly up the stairs. “Shush, it doesn’t matter,” he breathed hotly onto her cheek at the top of the spiral staircase.
In the bedroom, Hana discovered exactly how a delay could trigger Logan’s insatiability. Her dress was quickly discarded on the floor before the door had even finished closing properly, pulled up and over her head by firm hands. “I’ll scream,” she threatened as Logan’s eager hands attacked her bra.
“Promise?” he asked, his voice loaded with desire.
“What if there’s someone next door?” Hana gasped as his strong arms lifted her into the air.
“There isn’t,” his breath was seductive on her skin, “I checked.”
“No!” she squealed as the tearing sound bit into the silence. “You didn’t!”
Her second pair of knickers went spinning over Logan’s head backwards, landing on the floorboards next to the bed. “I think I’ve got a thing about lace,” he moaned into her neck, his fingers tracing the soft skin of her thigh. “Lace knickers on pregnant women. I never knew it could be so hot.”
Hana lay comfortably in the big double bed, her head half on Logan’s upper arm and half on his chest. The portable TV in the corner played softly, some strange reality show involving hair salons going bust. Hana couldn’t be bothered to get up and change channels. Logan dozed contentedly under her and she stroked his dark chest hair with her forefinger. “I thought I was quite worldly but actually, I’ve led a sheltered life,” he sighed playfully.
Hana snorted. “You have to stop ripping my knickers and throwing them over cliffs, Logan! I’ll run out.”
Logan made a small sound, halfway between a sigh and a purr and turning his face sideways, kissed Hana on the temple. His eyes were full of pure lust. “Don’t even think it!” she threatened. “I’m not risking another pair.”
“When you run out, does that mean you don’t wear any?” His hands roved over her naked body,
settling in the places he had grown to love. Hana buried her face in his chest, running her cheek across his nakedness.
“No, it means I start wearing yours.”
“Na, sorry. That does nothing for me. But the thought of you without any...”
Hana’s mind felt amazingly clear for a change, not cluttered by work and worries about Izzie or Bodie or being followed by strange men. It was an unusual feeling. What a dreadful pity that at such moments, the human brain has such an inexplicable knack for self-destruction. “What’s CircleLine?”
The question was out in the ether before Hana had even properly processed it. It was like listening to someone else ask a question. Logan’s reaction was as though he had been shot, jumping and then tensing. Hana’s heart quailed, sensing she had betrayed him by probing whilst he felt vulnerably comfortable. His first inclination was to pull violently away, but Hana’s delicate stomach faced towards him. She brought her knees up in defence and felt Logan relax, hoping he understood how a hasty movement would cause her harm. She sensed his great self-control as he remained in the same position, trying to soothe away Hana’s obvious consternation when really he wanted to get out of the bed and run. “You got me there, babe. Well played.” Logan sounded tight, knowing he was cornered and it wasn’t a feeling he was ever happy with. Every fibre of his being yelled out ‘disaster,’ borne of experience, but Logan Du Rose was old school. He could plan and think on his feet, even when the world came crashing down around him. Which right now, he told himself calmly, it isn’t.
Hana heard his thought processes like clear signals and felt the fear in her husband’s jerky movements as he shifted gently in the bed, resettling himself and buying himself thinking time. He snaked his arm around his wife and pulled her in closer, kissing her gently and tenderly on the lips. Hana allowed herself to be distracted, but had sensed his confusion and was dismayed. She felt sorry she asked. She resolved to leave it, not to ask again and was surprised when Logan answered. “The Circle Line is the London Underground train line I first met you on.”