Necessary Secrets

by Greg McGee

  ‘She’s at kindy,’ said Simone, taking the doll. ‘She’ll love it. I’m trying to keep the kids to their routines, if I can.’

  Simone offered Ellie a chair beside the sofa, but didn’t sit herself, instead hovering anxiously over by the baby, one hand caressing the curving cane on the side of the old bassinet. She was a petite woman of about thirty, Ellie guessed, considering that she probably looked older than she was. She was somehow elegant, even in jeans, jandals and a faded cotton top.

  Intuition born of experience told Ellie that this injury wasn’t the first Simone had suffered, just the first she’d reported. She suggested they work through a risk assessment together, that it might be really useful in determining how dangerous Lyall was and what sort of plan they might need to keep her and the children safe. She didn’t want to spook Simone by telling her that the real aim was to determine how lethal her partner was. Sometimes, just producing the checklist spooked them, and she would work through the questions from memory, but after such a long absence she couldn’t trust herself to do that.

  Simone didn’t object when Ellie withdrew the form from her bag and they started on the questions. By the time Ellie got to the third section, how much abuse the children were witnessing, it had become clear that the police report about Saturday night had not even begun to reveal what was really going on. The blow to the eye might have been the first injury that required medical attention, but Simone revealed that Lyall had often punched her in the stomach, kicked her legs and tried to strangle her. He’d tried to isolate her from friends and family, and seldom took her out in public because of his flaring paranoia and jealousy: at the pub he’d thought she’d exchanged glances with one of his mates.

  ‘He usually won’t take me out with him, and I don’t want to go, because he’s accused me of that before. I don’t make eye contact with anyone any more, because he might think I’m looking at them. I don’t laugh at anyone’s jokes, I don’t talk to any of the men, only the women, and even then he’s suspicious that I’m talking about him.’ She looked away from Ellie, towards the sunlit window. ‘What I’m doing now, with you, he’ll kill me if he finds out.’

  ***

  IT was an hour before Ellie made it back to her car. The last ten minutes of that had been on a Housing New Zealand 0800 number, on hold, before persuading someone to send out a repairman this afternoon to fix the front door. Simone had wanted to stay in the home for the children’s sake. She had no family in or near Auckland, so Ellie rang the agency and tried to ascertain whether Lyall had appeared in court yet, and what his status was. Ideally, the court list would be updated by email every three-quarters of an hour, with ‘Bailed’ or ‘RIC’ beside their names. Remanded in custody would mean breathing space for Ellie and Simone, but Maria told her they hadn’t heard yet. Ellie then phoned Zoe, a family lawyer who specialised in these cases. She was in court, but Ellie knew that if she left a message for her, Zoe would respond and do what was needed. Then Ellie arranged for new locks on the doors and windows and an alarm that went straight to the police. The trouble was, all this would take the best part of a week, a week in which Simone and the children – and the elderly Mrs Dempster – would be in danger. Ellie would have to get on to Women’s Refuge and see if she could get Simone and the children there for the next few days.

  She looked at her watch: 10.45. She needed to get across to Alana. First, though, she needed to know that Eric Sua-Bensen wasn’t likely to be in the vicinity. She rang Maria again – still no court update. Ellie didn’t have a choice: she had to take a chance that the judge sitting this morning wasn’t stupid enough to believe that a patched gangsta with previous was going to abide by any bail conditions. Before she could put the mobile down after talking to Maria, it rang again. Will. Fuck.

  ‘Had a call from Meredith at Sunset,’ said Will quietly. ‘She said she couldn’t get hold of you, that Dad’s done a runner. When were you going to tell me?’

  IT’S GOOD TO feel the wind. The remains of the house give a bit of shelter from the southerly. The boy sets me up at the table with a rug over my shoulders and shows me how to strip the buds from the leaf. He seems to understand my finger problems and sits beside me, so that my actions can perfectly replicate his own. ‘Here’s some good buds, Mr D, you reckon?’

  ‘Good buds.’

  ‘See these have turned dark brown an’re covered with resin, so they’re ready. We strip the leaf away, careful, not touching the buds . . .’

