The Only Secret Left to Keep

by Katherine Hayton

  “I went down to see Rosemary today,” his wife announced. “She’s recovering nicely from the surgery.”

  Matthew nodded and mumbled, “Good, good,” hoping that he didn’t have to expand any further. He couldn’t for the life of him think who Rosemary was or what medical procedure she’d required. His wife talked about people all the time, and Matthew couldn’t keep any of them straight. Even when he met them, their faces blurred into one montage, all the same.

  When the silence stretched out too long, Matthew said, “I think the fellow Andrew that I chatted with the other day is coming around at last. If he can stay the course, I think there’s a good chance he and his wife will have a good and lasting marriage.”

  “Just like ours,” Emilia said, reaching out her hand and laying it over his. Matthew stared down at it for a moment, then moved it aside to go back to eating.

  Back when he was a lad, there’d been a flush of true love that made him feel like every cell in his body was overheating. A girl who walked in front of him into his physics class, always flashing a little bit of leg. During summer months, he didn’t notice, but in winter the school uniform kilt she wore had crisp pleats that broke with the back and forth movement. He’d been so entranced that Matthew made sure to carry his books in two hands in front of him. No need to make himself into more of a laughing stock than he already was.

  Emilia was nice, and Matthew’s mother had approved of her. Still, nothing she’d ever done had ever come close to repeating that feeling of friction and heat.

  She was explaining something now, her cutlery dropped while she moved her hands about in expansive gestures. It only happened when she became truly passionate about a cause or a crusade. That’s how Matthew thought of them, anyhow, if he thought of them. Emilia’s little crusades.

  What happens if she goes into your office and turns on the television? What will you say if she asks you about the man on the screen?

  Matthew’s throat seized. He couldn’t swallow the masticated meat in his mouth. He put his hand up, ready to catch the food if it came back out, and ran for the sink. When he spat it out, the wasted food sat in a brown crushed lump. His mother’s voice rang in his ear, are you so spoiled that you can just throw away good food? Kids are starving to death in Africa.

  “Matthew? What’s wrong?”

  He ran water in the sink and started up the Wastemaster. When the pressure from the taps wasn’t enough, Matthew got a long-handled scrubbing brush from under the sink and pushed it down the drain. The water spinning into the black hole looked like a glaring eye.

  “Didn’t you like the taste?” Emilia said, standing and wringing her hands together with worry. “I tried a new cayenne pepper but not too much. I know you don’t like hot food, but I thought a bit of spice would improve it.”

  “The casserole is beautiful,” Matthew said, leaning further over the sink, staring back at its one baleful eye. What would it feel like to shove his arm in there? To feel the metal blades tear at his flesh and pulverize his bones?

  He shuddered and stepped back, turning the machine off at the wall. “I just felt dizzy for a second,” he said. A shiver ran through his shoulders in mute support for his claim. “I thought I was about to choke, that’s all.”

  Matthew clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Just a silly spell. Don’t worry about it. You were telling me about Rosemary?”

  Emilia’s frown deepened, and she moved over to feel his forehead with the inside of her wrist. Matthew tried not to flinch back from her touch.

  “I said, I’m okay,” he said, catching her arm and gently pushing it away from her face. “It was just a passing thing, nothing to be concerned about.”

  “Come and eat the rest of your dinner, then,” Emilia said, her voice taking on a scolding tone that she may as well have inherited from his disapproving mother. “Before it gets cold.”

  Bile gushed up the back of his throat, spilling over his tongue in a flood, burning, sour. Matthew grimly fought against the accompanying nausea, swallowing the unpleasant mouthful down into his uneasy stomach. “I think I’ll actually go and lie down for a while,” he said, turning toward the bedroom. “I might be getting one of my migraines.”

  “Do you want me to call Dr. Phillips?” Emilia asked. “You haven’t had a migraine for years.”

  Matthew hadn’t had a migraine ever, in fact, but it had made a quick and easy excuse for family obligations.

  “There’s not much he can do,” Matthew said. “I’m sure if I can lie down in a dark room for a while, that’ll take care of the worst of it.”

  “Do you want me to bring you—”

  Matthew held up his hand, cutting her off mid-offer. “Nothing. Don’t do anything. I’ll rest on the couch in my office, so I don’t disturb you during the night.”

  Emilia’s expression melted into one of gratitude. Probably thinking he was such a selfless husband to think of her when he was in pain. The bile ate away at the back of his throat, steadily rising once again. He needed to get to the television and get rid of that image. He needed to forget about everything that had happened when he was young.

  Matthew turned away from the wife who was all he deserved and escaped to the solitude of his office room to sleep and forget.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bustle and noise around the grounds of Lancaster Park had been incredible. For Shannon, who’d always wanted to go to a rugby match but never been taken, and Sam, whose father had wanted to drag him along to sports but who had put his foot down and never gone, the whole spectacle was new and exciting.

  Street vendors offering a wide selection of food from fish and chips to battered sausages and chips had chosen positions that meant the people going to and from the test match passed right in front of them.

