by Bowes, K T
Hana backed out from under the desk at a speed she didn’t know was possible, at the same time letting out a screech that terrified both herself and the rat. Hitting her head on the underside of the desk she shot out backwards, tangling up her legs and landing on her bottom, her laddered tights pointing skywards for all to see. As her legs went over her head, Hana was later to remark to Anka, “I wondered who they belonged to, I didn’t think it was physically possible at my age. The rat saw my knickers!”
Flipping onto her knees again and scrabbling away, Hana’s pounding heart convinced her the rat was in hot pursuit. When she reached the other side of the office she was greeted by the knees and hairy feet of senior boys, attracted to heroism by the screams of a woman. Unfortunately they were boys who hadn’t seen the rat and struggled to believe in its existence. “Na, Miss. It’s in your head. My mum sees all kinds of things.”
“Only after a couple of bottles, bro’. She’s all right normally, aye.”
Hana shoved past the gathering throng and bolted through the double doors of the common room, making for the ladies’ toilets with an understandable desire to scrub her hands. The rat’s twitching whiskers haunted her inner vision and convinced her that the whole office was contaminated with the most impressive germs.
Recovering in the kitchen area of the staff room, Hana remembered too late, her neatly wrapped sandwiches reclining vulnerably on her desktop. “Oh, wonderful!” She fumbled for a mug and filled it with hot water from the urn and heaped in a generous amount of coffee and sugar. “My mother always told me it was good for shock,” she told a wide eyed science teacher. There was only blue-topped milk left in the fridge and she doubted the age of it when it left a floating scum on the surface of her drink. Never mind. It’s better than nothing. Her hands felt sore from the vigorous scrubbing she had given them in the toilet.
Hana looked around the staff room at the many tables and seating areas. It was a deceptively innocuous place, generously proportioned so that unsuspecting newcomers might feel they could choose where to sit and enjoy their break. That was not the case. Each table, despite not being labelled as such, was designated to a particular faculty and members had their own seats. It was not intended to be that way, but somehow over the years it had evolved into an unspoken world of hierarchy and regulation. No-one could sit where they wanted. Staff sat alone on their tables during free periods, calling across the room to one another or hovering between tables to chat, without sitting down and committing the ultimate crime.
Hana was not in the mood for such rules today. She didn’t feel like sitting alone with her badly frightened heart still pumping rudely in her chest and her hands jittering around her mug.
Spotting Mrs Bowman’s ‘Poor Logan Du Rose’ sitting morosely at the English table over a pile of marking, Hana took a deep breath and made her way through the puzzle of chairs, still in disarray from the morning interval. The English teacher glanced up at her and then, looking around the room guiltily, leaned back in his seat. “You’re a brave woman, Mrs Johal,” he smiled. “Obviously not afraid of committing cardinal sins then?”
Hana sat down, noticing again the ladder in her tights and sighed, feeling the tantalising increase in her heart rate as the teacher studied her with uncanny perception. He knew her name and it caused a flutter in Hana’s chest. His dark eyelashes fluttered as he looked at her and Hana babbled like an idiot as nerves got the better of her.
She entertained him for the next five minutes with the tale of the rat, which to the best of her knowledge was still in the office. He found the incident funny and visibly relaxed as they chatted. Logan was definitely younger than Hana. He was incredibly good looking and could have been confident and outgoing but a nervousness robbed him of the ease his looks should have given. When he looked piercingly at her as he had during the powhiri, Hana saw his eyes were an unusual shade of grey. They glittered like precious stones, all the more striking because of his obvious Māori heritage, which inevitably birthed brown-eyed children. Long dark eyelashes touched his cheeks as he blinked, giving Logan a deceptive look of innocence.
Isobel saw him in the staff photo which Hana emailed to her for a laugh. It was taken on a windy day and Hana sported a splendid ‘comb over,’ due to an irritating gust that appeared at the wrong moment. Izzie had commented on Logan in particular. “Who’s the new guy? He’s quite hot, Mum. I could go for him...if I didn’t have Marcus, obviously and he wasn’t so...ancient.”
