Hana couldn’t sleep. She lay on her back and sighed as Logan breathed next to her in a regular, even rhythm. It was a beautiful noise to her former widow’s ears. A romp with her gorgeous husband had left her breathless but still wide awake. Hana nudged Logan’s strong thigh with her bent knee and wondered if he would be interested in tiring her out some more. He was an attentive and energetic lover and usually wore her out thoroughly, but tonight, sleep eluded her. “Logan,” she whispered, trailing her index finger up his hairy thigh into the hem of his shorts. Logan grunted and turned his back on her.
Hana counted the yellow spots on the ceiling, adding up the glittering reflections from the street lights around the driveway which sneaked between the curtains. The face of the tennis player wafted across her mind’s eye, handsome and blonde, stunning blue eyes and a muscular physique. He was an awesome player - had been an awesome player.
Lachlan Reynolds, Lachlan Reynolds. Hana ran the name over and over through her brain, but only produced the skinny, red-haired child. Something about the name and the boy tugged at her memory but wouldn’t come loose. If Vik were around, he could tell her what it was. He coached the tennis team for a couple of years, even after Bodie lost interest. Something jarred in her memory but still, Hana couldn’t nail it.
Tired of driving herself mad, she got up and slipped a fleece over her nightdress. With a pair of woolly slippers on her feet which a lady from church knitted her, she padded downstairs in the dark, using the moonlight through the stained glass windows on the landing to guide her. The coloured patterns on the floor were eerie and the stairs creaked as they launched themselves into the lobby, but Hana made it to the kitchen of the strange house without disaster.
Shutting the door before turning on the light, Hana placed the wooden shell of the diary on the table. As she reached into the wardrobe for her fleece it was there under her fingers, calling to her with a tantalising invitation, asking her to plunge herself back into the depths of its memory. Hana hunted in a drawer for a needle and used the long metal inserted into the hole to lever open the hidden clasp. Then she made tea and settled down to read, like a closet chocaholic with her next fix.
The cotton gloves were stuffed inside the diary and Hana groaned as only one came out, realising she must have dropped the other one in the bedroom or on the stairs. Using only the hand with the glove, Hana continued her expedition back in time, drinking in the writing as a personal conversation with Logan’s grandmother. Feisty and independent, Phoenix Du Rose was impossible to dislike. She wrote truthfully about her life, her fears and worries. Hana felt a deep empathy with her daughter’s namesake, yet the burden of her secrecy burned in her heart. The more she learned, the more she worried about her husband’s ability to forgive her deliberate concealment of the diary. There were things in it he really should know, but others Hana would rather he didn’t.
By the early hours, Hana knew for sure that Phoenix Du Rose and not Henri removed the tapu pin from her father’s burial cloak. It was done in panic, to prevent her mother’s sister, Rangi, from taking it instead. There was mention of a dispute between Rangi’s family and Phoenix’s father, which was serious enough for him to send her and her family away. Hana turned the pages but found no information about the cause. The attendance of Rangi’s family at the funeral distressed Phoenix.
‘I knew they would come like birds of prey, circling around the dead. They came to pay their respects she said, whining like an old steam engine. While they were here, they capitalised on the sympathy of my unwise whānau and got drunk and fat at their expense until their whatuaro hung over their trousers.’
Hana bit her lip and rubbed her tired eyes. “That’s belly fat,” she said out loud. “Logan’s said that to someone. Tama? Phoenix? Someone, anyway.”
Hana read up to an entry dated 10th February 1952. She got up and reboiled the kettle, feeling the pull of the diary even from across the room. Already addicted, she slipped the glove back onto her right hand even though it was a left-handed glove and noticed something. Phoenix’s handwriting slanted to the left. Logan was left-handed and his daughter favoured that side when sucking her thumb or grabbing for objects. It made Hana feel an even stronger kinship with the matriarch. Loneliness seeped from every page and Hana recognised and felt its keen bite.
