But this green room was no fun ride. Ben looked around. A steel bed stood against the curve of wall. Under it was a disposable cardboard potty. On the ceiling was a bonnet of black glass with a flashing red light that winked at him every twenty-six seconds. And every fifteen minutes a guard pressed his face up to the small window in the door. The light was left on all night. Ben was glad for this though, even if it did shine into his sleep and wind itself around his dreams. Darkness was scarier.
Next morning he was permitted one free phone call. He called his mum.
‘You okay, boy?’
‘Yeah … Hey, Ma, don’t forget to visit. You gotta call 0800VISITS. Tell them to get me to make an appointment or they won’t let you in. You hear me?’
‘Sure thing, baby.’
‘Also money for food, a TV, and a radio.’
‘Who do you think I am? Fuckin’ Santa Claus?’
He could hear the other kids screaming in the background; the loudest squeal was probably Cody.
‘I gotta go,’ she said after a long pause.
‘Yeah.’
‘Look after yourself, Benjamin, boy. You hear me?’
‘Sure.’
Then the phone went dead.
Beyond
The law. You must be chewing on that now, boy. Or perhaps your own small world is still wrapped too tightly around you, like an unfurled koru, and you cannot see beyond it.
I was talking about the law when last I left off. I keep on, even though you do not yet hear me. What I hope for is that my words reach you on a dream, words that find and mend the severed cord, which catapulted you into this darkness.
New people arrived on this land – white settlers and those men left here for months at a time to catch our seals and harpoon our whales. And with them came an unruliness we had not experienced before – a disorder fuelled by alcohol, greed, and a lust for women.
Even some of our own, usually those living along the coastline of this beautiful land and so the first to come into contact with this new pale tribe, were sucked into the downward spiral, trading their wives and daughters, and land they did not individually own, for the musket. The musket – a weapon which surpassed all others. A weapon that promised power.
The British Crown held some concerns for the ‘indigenous’ people, as they were wont to call us. However, of greater alarm to them was the competition amongst crooked land agents and nations hungry for this ‘new’ and valuable country. The Crown had to have control. So in haste a treaty was drawn up which would give the Queen the right to impose her law on this far-flung place and the singular right to buy our land.
And somewhere, woven in amongst the words, was also the intent to safeguard our interests …
Chapter Seventeen
CARLA
Carla looked out of the window at the chain of identical townhouses reaching down the slope of freshly turned earth. With echoes of British council housing, another row rose up behind these in a paler hue. And behind these, another, and then another, the cancer finally curtailed by a main road, which carved a thoroughfare through them.
The farm had not sold easily, as the agent had predicted. The market was flagging, and trying to sell a farm that had once been the scene of a murder was a big ask. Carla felt as if she was selling off some stained, second-hand garment.
A developer finally bought it, haggling her down to well below the government valuation. ‘Love to offer you more, Mrs Reid. I really would. But my hands are tied. I’ll barely recover costs. People are superstitious creatures, you know, and the farm is very run-down.’
Her agent advised her to accept. It was the only offer they’d received and he was right, the place was run-down. The garden had reverted to weeds and the charm of the homestead had long since expired. Then again, a farm in the fastest-growing district in the country should not have needed charm to sell. But Carla was tired. And she needed the money; the farm’s finances had been in a worse state than Kevin had ever let on. Learning of his secrecy had come as yet another blow, further eroding the certainty of the past. She offered Rangi and Rebecca most of the stock in lieu of money owed them, and accepted the developer’s bid. Later, she learnt that he’d got council approval to subdivide the land into ten lots, selling on each for more than he’d paid her for the entire farm. But she didn’t curse or despair, instead, simply mused at the parallels it reflected in her life – the whole butchered, the remainder a corpse of disconnected fragments.
She decided on Unit 32C in a morning, putting in an offer at midday and by four o’clock, owning the unit. It was all she could afford, and the position meant she’d be close to The Bays and therefore to Kevin.
His specialists, concerned that the additional stress would be detrimental to his precarious state of mind, had advised her to put Kevin in respite care before packing up. It would also give Carla a much-needed break. She hadn’t been able to afford a night nurse, and by the time the move had come round, was exhausted. At first she’d baulked at the idea of putting him in care. It meant she was opting out, dispensing with her marriage vows – for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Yet The Bays offered something better than anything she could ever muster.
Kevin didn’t even look up when she left him there that first day, the institutional aroma of cabbage and mince already vying for his limited attention.
She phoned later to check on him. The nurse reported that he’d been asking for Carla all afternoon, but advised against speaking with him, warning it would only upset Kevin further.
Carla replaced the receiver and stood alone in her new lounge, cardboard packing boxes piled high around her. She’d managed to reduce the moving costs by opting to unpack herself. Vera and Bev did offer to help, but she’d declined. Anything and everything once precious to her had been fingered and handled, inspected and analysed. She needed to stop the relentless scrutiny, the vulgar dissection of her life. No one other than she would unpack her belongings. There wasn’t much anyway. She’d been ruthless about getting rid of stuff, with the exception of Jack’s things.