  Not as many patrons picked food up on the way into the grounds as they would on the way out. With beer being sold inside, the drunken revelers would need something to sop up the alcohol. That universal law applied, no matter whether the All Blacks won the game or not.

  If the game even went ahead.

  The assembling crowd held themselves more rigid and looked about more keenly than was usual for a home ground game. The tension running through the gathered people swirled and passed from one small group to another. When a new person was glimpsed from the corner of an eye, they were assessed, categorized, and slotted into their labeled boxes. A challenging task made harder by the divide running through family homes, splitting two identical parties into friend and foe.

  The ticket holders had a good concern. After all, the test matches cost a damn sight more of their wage packets than a regional game. If today’s event ended up being canceled by a pitch invasion, they had a lot more money riding on the loss. The uncertainty should have kept some home. Instead, more turned out than normal.

  Behind the fear of a useless ticket stub was the aching need for a fight.

  For fathers who’d found out their sons and daughters were bleeding liberals, the match gave them a chance to rage out loud under cover of cheering on the team. For sports-mad teens who claimed to only want to watch rugby’s dance of aggression live, they were willing to display hostility openly on the street.

  And for all the anti-apartheid protesters talked about human rights, they kicked back as good as they got.

  Of course, the protesters weren’t in equal numbers to the attendees of the game. Instead, they formed an edging to the fabric. One pop of thread and the entire expanse of material would rip across.

  They’d done it in Hamilton. The whole bloody game came to a standstill, and no one was even hurt. A few cuts, a few bruises, but the batons hadn’t come out, not then. The threat of disruption proved more than enough to derail the game.

  The second time around it would be harder. Lucky then, that the protesters had supped of victory once, and it left them hungering for more. Another win, another day when the match was stopped—and a test match at that—and the tour would be a sham. The South Af
rican team could slink away, tails between their pure, white legs, and New Zealand could go back to normality again.

  The police had turned out in force. They formed lines eight men long at the tougher entrances to the ground. The places where there were overhangs to drop projectiles off and so open that people could sneak up from any side.

  The lines were casual now. The officers’ hands hung loosely at their sides. It would only take one blow of a whistle for them to link up, and form a human chain much harder to sneak around or bluster through.

  Shannon led Sam under a concrete overhang to meet up with Lily, who was handing out stickers, and Hollis, who was handing out resentful glares. When she first caught sight of the macramé vest on Lily and the bright orange pants on Hollis, Shannon felt a nibble of dread. What were they doing here really? With the number of battles they already had on hand, did any of them need to add one more?

  Easy for her to think, being white as a snowflake. Perhaps if she lived inside the darker shades of Sam’s skin, the fight before them wouldn’t be as easy to cast aside.

  Even with all her openness and acceptance for people of any color, creed, or sexuality, Shannon still caught herself on occasion marveling at the different nature of Sam’s skin. It was still strange for her to reach for a lover’s hand, and see it colored differently to her own.

  Sam’s color and ethnicity were like a magnifying glass for the disturbances she suffered because of her sexuality. A large, African American man would have been troubling enough to most of the residents of Shannon’s hometown. To add the spice of gender confusion just twisted the dial on bullies’ radars all the way up to vicious.

  She shivered and shook her head, trying to dislodge the thoughts that wanted to make their home there. Today was for action, not reflection. In less than an hour’s time, they would be headed into battle.

  A War Played Out Twice A Week, the headline in the paper had read that morning. Her mom had stated that Big Norm had the right idea keeping the buggers out of the country, while her dad had glared across the kitchen table, committing her blasphemous words to memory.

  Usually, her dad was the one supporting Shannon in whatever daft troubles she got herself into. Never having been the princess her mother wanted, he’d been delighted with the tomboy they got instead.

  Now, though. Tensions strained along the familiar seams of their family life. Nostrils flared, and stomachs churned as everyone waited for the right word to start a knock-down, drag ‘em out fight.

  Shannon could feel her own anger boiling out of control, even if that was for very different reasons. It was like a wild thing, roaming through her bloodstream. The testosterone made her feel alive and vibrant, but it also made her want to punch and scream.

  She leaned across the small group and kissed Sam on the cheek, taking a moment to inhale a breath full of his perfume. He looked stunning. Gorgeous, even though they were all dressed in jeans and T-shirts that would enable them to run. Easy wash, in case the crowd pelted them with something other than the ritual slurs of abuse.

  “Everyone ready?”

  Shannon gave a start and sat up in bed. The late afternoon sun made her feel woozy like she was two drinks down already. She swung her legs around on the bed and stared at the floor for a second. Pulsing flashes of light danced around her vision. She bent over, placing her head between her knees, and closed her eyes.

  Ten… Nine… Eight…

  Sleep was too close for comfort. Shannon opened her eyes again for the rest of the countdown. Sam’s face flooded her vision nonetheless. A trickle of blood ran from beneath his wig down to the corner of his eye, some following the curve of his eyelid underneath, some falling further down to his chin.