‘The boys are well now, although Reuben continues with the bleeding at times. I manage to hide it - I do not want Rangi’s whānau circling. Alfred is a quiet boy but Reub is hard to manage. He wants to do everything Alfie does and rivals his older brother without care for his own harm.’
Hana wondered how Phoenix coped with her haemophiliac son, living miles away from medical help. The tattered pages contained recipes for herbal remedies, parts of them missing or water damaged. Phoenix found natural ways of dealing with Reuben’s condition and Hana shuddered at the fear a bleed engendered in her, when she had ambulances and hospitals available. “It must have been horrific,” she breathed. “How did you cope, Phoenix?” Often Logan bled without relenting and ended up in hospital on a drip and Hana shook her head, imagining a bowl of mashed kawakawa leaves as a ready substitute. An entry on 28th February 1952 revealed a dramatic change in Phoenix’s ability to manage Reuben’s disease.
‘Reuben’s condition is not showing improvement. The Pākehā. doctor has done what he can. The boy insists he can ride and muster and he is always in trouble at school. I don’t know what to do with him. I fear for him permanently. The blood disease is the curse of the women. Will there be no end to it? Almost all the men are gone because of it. Matua predicted this.’
But as Hana read on, a few pages later revealed a pitiful entry. The writing was heavily slanted and untidy, as though the writer struggled to keep it together. Hana knew that feeling well.
‘The hapu think Henri died because of the tapu. I feel so guilty. Henri has been a stubborn man, but we learned to love each other. He knew I took the aurei, but he understood. Life has been cruel to us. What the curse has not stolen, the war took. It was only a matter of time. The shrapnel in Henri’s head from the injury was always moving. He knew it. His sight had become worse of late. I miss my husband. Nothing seems to take the pain away. Not even the laughter of my boys.’
Hana blew her nose into a piece of kitchen roll. Phoenix’s grief rolled over her like a wave, agonisingly familiar. In Hana’s mind, it became all about her. She was back in that world of loss with her dead husband and two teenage children. The misery felt like an old friend, tempting and attractive. Hana wanted to pick it up and wrap it around herself again, knowing if she accepted its embrace she would find it impossible to break free. So she resisted, drinking her cold tea and skipping pages, avoiding the worst of the sadness for now. The diary continued as Phoenix grew busier with the farm and the entries became more spread out.
‘Reuben is a terror. They have refused to have him at school. The payments were so much to keep him there, but they have sent notice he is not to return. Alfred is to continue to stay with Matua’s whānau in the city and attend, but Reuben must come away. The teachers beat him so badly this time I feared he would not recover. His body was black from it. The kaumātua has been here permanently since they sent him back on the cart. He has used all the old knowledge to help my son. Reuben is not sorry. They beat him for using the language of our forefathers to another boy and so he refused to stop. I know not whether to be angry with my child or proud of him.’
Hana’s hand strayed to her mouth in horror. She had heard tales of Māori children beaten for speaking their language, but never encountered anyone willing to talk about it. It was horrific, barbaric. The words for it were endless. A glance at the clock showed it was after three in the morning. Hana gently closed the pages, intending to go to bed finally. But the book fell open and a loose tattered page fluttered out, bearing a curious statement. There was no date.
‘The women are the curse of this family. But the men will be its ruin.’
Perplexed, Hana reached towards the page but her hand didn’t quite get there. She felt the presence of Logan in the room, even before she saw him. Not only was he a master at breaking into locked doors, but somewhere along the way he acquired the ability to move his six foot, four inch frame in complete silence. Hana gaped, caught out in her deception. Logan pointed towards the table and raised one eyebrow. Hana bit her lip. “It’s your grandma’s diary, Loge. I was reading it. It’s incredible; I’ve learned so much about your family. None of what you’ve been told is true. She...”
“You had no right!” Logan’s voice rapped out into the silence, halting Hana’s babble. She felt stunned.