After locating the kettle in the ‘smoko’ box, Carla made herself a cup of tea, then sank down onto the new cappuccino-coloured carpet and picked at one of Bev’s salmon and cucumber sandwiches. Already she yearned for the heady cocktail of the family home – polished parquet floors, woodsmoke, cow manure, and old-fashioned roses. Her new apartment with its thin walls, budget kitchen, and Pacifica wool-mix carpet, was devoid of soul. She could have been posing inside some generic housing catalogue.
She tried to force out tears, but none came, only a silly barking noise. How she longed to cry, yet even that release was denied her. She lay back on the floor and stared up at the low ceiling, eventually drifting off to sleep.
She awoke with a jolt, her chin wet with drool and one arm thick with pins and needles. The smell of fish was strong in her nostrils – a half-eaten salmon sandwich lay beside her on the carpet, the dry bread curling up at the corners.
Carla sat up and took a swig of cold tea, flushing the scum of sleep off her tongue. Outside, it was already dark. Through the walls, she could hear the muffled tones of the evening news. She rubbed her eyes and squinted at her watch – 6:12 p.m. Slowly she got up, her body holding onto the awkward position in which she had fallen asleep, and she shuffled through the small apartment. ‘Compact’ was the word the agent had used. She felt the loss of her history acutely – the holes in the walls where she’d impatiently guessed at stud positions when hanging a picture; the golden stains blooming over her oven window; the layer of ash in the fireplace grate; the picture window which led the eye into a garden of birthday parties. The history of a home.
Her solitariness was unsettling. She’d lived alone before, but of her own choice as a rebellious and determined young student. Now the solitude had been thrust upon her and she longed for the very connection, company, and oversight she had once shunned.
She wandered into the kitchen. Fingers of white light from her ne
ighbour’s kitchen just metres away poked into the room. The proximity to strangers felt uncomfortable.
Carla switched on her own light, the neon strip stuttering to attention, and fiddled with the venetian blind. It dropped a few centimetres, then jammed. While adjusting the cord, she peered out of the window. A small hand was wiping clear a porthole on the steamed-up window opposite, in which an Asian woman’s smiling face appeared. Carla successfully dropped the blind.
The next month passed in a haze of broken sleep and mercurial moods. Nights seeped into mornings, and mornings into afternoons. When asleep, Carla was plagued by disturbing dreams, and when awake, by questions. What if she’d secured the garage door that night? What if she hadn’t invited Jack over for their anniversary dinner? What if they’d gone to a restaurant instead? Why had she uttered those final cruel words to him? What did it matter if he wanted to live in the city? What if …? Why …? If only …
Food and hygiene became incidental, Carla’s body gradually losing the plumpness and turgor of well-being. She went outdoors only when she had to, and used the answering machine to bounce unexpected callers. Unable to concentrate for any length of time, she gave up on reading and turned to television, often watching mindlessly for hours at a time.
One night she awoke from a feverish dream, her body wet with perspiration and her bedclothes in disarray. The red numbers of the bedside clock fluoresced in the blackness. It was just after three. Her bladder was full.
The bathroom light was unforgiving, her gaunt reflection made even more unattractive by the craters of rust already pitting the cheap cabinet mirror like acne scars. Wide-awake, she shuffled down the hall to make a warm drink, and was startled to discover her kitchen again illuminated by her neighbour’s intrusive light. It was three in the morning!
She peered through the glass. There was the woman again; her back turned this time, and rocking an infant on her hip. Carla had bumped into her neighbour once when she’d been putting out the rubbish. They’d introduced themselves and exchanged simple niceties, but when ‘Mingyu’ had invited her over for tea, Carla had quickly made an excuse. After that, she was careful to venture outdoors only when she knew she was unlikely to meet the petite Asian lady.
The scene now before her transported Carla back to the night-time vigils she and Kevin endured after Jack’s birth. It had taken a full three years before they’d managed to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Exhausted and robbed of her sanity and good humour, Carla had found herself resenting the colicky bundle she’d waited so long for. In the end, it was her faith, and Kevin’s quiet support, which got her through.
Carla had always kept a strong faith. It did not really fit into the prescribed Catholic mould of her Italian upbringing, but was rather a distillation of many religions, a code of living, a reassurance that the force of good would ultimately win out.
Kevin, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed atheist when she met him. Stonehearted nuns had marred his childhood in a Catholic boarding school. Being locked in cupboards, beaten for minor misdemeanours, and worse, had served to permanently taint the notion of religion for him. As far as he was concerned, God, if there was indeed a deity, had failed him.
Over the course of their marriage, however, Kevin mellowed. Perhaps it was Carla’s quiet conviction that finally enlisted him. And while he never openly admitted it, she suspected that in recent years he’d come to even share some of her beliefs.
Carla slammed down the mug in her hand and turned off the kettle. The irony. Kevin had been right all along. Religion was a nonsense. A fiction to make the pain of a random existence seem purposeful.
She opened the bread bin and put a hand into its cool cavity. Then her fingers were wrapping around her secret. The absurdity of hiding the bottle was apparent to her. There was no one to hide it from, only ‘the other Carla’, the one she pretended she still was.