  Head wounds bleed a lot. Shannon remembered that from the first aid class that she’d done as part of her retail training courses. When she got the job, the boss told her it was mandated, and she never questioned it.

  The first time a customer took a tumble, Shannon had run to the woman’s side. The rest of the staff stood still in fright, and she’d understood then. Mandated for her, not for the rest of them. Half a day lost wages while everyone else earned their full pay.

  The old anger stirred. No longer driven by the testosterone shots rampaging through Shannon’s body, her anger now had the sharpness of a razor blade, slicing, drawing blood. Back in those days, it had been like a battering ram. When it took over her body, it went everywhere, all at once. Blind, deaf, consumed with a burning rage so fierce that it seemed unending. When Shannon lost control of it, the effects were devastating.

  Just breathe.

  One of these days, her memories would start to slip and slide away. It was already happening with her dad. Some days she’d sit across him at the dinner table while he grasped for a single thought.

  Other times, of course, the whole world was still there within his reach, ready to be flung back at her if she stepped out of line. As if. Prison taught her full well what happened to little girls who stepped out of line. The grief of consequences would kill her if she let it.

  Shannon sighed and got to her feet. The day was too hot to feel like cooking a big meal for tea. If she wanted to make herself useful, she should go down to the shelter and help out. There would still be a couple of hours until they started letting in the applicants for beds tonight. She could help change the bedding and give the bathrooms in the dorm rooms a scrub down in preparation.

  Instead, she slipped down to the letterbox to check for mail, then stood for a while, transfixed by the play of light through the hanging pall of smoke. No wonder her dad’s breathing had become labored the last few days.

  If the fires didn’t stop soon, he’d need to pay a visit to the local doctor’s office and take a turn on the nebulizer. Even though he was better about using his brown inhaler each day, she’d caught him sucking on the blue one more often. His lungs just didn’t have the capacity to recover from these episodes any longer. Take that in conjunction with his heart, and soon enough, he’d be slipping away.

  The thought shocked her. Enough to make her gasp and turn back toward the lounge. For the disturbing thoughts, she would make her dad a nice, big dinner. Even if all he did was pick at it and complain about the heat.

  If she kept on having thoughts like that, God would soon strike her dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Bingo,” Deb said, lifting out a videotape from the box of files.

  “What is it?” Ngaire asked, reluctant to leave her cataloging in case she lost her place.

  “Footage from the match on the day. At least, that’s what it says on the label.”

  “Do we even have a video player around here anymore?” Redding said, walking into the room with a stack of scanned papers and placing them at the far end of the table.

  The team was sorting out the contents of the additional files and scanning them into the computer, an attempt to sort them into order. Mind-numbing drudgery that was made worse by the heat of the day and the irritation of smoke still hanging in the air.

  Three days of fires on the hills and still counting. Ngaire wished that Christchurch would sort itself out and stop mimicking Australia.

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll check the stockroom,” Ngaire said. “I’m sure there used to be one in there.”

  A few years before, she’d been assigned to endless hours of transcription. The wire taps would come through to her straight from the drug crimes unit, and she would painstakingly try to work out what the mumbles and muttering all meant. During that period, Ngaire had been in and out of that cupboard more times than she liked to think of. Each time trialing a different headset or ear covering in the hopes of catching every last word.

  The whole room was a throwback to the eighties when the new guard of policing branched out to electronics. Now, there was a specialized unit down in Dunedin who was tasked with keeping up with technology. A good thing, too, Ngaire was sometimes lost just trying to upgrade her phone.

  “I’ll check
,” Willis said, dumping some manila folders down on the table and then watching in horror as they started to slide. “Damn things,” he muttered as he caught them before they spilled his carefully organized files across the floor. “And I’ve got a paper cut,” he added in a tone of absolute disgust.

  Deb caught Ngaire’s eye, but she refused to play the game until Gary was well out of earshot. “Stop it,” she whispered while biting down on her laughter.

  “Oi, you two. Get back to work and stop making fun of my special friend,” Redding said, and that was it. Ngaire and Deb were killing themselves with laughter by the time that Willis staggered back in carrying a video throwback.

  “It’s got a conversion unit,” Willis said, frowning in bemusement as Ngaire got herself under control. “While we play it back, we can record it onto a DVD so that we don’t lose the quality over time. As long as it holds out for one play through, it’ll be easier to work with from there.”

  “Great job, Willis,” Deb said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Set it up for us then.”

  He fumbled through the different cords until he hit upon the right configuration. “Here we go,” he muttered, pressing play.

  The quality of the tape was appalling. A permanent line of snow ran across the top and bottom thirds of the screen, while the middle had a light smattering. The picture was in color, but it took Ngaire a few seconds to recognize it. The degradation of the images had rendered them close to black and white.

  A line of police officers hooked arms together and led a charge toward an unseen foe. The maneuver was pulled straight from the police guidebook to crowd control by intimidation. Although it seemed comical to watch now, when a line of uniformed police charged en masse in a lineup, it scared most folks into immediate obedience. The ones it didn’t scare, were singled out where they could be dealt with by other means.