“You gave me the right! You said I could deal with it, take care of it. That’s why we brought the box back, so...” she stopped, knowing by the look on his face her words were a waste. Her acceptance into his whānau was nothing but a smokescreen.
Hana’s ungloved hand strayed to the cover of the book, attempting to draw strength from the woman who poured her heart into it. But the feeling of shared confidence was gone, stripped away from Hana the moment Logan opened his mouth. She withdrew her hand, grief wrapping itself round her soul. The cultural and emotional divide between them yawned wider and deeper, an insurmountable chasm she was powerless to breach. Hana mentally withdrew and after a year and a half of wrangling with her marriage; she gave up. Her shoulders slumped and the fight went out of her. With shaking fingers she pushed the wooden cover towards Logan and let go, resignation filling her eyes.
Logan struggled to maintain his composure. Rage leaked out of him like water from a laden sponge, seeping and dripping from every part of his being. His grey eyes glittered with a hard-edged-danger and Hana held her breath. His muscular body was taut and rigid, compressing his anger within and Hana looked away from the display of power, filled with terror and longing, a heady mix of competing emotions. “You. Are. Not. The. Person. I. Thought. You. Were,” he snarled, each word coming through halted and blunt.
The words were laced with cruelty and cut Hana like a sabre, renting her flesh from her bones and causing equally as much pain. The old Hana would have thrown the book at him and run away to lick her wounds, lashed out with some smart remark that aimed its own low blow, but that Hana was gone. This Hana clasped her hands gently over the offending diary and closing her eyes, hung her head. She reached inside herself to the ‘pit of despair,’ the place where fear and rejection hung out. They could be relied upon to feed her ready grasp with barbed comments, defensive actions and bile. But Hana found nothing there.
Fear and rejection had been de-installed and replaced with nothing. There were no spiteful words to hand and nothing to hurl back at her husband, who just told her he didn’t love her. He loved an image of her which wasn’t really Hana. He just admitted it and the fragile vase of their marriage cracked against the blow.
Logan watched with knitted brow, his fists balled in frustration while he waited for Hana’s inevitable detonation. When nothing came, he looked lost with no idea how to handle this silent version of his wife. He knew what he meant to say, but once it was airborne, it emerged as something else and they both knew what that was.
Hana looked up at him and her eyes were steady, focussed and calm. Her palms rested gently on the cursed book as though drawing strength from its presence. “I can never be the person you thought I was, Logan,” she said and smiled at him with something like apology. “Because that person doesn’t exist. You didn’t know me when you decided I was worth pursuing as your soul mate. I was just a terrified, lonely, disgraced girl on a train who you could ‘fix’ and then fixate on. It was just a snapshot of who I really am, a single unit of time in forty-five years of a life well lived. I’m tired of bowing to an illusion, trying to be someone you’ve spent more than two decades manufacturing in your head. I’m me, Logan, nothing more, nothing less and I’m reasonably happy with who that is. I’ll never be accepted by your whānau, because no matter how hard I try, you want to keep me on the outside. I’m tired. I’m over it. And I’m done here.”
Hana got carefully to her feet, but when she walked towards her husband, she glided like a swan with more superhuman grace and dignity than she could have humanly mustered. Calm and serenity exuded from her like a covering. Her green eyes sparkled and shone with inner beauty as she gazed into Logan’s stunned grey ones for a long moment. It was uncomfortable. Then she held the wooden casing out towards him, pushing it gently into his chest when he resisted, leaving him no choice. “Read it, Logan,” Hana ordered. “I’m glad I did. I now know all the things that are great and awful about the Du Roses. There’s a lot of wisdom in your grandmother’s words and you’ll find it releasing. It might help you work out who you are. Good luck, Logan.”