Impatiently, she fumbled with the cap before filling her mug with the clear colourless liquor.
The first mouthful shocked, the second numbed, and by the third, the angles and edges of her life were being sanded and smoothed.
Chapter Eighteen
THE JOURNALIST
Mike Adams sat at his PC, trying to fulfil the three-thousand-word brief. He wanted the piece out of the way and done with. His wife was at a baby shower, so the evening was all his; he had no excuse. Yet the story refused to flow, every phrase vetoed en route to the screen.
Word count: 207.
He stood up and rammed his chair back under the desk. The computer screen flickered, threatening to shut down. The Word document reappeared. Adams quickly pressed Save.
Out of the apartment window the black cone of Rangitoto Island was silhouetted against a bleeding sky. Very apt, he thought. That’s what Rangitoto meant in Māori – ‘bloody sky’. So he hadn’t forgotten everything he’d been taught.
He loved their tiny apartment for the view alone. Rangitoto was as haunting as the Mona Lisa, revealing the same silhouette irrespective of the viewer’s vantage. He always felt a calm come over him when gazing upon the dormant volcano. It never failed to take him outside of himself and make him feel part of something bigger.
The smell of lamb vindaloo wafted up from the takeaway below. He was hungry. He grabbed his wallet and headed for the door.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ said the little Indian man with Dr Spock ears. So Adams decided to take a stroll along the waterfront instead of paging through out-of-date magazines.
It was high tide and waves pounded against the sea wall, spraying a cool, briny mist over him. It felt surprising, the wetness, in contrast to the stale air of the apartment. It felt real.
The sound of a bicycle bell jolted him out of his reverie; he’d crossed into the cycle lane.
‘Keep your hair on!’ he shouted after the orange Lycra apparition, even though he knew he’d been in the wrong. But he was unsettled and angry. The interview with Toroa’s mother had been a disaster. His worst. And he’d nearly got thumped in the process. More than that, though, it felt as if the very ground under him had shifted. His journalistic aspirations seemed suddenly artificial and academic. It had been a strange past few weeks as it was, with the pending arrival of their first child ushering in a raft of powerful emotions and a period of self-scrutiny.
What had he hoped to achieve interviewing her? Give the underdog a voice? Identify the reason criminals were becoming younger and younger? Instigate some social reform?
Had he really believed he could write something of depth that would inspire people to stop, think, and even change? He’d once aspired to becoming a lawyer – been in love with the notion of helping his fellow man. Who was he fooling? A career in law had all the allure of Pākehā prestige and offered a safe distance from his past. When he didn’t get into Law School, he opted for journalism, espousing the same idealistic motivations. Perhaps his intentions had once been pure, however they’d long since been buried beneath a much stronger drive – to sell the story, impress with the manipulation of words, win awards. Those were the real sirens leading him on and gradually eroding his integrity.
Today’s interview had been different. It had unexpectedly pierced his carefully cultivated mantle.
Adams thought back to the afternoon. He felt confused and conflicted about it. He was angry with the woman for smoking when she had a baby on the way. For even having another child when she’d already had six, one of whom was a murderer.
Yet the purple bruises encircling her arms, they troubled him. And her tired, pregnant body. The vehemence in her voice too, when she spoke about her son. It reminded him of …
And she painted! He shook his head and laughed out loud. An elderly couple out walking their dog turned and stared.
Miriama Kāpehu painted. Beautifully. Despite all the crap in her life, she still painted.
He was frustrated with himself for losing his objectivity, for letting emotions cloud the journalistic process. He was also angry at his own dishonesty.
He hadn’t thought about her in the longest time.
The waves sucked his thoughts out to sea, then brought them crashing back.
It was too hard – the confusing debate in his head. Had he been fooling himself all this time?
Suddenly he felt unanchored and lost. He had a child on the way. He owed it authenticity. Owed it a code of living he subscribed to, not merely paid lip service to. But who was he? What was he? He’d turned his back on his heritage. That surely spoke louder than three thousand words.
He stopped and stood in the shadow of a giant pohutakawa tree. Three night-kayakers were carving lines through the moon-silvered water. A girl jogged past, her blonde ponytail swinging from side to side, then a couple passed pushing a pram. This was the sedate Mission Bay landscape he and his wife had bought into. He’d thought he belonged. He’d worked hard enough to lose any trace of his upbringing, to lose the shame. He sniggered. Even his Māori greeting with Kāpehu had clunked awkwardly.
Adams turned and wandered back along the water, catching glimpses of Pākehā lives through warmly lit windows. At the restaurant, he collected his order and headed back to his apartment, but the turmeric-stained container never got opened. He had lost his appetite.
Chapter Nineteen
CARLA
‘Miss Carla. Miss Carla. You inside?’
The thumping woke Carla. She groaned and rolled over.
‘Miss Carla?’ the high-pitched voice persisted.
Carla pulled herself upright, a crack spreading through her head like expanding concrete. ‘One minute!’
She lurched towards the door, one foot sinking lower than expected, the other rising too high in compensation. She fiddled with the deadlock and finally succeeded in opening the door.
The Last Time We Spoke Page 10