The bruising on Logan’s face which Mrs Bowman gossiped about so freely, was reduced to the greenish hue heralding the end of the healing process. A nasty gash under his eye still glared lividly. Hana tried not to stare, but in his nervousness, Logan touched a hand to it, a hand with bruised and swollen knuckles. He sighed and made a noise with his mouth, betraying what Hana mistook as exasperation. “Sorry,” she said, biting her lip with remorse. “I didn’t realise I was staring.”
Logan was immediately contrite, “No, no it’s not that. It hurts when I laugh. I have stitches inside my mouth and you’re funny! Anyone ever told you that?”
Hana bit her lip and shook her head. “Stupid, dumb, an idiot. Never funny.”
Logan narrowed his eyes and hid his surprise. His irises seemed to change colour, from a gentle grey to the colour of grit. “You’re none of those things,” he replied in a soft voice that resonated somewhere deep inside Hana’s soul. She felt the overwhelming déjà vu strengthen its hold as speechless, she watched fascinated as the colour changed slowly back.
Hana felt sorry for Logan Du Rose, recognising his need for affection from her. His clothing was immaculate to the point of perfection but his aura was one of emotional neglect. Hana pushed her own confused thoughts to the back of her mind, catching what she thought was the word, ‘soccer’ as Logan spoke quietly to her. She was confused and must have looked it because Logan continued, “I tackled him and won the ball. He didn’t like it and took my legs out in the box. The referee pinged him for a penalty so he waited for me in the car park.”
Hana’s response was a long, “Ohhhh,” as she silently contemplated the harm of Mrs Bowman’s most recent tale.
“I’ve only been playing for Rovers this year,” Logan continued, “well, actually I haven’t had a proper game yet. We’re getting fit over at the indoor pitch so it was only a friendly anyway. Not that friendly obviously.” Logan smiled ruefully, oblivious to the sordid make-believe-life invented for him by the gossip. Even though Hana hadn’t partaken of it, she still felt as though something dirty had attached itself to her.
Smiling with encouragement at Logan, she finished her horrid coffee and stood. Logan was the perfect gentleman, getting to his feet as she stood and waiting for her to leave before he sat again. There was something about him which captured Hana’s interest. She glanced back as she reached the kitchen area, embarrassed to find him watching her. I really need to stop doing that, she chided herself. Like you’d be attractive to a man in his thirties. Idiot!
As Hana put her mug into the dishwasher she was startled by a loud shout and almost dropped it. Paul Mannings, the biology teacher came storming through the double doors into the staff room, his face puce with rage. Dangling from his hand was an empty cage.
“Oh no!” Hana’s realisation was instant and she clapped a hand over her mouth, heading back to the office at a run. The common room had erupted into noisy chaos and boys crowded ten deep round the office door. Hana pushed her way through the tall bodies and managed to see between all the rucksacks.
The groundsman wore large gloves and dangled a dead rat from one of them. A Year 13 boy leaned down towards Hana from his great height. “Fluffy from the bio laboratory got done in by ‘im. He did it seconds before Mr Mannings arrived.”
Consequently the latter was fuming. “Why, Collins? Why?” he apparently shouted, boys doing impressions of him and laughing. The groundsman looked distinctly smug and posed with the dead rat while the boys snapped photos of him on their phones.
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br /> “Vermin!” he hissed with a sour expression, enjoying the attention.
Hana put her hands over her face and pushed her way back through the boys, to the relative safety of the staff room again. This time, the coffee would need to be much stronger.
Isobel phoned later that evening as Hana enjoyed the last rays of sunshine out on the deck. “You caught me finishing this bottle of red wine I’ve been slowly working my way through for quite a few weeks,” Hana sighed. “It’s good I’ve reached the end. It’s got quite vinegary and there’s bits of cork in my glass. Yuk!”