The smile Hana bestowed on her husband was both kind and sane. It held compassion and no trace of the expected hysteria. With a final tiny smile, Hana turned and walked away from him, drifting down the long corridor without hurry and up the majestic wooden staircase with the same degree of dignity and poise. Logan stayed rooted to the spot, clutching the wooden box in his hands. Its surface felt gnarled and ridged under his fingers and he glanced down at his white knuckles. The markings of his lineage winked back at him in the wood, enhanced by the fluorescent light overhead, mocking him in some understated way. He wanted to throw the taonga, to smash it to the ground in anger, but for only the third time in his life, his body refused to do his bidding.
The angry sweat dried cold on his torso and his shirt stuck to him and made him chill. His lithe, athletic frame with its one fatal flaw seemed incapable of taking orders from his brain, ignoring the urgent signals to flee by remaining glued to the floorboards. Logan’s jaw worked furiously, grinding his teeth until his head hurt. A voice inside his consciousness yelled at him, Stupid, stupid, stupid man! And he knew he had inadvertently made Hana believe he didn’t love her. It wasn’t what he meant; but it was his inference.
As the blood flowed back into his feet, Logan drew a long deep breath and knew this couldn’t be easily fixed. He had some thinking to do, but needed to get away from the house to do it. The first time his body refused his bidding, he was fourteen and his mother clouted him hard around the head. They should have got off the train at the last stop but Logan delayed, getting slowly out of his seat and dragging his feet down the carriage towards the automatic doors. The dirty underground furniture had looked dull and lifeless in comparison to the glowing, vital, pregnant girl in the yellow dress opposite. In his memory she remained on fire, her auburn hair complimenting the dress and her reddened, tear streaked cheeks.
Miriam needed to get off sooner, to get to the hospital and visit her terminally ill brother. Logan’s dallying caused them to stay on the underground too long and they were forced to double back. They were too late and the dying uncle was gone. Logan’s body froze up that day too, refusing to take another step away from the redhead, transfixed by the sense of knowing she belonged to him.
It was a turning point in his life, the clever boy who until then wasted his talents suddenly had a goal, an aim in life - to find her. His failure was almost his undoing, until there she was, grappling around on the floor for her dropped belongings on the wrong side of the world. Logan experienced the same rigidity in his soul and did nothing. He was late for the first day of his new job, stuck in the car park waiting for his body to listen to his screaming brain.
Logan stood in the kitchen of the old schoolhouse and ordered his body to move. “Just move, Logan, damn you!” he hissed, to no avail. The memory of Hana gliding across the room towards him, clutching the taonga to her chest, was burned onto his inner eyelid like a brand. “What have I done?” he breathed. She was every bit as beautiful as on that first day, dignity and composure etched into her very being. Logan cursed his body for locking up and refusing to move, responding to a presence which left him breathless. She got too close to the core of him and he froze her out.
Hana got into bed and snuggled down. There was a tightness in her chest from keeping the tears confined but when she reached for the sadness and permitted its escape, it didn’t come. A numb, emptiness took over her soul and left her struggling. She prayed, not knowing even as the whispered words tumbled from her mouth, what it was she was asking. To her amazement, sleep collected her quickly and the tears remained unshed.
Downstairs, Logan acknowledged an overwhelming need to scream out loud, but the sound would contain far too much of himself and he couldn’t allow it. He retreated to the office at the boarding house where he spent the night in a stunned contemplation of his beloved grandmother’s words.
Hana woke feeling surprisingly refreshed the next morning. The numbness had devoured her heart, allowing her room to breathe. It was a reliable defence mechanism. As soon as she was dressed, she rang Peter North’s mobile, confused by how puffed he sounded as he answered the phone. “What are you doing?” Hana asked, alarmed by the degree of heavy breathing.
“I’m running!”
Hana peered through the glass of the upstairs bay window at the sports field. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’m gettin’ fit. Haven’t you noticed?” His voice held an edge of pique and Hana raised her eyebrow at her daughter. Phoenix sucked her thumb and pointed a delicate finger at the tiny figure lumping around the athletics track near St Bart’s. The figure stopped and bent in half from the waist and Hana continued.
“Well, after you’ve finished ‘running’ could we have a chat? I’ll walk over to you in the next few minutes.”