  ‘Right.’ When I get the sticky stuff all over my hands, the boy doesn’t get upset. ‘We got so much it doesn’t matter.’

  I’d woken at first light, disoriented. Had no idea where I was at first. Stared up at the sky, then felt something hard under my pillow. Was delighted to discover Walter. Rolled out from under the blankets and rugs and fell the short drop from the sun-lounger to the wooden deck onto my complaining knees. When I hauled myself to my feet with the help of the table leg, and saw the charred skeleton of the house, I remembered where I was, and rejoiced.

  The sun-lounger nearby had been empty. I remembered the boy had been sleeping there, the boy who had the nightmares. What had happened to him? Then there’d been a loud crash from within the ruins, like collapsing timber. I’d panicked and run towards the french doors, but it was only the boy, with the tomahawk, appearing from where the living room used to be, dragging a piece of blackened four by two. ‘Wood for the fire, Mr D. I’ll get it going.’

  And he did. Then toasted some lumps of bread in the flame, and spread butter and jam over a couple for me, and brewed a pot of tea to wash it down. What a start to the day!

  After breakfast, I was about to piss al fresco when he took me down through Carol’s garden and into the concrete shell of the garage, to show me the track he’d cleared to the downstairs toilet, which still had water in it but wouldn’t flush by itself. He showed me how to tip some water in from the plastic bucket sitting beside it. An old saying came to mind, way back from the hippy communes: ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.’

  The boy grinned and gave me a high five as if I’d discovered the formula for thermal, thermo whatevers.

  On the way back out, we passed an old metal cabinet near the door, scorched but not burnt. One of the doors was hanging open. Inside, the shelves were crammed with pots of paint of different sizes, all used, the sides smeared with the colours of the house, with Carol’s scrawl in black marker on the sides or tops: ‘Undercoat, outer. Back bathroom: Wash & Wear. Upstairs walls. Top coat, tongue and groove room.’ And instructions: ‘Washhouse: Okay for touch-ups but not completely the right colour!’ Carol had chosen the colours and supervised their application with the care of a Michelangelo. I had a moment of despair, a sense of waste that staggered me against the cabinet.

  The boy took my arm. ‘We got fresh water too.’ He led me back through the gate and showed me the nozzle of the hose, followed it back to the tap, just to be sure that I remembered where it was. ‘That’s how Miss Ellie found me here,’ he said. ‘Came to water the garden. I thought she was the department.’

  Back on the deck, he’d explained that we’d better clear the hut, because it might rain soon and we’d need to get the sun-loungers and the bedding back inside. He sat me at the table and brought the leaf hanging inside the bivvy, and began stripping the buds, showing me how to do it, over and over again with endless patience . . .

  It comes to me as I’m sitting there beside him, whose name I can’t remember, that I’m happy as I can ever remember being. I suppose, my memory being what it is, that may not be saying much. But still.

  IT WAS DIFFICULT getting used to the new, straight, family-oriented Will. Ellie wasn’t accustomed to factoring him into decisions about her father, or anything else of consequence, so keeping her brother informed about Den’s escape had been the last thing on her mind. Even now, sharing information with him didn’t come easily, not help
ed by his responses.

  ‘Out in the open on the fucking deck?’

  ‘He’s got shelter. Jackson’s built a little hut from bits and pieces of the house.’

  ‘Jackson? The fucking arsonist?’

  Ellie explained as patiently as she could that Will should be grateful that Jackson was there to look after Den, that it had given everyone a bit of breathing space because Den was adamant he wouldn’t go back to Sunset. ‘We have to think of something else.’

  But Will wasn’t able to move on to future options. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Dad’s squatting in a humpy made out of the burnt-out ruins of the house this little shit set fire to?’

  Ellie took a deep breath, then thought, I don’t have time for this. The alcohol and drugs might be out of his system but Will was still toxic. She hit the off button on the phone and started the car. By the time she’d completed a U-turn, so had he. Her mobile burped again. ‘I was out of line, sorry,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll figure it out. Tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘What are the options we should be thinking about?’