Izzie, usually upbeat and level headed sounded down in the dumps. Being the wife of a pastor in such a small community was taking its toll and after a week of mishaps and troubles, the young mother rebelled against the congregation’s ownership of her little family. “I thought the chairwoman was nice. She took me under her wing but now the Parish Church Committee’s decided I can run the Mums’ and Toddlers’ group all by myself.” She sniffed, holding back tears that even through the phone line, Hana sensed.
“Oh, Izzie,” she sympathised. “It’s obviously far too soon for your after delivering Elizabeth. Can’t you explain how you’re feeling?”
Elizabeth’s handicap made her more demanding than other babies. Izzie made it look easy but it wasn’t. “She actually left me with thirty women and children and thought I was going to sing nursery rhymes to them!” Izzie complained and then let go of the threatening deluge. “I can’t sing,” she wailed.
Hana tried to help out with all the usual platitudes which mothers seem hardwired to produce, but Izzie was not going to be soothed. Izzie and Marcus had not been in the new parish long and it didn’t sound as though they would be there much longer. As she rang off, Hana feared for the safety of the Chairwoman-lady, whose boorish manner was evident last time she visited. Izzie was a slow burner like her daddy and volatile under pressure. She would only take so much. Mrs Chairwoman was heading for a battle and probably wouldn’t see it coming. Poor Marcus, bearing up in the middle of it all. He had been so calm and strong when Elizabeth was born, supportive of Izzie and loving and accepting of their baby girl. “He must feel stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Hana muttered to herself.
Hanging the phone back on its cradle, Hana heard the doorbell chime and went to see who it was. She rarely got visitors now the children were gone, except for schoolchildren selling chocolate bars for $2 to raise money for the school or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who called periodically. Last time they had debated on the doorstep for over an hour. Finally Hana stated, “Look, Jesus wasn’t just a prophet, he was the son of God. That’s what I believe. Adam screwed it up so I can never get it right and Jesus took care of it on the cross. For me. Nothing else is required. That’s it. Debt paid in full.”
The older woman of the two looked at her sadly and said, “That’s a nice theory. I wish it were true.”
They left then. After an hour of wishing they would get the message and go, Hana wanted them to stay and talk some more. But they went. She saw them in the area a few months later and wondered what else she could say to convince them, but they didn’t return. Perhaps she had been blacklisted.
The shape in the glass didn’t look familiar, so Hana opened the door a bit more sedately than she did to her neighbour, Andrea. Standing on her porch, already looking guilty was Logan Du Rose. She smiled cautiously at him and as if in answer, he said, “I’m not stalking you, I got your address from the staff list.”
Realising it actually did sound like stalking after all, he bit his lip and hesitated. Hana laughed and stepped back for him to come in. As he stood in her hallway, she realised how tall he was, well over six feet. Hana found herself looking at the line of his collar. “I’d forgotten about the staff address list.” She wondered momentarily why, if everyone knew where she lived, only a few had ever visited.
Logan came in, removed his cowboy boots and waited to be told which way to go. A vein in his neck twitched with nervous energy and Hana fought the urge to touch it. Tiger the old black and white cat hovered at the top of the stairs up to the living area and stared nosily at the visitor through saucer eyes. He looked funny, his neck extended so he could peep around the corner.
“Come out of the way, silly boy,” Hana chided him softly, leading the way upstairs and into the bright dining room, the ranch slider standing open still. Tiger fled outside, his tail pointing upwards like an arrow. Logan stepped out onto the deck and stood for a long while, looking back at the house and the Hakarimata Bush in the distance. He turned towards Hana and remarked, “Wow, what a view. Now I know why the house is so high from the street.”
Hana offered him a drink, tea, coffee, wine or juice and like most Kiwi men, he chose the cold juice. Hana surreptitiously lifted her wine glass from the dining table where she had abandoned it and laid it carefully in the dishwasher. “Have you eaten?” she asked.
“Er, no, I haven’t.” His brows knitted and he looked awkward again.