“Well don’t be long,” came the panting voice, “I’m only doing a short one.”
“How short is short?” Hana enquired.
“Five minutes and I’ve already done three.”
Shaking her head, Hana rang off, stuffed Phoenix into her pram and after locking up the house, strode over the fields to meet her old colleague. By the time she made it across the lumpy grass, Pete lay flat on his back staring up at the sky. His face was a dreadful shade of tomato-red and his chest heaved in unhealthy gasps. Phoenix took one look at him and lay back in her pram with her thumb and squeezed her eyes tight shut. Hana straightened the bobble hat and blanket and gave Pete time to recover his dignity. “I thought you’d be in tutor group,” she commented, wincing as Pete hawked up phlegm and spat dramatically on the grass. He shook his head with enthusiasm.
“Angus took them off me. He said it’d do the student teacher good to manage on his own. Said I’d be doing him a big favour.”
Hana rolled her eyes. It was common knowledge Pete was currently taking ‘a long walk off an increasingly short pier.” Logan had vouched for him becoming deputy manager of the boarding house, promising no doubt to keep a really tight rein on him; otherwise, it was a dead cert Angus would have biffed him out of the school for good. Angus didn’t usually dodge issues, so Hana wondered if the student teacher story was made up by Pete to hide his incompetence. She waved her hand at him and tried not to focus on thoughts of her husband. “Please can you get me the private phone number for Alan Dobbs?”
Pete alarmed her by jumping to his feet. He laid a hand firmly on Hana’s shoulders and got way to close for a sweaty man, reeking like he hadn’t showered since Henrietta left, over ten days ago. “What?” Hana pleaded, trying to dodge his ministrations without waking the baby.
Pete gripped both her shoulders in his pudgy hands and breathed pickle breath over her face. He leaned in so close Hana could see the hairs nestling up his nose and then he uttered his words of wisdom. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Hana. But Alan Dobbs is dead.”
Hana couldn’t help herself. She shoved the little man hard and he stumbled back over the pram wheel, landing on his backside with a thud. She looked down at him sitting on the ground in the frosty grass and felt a stab of guilt. But before she could make the fatal mistake of showing any weakness, Pete grappled around his backside and looked up at her in annoyance. “You’ve wet my pants! Now I’ll come back to yours for a shower!”
It was so like Peter North, it infuriated Hana. Within a three hundred metre radius of his lardy backside were four available showers for him to use; one in the male toilets in the main building, one in the school gym, one in the staff area of St Bart’s and Pete’s very own shower, in his staff unit, in view of his seated position. “And you’ll have to cook me a full English breakfast while you tumble dry my pants,” he added.
Hana felt exhaustion wash over her. “I’m sick of men!” she snapped. “You’re all dicks!” She stomped off, pushing the pram ahead of her and racking her brains for another way of getting the deceased man’s phone number, so she could contact Dora.
As the bell rang for first period, Pete saw Logan’s confident stride heading over to St Bart’s. He decided to add an extra minute’s run onto his exercise regime, in order to confess he’d broken the news about Dobbs’ death to Hana and she hadn’t taken it well.
Hana pushed her pram up the disabled ramp and into the reception area of the school. She hoped to get up to the student centre without going through the pain of writing a visitors’ badge but was out of luck. Despite being due to retire, it hadn’t daunted the receptionist’s dogmatic enforcement of the rules. She bobbed her grey head as Hana protested the ridiculousness of writing out a name badge for herself. “This is silly,” Hana grumbled, pen in hand. “Not only am I a former employee, but I still live on site. If people don’t know who I am after sixteen years, it’s a bit sad!” Feeling facetious, she wrote herself a name tag and slapped it on her jacket.
“Nice one, miss,” a boy chuckled as he held the door open for her. He jerked his head towards her name tag and Hana smiled. Emblazoned on her front was the name ‘Minnie Mouse’ and on the carbon downstairs was the reason for her visit; ‘looking for Mickey.’