  ‘Will, I’m driving, I can’t do this right now. We’ll talk later, okay?’

  AT SOME STAGE I must doze off, or somehow absent myself. When I come to, I’m still sitting at the table, as before, but the boy’s looking at me strangely. What the fuck have I done?

  ‘Was that your missus you were talking to?’ he asks.

  I’m not sure what to say. I can’t remember talking to Carol just then but I know she’s back. The boy isn’t a doctor or a red and white, so there’s no danger surely in telling the truth. ‘Her name’s Carol. Does it bother you?’

  ‘Nah. She’s a spirit, wairua, like my nana. I talk to my nana in my head, ask her what she thinks. What would you do, Nan?’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘Up north, she used to. Me and Lila would go there, stay with her. You’d have liked her, Mr D.’

  ‘I’m sure I would have.’

  ‘She could tell stories, my nan. You ask her a question and she tells you a story. Sometimes, it was the same story, but second time around it would have a different meaning. Depended on the question.’

  ‘It always does,’ I say, unimaginably grateful for his under-standing. ‘You can’t get the right answer unless you ask the right question.’

  ‘That’s the sorta stuff she said.’

  ‘How long since you’ve seen her?’

  ‘She passed when I was like eight, but I remember her like yesterday.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ I say. Possibly a bit mournfully.

  His long face droops. ‘Jus’ the way it is,’ he agrees.

  ‘I used to say something,’ I tell him. What I used to do, I think, in situations like this, is tell a joke. I seemed to have one for every occasion. But they’ve fled. There was a saying, though. Uplifting, I think, if I can remember it. ‘Life is like . . . something . . . A haircut!’

  The boy is looking at me doubtfully. ‘A haircut?’

  ‘A haircut. You get it just the way you like it, but it keeps changing anyway.’

  ‘Yo!’ The boy likes that, laughs. ‘My nan liked a morning tea. Got no bikkies left, so another piece of toast, cuppa tea?’

  ‘Smoko,’ I remember. ‘What Branko called it. We liked to pretend we were working men.’

  ‘Smoko,’ the boy repeats. ‘Do they still call it that?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘I never had a job,’ he says. ‘When I get one, I’ll find out an’ let you know. Why did they call it smoko?’

  ‘Back in the day, the manual labourers all smoked. They needed their hands to work, but when they took a break they could roll a smoke.’ I’m not sure how true this is, but it comes to me easily, as if it might be true.

  The boy looks carefully at me, weighing something up. ‘I could roll us a smoke, Mr D.’

  ‘A smoke for smoko! We’d be duty-bound, wouldn’t we? Honouring a tradition.’

  ‘An’ that,’ he says.

  I watch him get some papers from the bivvy, lay the papers and buds and leaf out on the table and expertly roll a fat joint. There’s a definite art to it, which I’m too late to learn. The boy is such a generous companion, and what with Walter in my pocket and a joint about to be smoked, I feel for the first time that I’ll no longer miss my roll-top: I have pretty much everything I need right here. The boy lights the joint, takes a deep drag, hands it to me. I hardly know him, but it’s like being invited into a warm house by an old friend. I hold the smoke in and hand the joint back.

  ‘Smoko,’ he says, grinning. ‘I like smoko!’

  When I exhale, I see the boy through the wreathing smoke. A kindly old soul in a boy’s body. In his confidence and ease around his bivvy, he reminds me of my father, though altogether gentler, nicer. He seems older and more worldly than me now. If he makes it to thirty, what a good man he’ll be.

  The boy hands the joint back. Oh yes, I think, dragging it deep.

  He says he has a question he doesn’t know the answer to. I tell him I probably won’t know either, but the boy isn’t discouraged. ‘Is it good to keep secrets, Mr D? Or should you always tell the truth?’

  ‘Mostly the truth, I think. If it isn’t cruel.’

  ‘I told the truth about Dad smashing Mum and they put him away.’

  Oh shit. That order of secret. I need another toke, draw it in. ‘What are we talking about here? There are different kinds of secrets. Some are relatively harmless.’