“Me neither,” Hana confessed. “It’s hard when you live alone, isn’t it? I either eat everything in the fridge, or practically nothing at all.”
“Oh, I don’t live alone,” Logan replied and Hana’s eyes widened. Her heart plummeted into her stomach and she tried to hide her misery as it flopped like a dead fish inside her. At least now you know, she told herself. Of course he wouldn’t live alone.
Hana made them both a fried egg sandwich, definitely an English delicacy, in the electric fry pan which she discovered Bodie hadn’t cleaned properly. Logan relaxed and it was a pleasant change as they chatted, cooked and ate.
After they cleared up, he pointed out his neat little Triumph Spitfire parked out on the driveway. “Most of the tech department live in this road,” Logan mused. “I remembered reading your address on the staff list and then noticed your car out front. I’ve just been exploring the area and giving the old car a blow-out.”
They chatted in the garden until well after dark, when the cool night air began to bite along with the mosquitoes. In part, Mrs Bowman had been right about the jilting, but not about the fight. Like most things, she had mangled it in the telling. Hana felt a twinge of guilt at Logan’s tale of woe, which infused her with an opportunistic hope and made her feel ashamed.
“My fiancé worked at the same school as me. I decided to be the one to leave. The relationship ended in the summer holidays a fortnight before school started back. We were supposed to be getting married.” Planned for months and destroyed in a moment. The man looked wistful and embarrassed, picking at a thread on his jeans.
He had gone overnight, leaving an apologetic letter for the principal and walking into the Hamilton school armed with his CV in the hope of getting some supply teaching work. His timing had been impeccable for at that exact moment Angus wondered how to back-fill the post vacated moments before, by the head of the English department. Her husband had accepted work in Dubai and left on the next flight out. With a department filled with the newly qualified and teachers of the ancient-crusty-variety, Angus had been scratching his head and wondering how he could justify choosing one of them for king, when in walked Logan Du Rose.
Hana shivered and Logan, tuned into any perceptible sign of unwelcomeness, slapped his thigh and stood up to go. “Thanks for dinner,” he said and smiled, his grey eyes studying her face intently. Again, Hana felt that curious sensation of having been here before, shaking it off as she followed him down the stairs to the front door. He turned and looked as though he wanted to say something but lost his nerve. Logan pushed his feet into his boots and went out onto the front step.
Hana caught his scent, a pleasant meadowy smell, like flowers and hay and wanted to be near him. It plagued her memory and she shivered, as though somehow touched by her past.
The car waited on the driveway, matt white with green leather interior. It was cute. It was almost comical to contemplate Logan fitting his tall body into such a tiny seat but evidently he loved the vehicle, running a slend
er finger over the paintwork. He opened the door which creaked alarmingly and folded himself into the driver’s seat to start the engine. “See ya,” he said and winked.
With a splutter and a hiss, the car roared to life and reversed out onto the street. Logan waved and sped off. Hana stood on the drive for a moment, staring at a patch of oil left by the car. It glinted and shone in the light of the streetlamps. Hana shook herself and made her way indoors still haunted by that inexplicable feeling of déjà vu which seemed to accompany Logan Du Rose.
Chapter 12
The next day, Hana apologised to the biology teacher for the loss of his pet rat and for overreacting when she met it underneath the desk. He in turn apologised for the sandwiches, which it had started eating and the box of paper, thrown away at over $200 for the entire shredded and chewed contents. To show his forgiveness, he vacuumed up the chocolate-drop-rat-poo from under the desk. Hana suspected Sheila had insisted on the latter, as the trip under the desk was not evocative of quite so much goodwill as it should have been, although that could be put down to grief.
Larry Collins, however, never usually so quick off the mark to replace a light bulb or mend a tap, was completely persona non grata with Sam Mannings. Apparently the groundsman hated the presence of the rat and there was speculation as to the actual circumstances surrounding Fluffy’s escape and speedy dispatch.