Walking up the stairs having left her pram in the kind bursar’s office and carrying her baby, Hana ripped the sticky label off her jumper. In case of a fire it was hardly likely the fire brigade would pull the building apart looking for ‘Minnie Mouse.’ At the top of the stairs, Hana paused and looked over the bannister to the parquet floor below. The broad staircase was an original feature of the old building. Two sets of steps approached a wide landing, running diagonally towards each other, symmetrical and identical like a pair of open arms. The boys were meant to go up and down one side, leaving the other free for staff, but often both sides were a free for all in the rush between lessons. The wood was a dark chocolate brown, shining from over a hundred years of polish and wear. It still felt as solid as the day it was installed, despite the daily heavy foot traffic of stomping, growing boys.
Hana peered over the balustrade at the administrative corridor below, stretching out either side of the stairs. Her best friend, Anka once used an office at the end of the left-hand corridor and Hana missed her after the affair with Tama ended her career. Anka’s office had been a site of much giggling and hilarity. Now a quiet, studious lady worked there and that end of the corridor was silent, but for click of a keyboard and the periodic squeak of a chair.
Kissing Phoenix’s downy head, Hana shuddered as she thought of Dobbs falling down the stairs. She had no idea which of the two flights saw his unintentional descent, but it would have been a painful end. “It’s so awful,” she mused. “I know I didn’t like him, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Hana stood on the landing and peered at the floor, entertaining the ghoulish pondering. Her body gave an involuntary shiver. It was a dreadful way to die, crashing over the worn treads, feeling bones breaking and not knowing if the next crash would be his last.
“I hope you’re going to give me a receipt for these things!” came an angry shouted voice behind her. It shocked Hana and she let out a small squeal. The school archivist, a gentle, elderly man in his late sixties appeared from the direction of the staff room, in hot pursuit of a uniformed police officer. He was pink-cheeked and agitated, scurrying after the burly cop. “These items belong to the school!” the white haired archivist stated in a loud voice. “You shouldn’t be removing them without the principal’s express, written permission!”
The cop ignored his plaintive cries, taking the steps two at a time downwards, disregarding the fact a man had died on account of them already. He carried in his arms a long photograph depicting the whole school, including students and staff from some bygone era. Hana knew even from a distance where her face would be in the photo. Dobbs glared out at her from the seated front row of the picture, causing Hana to recoil as she felt his printed eyes boring into her. Then his face was gone, along with what looked like a number of year books and a computer disk.
“Damn rude man!” the archivist grumbled to nobody in particular and Hana looked in his direction. He was flustered and sweating, his precious artifacts now long gone. “I’m responsible for those,” he said to her pleadingly and Hana smiled in apology. She felt the same about the diary, as though it belonged to her. Again she felt the lack of it, resenting her husband’s ability to take it away. She suspected he probably hadn’t even read it.
“Were they taking pictures of Dobbs?” Hana asked the man.
He shrugged in a verbose, exaggerated movement. “Him and Lachlan Reynolds,” he grumbled, “and someone else, but I’m not supposed to say.” The archivist pursed his lips and went carefully down the staircase to the left.
With a sigh, Hana turned to face the archway leading to the upstairs rooms. The senior common room was in front of her, accessed through wide double doors while the staffroom was through another set of doors to the left. The student centre, Hana’s old workplace for fifteen years, lay through the common room with the guidance counsellors’ suite adjacent to it. It was the one place she could potentially get the phone number for Alan Dobbs’ wife without too many questions. Failing that, it would have to be the phone book, but something told her the cautious man would have been unlisted.
Taking a deep breath and turning away from the crime scene of a few weeks ago, Hana marched with confidence through the double doors and into the common room. Over sixty faces turned towards her from their study, two whole classes of boys reading quietly. Hana knew some of the faces and they smiled. Nodding to the study teacher, she hoisted her baby over her shoulder further and knocked on the student centre door.