  ‘This one isn’t,’ he says.

  Through the smoke, the boy’s eyes are watering. Maybe that’s normal with him, I can’t remember. I feel too old to bear any burdens. That time has gone. ‘I don’t know that I’m the best person to tell a secret . . .’ I begin. I want to call the boy by his name. ‘I can’t remember your name.’

  ‘Jackson, Mr D.’

  ‘Of course, Jackson. My apologies. But therein lies the problem. I suspect this is an important secret, yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘My fear is that if you tell me your secret, I may not remember that it is a secret and I might tell someone. More likely, though, I’ll just forget whatever it was you told me, and what help is that? You wanted to share your secret and the person you trust loses it.’

  ‘Right,’ says the boy, though I’m not sure he’s understood what I said. In fact I’m not sure I said what I meant to say. And can no longer remember what I did say. ‘Another toke, Mr D?’

  ‘What a good idea!’ I take another deep drag. Oh yes!

  THE SUA-BENSEN house was a world away from the Bishops’. The street was almost all private houses and Number 45 was the pick of them, a two-storey ex-statie given the full reno – double garage lock-up at the side and a big lean-to extension at the back with an ultra-modern kitchen. At least it had been when Ellie was last here.

  She cruised past, parked and skimmed the police summary. It might have been a duplicate of the one she’d read four years ago, and the one before that – although the first complaint, she now recalled, had been made by Alana. A oncer. The second complaint was from the next-door neighbours – also a oncer. Within six months they’d been forced to sell up and move. This time, on Saturday night, the complaint had been made by a taxi driver who was dropping people off across the street. Alana’s screams carried clearly, but his fares simply hurried inside as if they were deaf. The driver rang the cops before he took off. Alana, the report said, showed no visible injuries, refused to be examined by a doctor, but ‘looked traumatised’.

  At least Eric the Red, as Sua-Bensen was known, couldn’t get to the taxi guy. That nickname had to be either a joke – Sua-Bensen was a big, very good-looking brown man – or a warning, to do with his gang colours or his propensity for blood. He was patched, his father had been patched, his grandfather had been pat
ched. The proceeds of crime enabled Alana and the children to live well, but in a cage of violence.

  Ellie thought about the food parcels and toys in the boot, but that wasn’t what Alana and her four children were missing so Ellie left it shut and walked up the concrete path to the door. Four years ago, Alana had feared Eric, but had also been in awe of him. She hadn’t believed she could ever escape him or the gang, that she had no choice but to put up with him and keep him happy. And the brutal truth was that there was no way out for Alana, short of Sua-Bensen disappearing off the face of the earth. They weren’t married, but the violent relationship would continue until someone died. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be him.

  She remembered her last Christmas drinks, three years back, with the advocates in a bar in Kingsland. After a few wines, the conversation among the women had inevitably gravitated to work maybe because it was sometimes too hard to share the daily brutality at home. The talk got funny, then it got dark.

  That day, a gangsta whose partner she was helping had wished one of the advocates, Ngaire, a Merry Christmas, then told her that it only cost about five k to off someone. Make them disappear, he’d said, to clarify the threat.

  ‘Really?’ Ngaire had replied. She was close to retirement, grey-haired, with a late-middle-aged frailty about her, but she’d had the guts and presence of mind to reply that he shouldn’t put ideas in her head, because if that was true there’d be a much cheaper and more efficient way for the agency to deal with intransigent offenders like him.

  They’d laughed and drank to Ngaire’s chutzpah, then the idea took flight, of what their world might look like if the agency started putting contracts out on the worst offenders, the recidivists, the irredeemables, the ones they knew would eventually kill.

  ‘Just take them out,’ said Ngaire gaily, sipping her rum and Coke. ‘Get rid of them, wipe them off the face of the earth, and–’ She’d shrugged. ‘Problem solved, actually. No one will miss these bastards, no one will mourn them. Everyone associated with them will be better off. Merry Christmas!’ They’d all laughed and raised their glasses again, except one of the secretaries, who’d taken the suggestion seriously. ‘Wouldn’t that be, like, eugenics?’