Heather, Angus’ new love interest opened it with a smile. “Hello, love,” she said with a smile. “Come to take your old job back?”
“No thanks,” Hana answered, knowing that part of her life was long gone. Hana rarely visited her old workplace anymore. Her world moved on in unrecognisable proportions, yet a thin trace of grief could still be unexpectedly felt and an inexplicable sense of longing for her old, simple life. Her battle with Logan in the early hours left her feeling raw and jaded.
As Hana stepped into the room, the familiar chaos surrounded her like a comfortable shroud. Heather jerked her head towards a familiar piece of A3 paper on the brown carpet, depicting the layout of the school and the classrooms being used by presenters for the upcoming expo. “Be very glad you’re not involved this year,” Heather whispered. “All I’m hearing is how amazing Hana was at everything and how rubbish I am.”
Hana winced and stared at the paper. It denoted the marks she put on it in years gone by, showing where wall sockets offered power for projectors or laptops. Next to it on the carpet were numerous squares of paper with names of organisations hastily scribbled on each. “Oh, yeah, I remember this bit. It was known as the pitch frenzy, when locations were allocated and then moved over and over. No, you’re right; I definitely don’t miss this part of the job.”
Heather rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “It’s like working for a banshee on crack.”
Hana snorted and a face peered from the corner office. “Oh my gosh, Hana!” Sheila Jennings tore from her office and wrapped elegant arms around Hana and the baby. Miraculously, Phoenix stayed asleep.
Rory, the Year 13 dean and Sheila’s son-in-law stood up from his seat behind the door and greeted Hana with fondness. He looked as though he had a whole pile of marking in the centre of his desk, but reached out for Hana’s baby anyway. “Holding a child is a good excuse for not working,” he chortled, cuddling Phoenix into his chest. The group exchanged pleasantries and Rory wandered off into the common room with the baby, heading for the staffroom. Hana stared after him, torn between trusting an old friend with her child and wanting to run after him and rip the baby out of his arms.
“He’ll be fine,” Sheila said gently, seeing the conflict on Hana’s face. “He has got three of his own.”
“I know,” Hana said, “it’s just that…”
“You haven’t really got over all that business at the start of the year, have you?” Sheila asked knowingly. “I can’t say I blame you. It’s been a horrific year for you and Logan.” She pulled at Hana’s arm and barked at Heather, “You can hold the fort for a while if I go and catch up with your predecessor, can’t you?”
Hana cringed, feeling the rub in the comment. But Heather merely smiled and winked at her. Sheila blew out of the student centre dragging Hana after her and together they tracked Rory to the coffee. “We’ve got a machine now,” Sheila said with excitement, tucking her arm genially through Hana’s. The machine was a forbidding looking vending unit and the charge a dollar. Sheila put in one coin each.
“A latte, please,” Hana said, watching Rory chat to colleagues at the social studies table. Phoenix was still fast asleep and her mother made a mental note to stop being so fussy and paranoid. Each morning, Hana said a prayer for Bodie and Izzie, in her absence placing their well-being into God’s capable hands. It occurred to her it might be a good idea to include the baby. Perhaps then, she wouldn’t be so inclined to do it all in her own strength.
Despite desperately wanting to show off the ‘improvements’ to her working world, Sheila couldn’t get the coffee machine to produce a latte. She pressed the button four times and nothing happened. Resorting to brute force and ignorance she kicked it hard and got four cups for her dollar. The cups then made quite a tower, which when filled, wouldn’t go past the spout without tipping and pouring the liquid into the drip tray.
Undaunted, Sheila set about retrieving Hana’s drink. She left her standing by the machine while she ran back to the office to fetch a pair of scissors.
“Where’s she gone now?” Rory asked, wafting past with Phoenix.
“To get scissors.”
Rory tutted and pushed a little button above the chute. The front part of the machine flipped open enough for Hana to grab her latte, ensconced in its four cups. “She hasn’t improved with age, has she?” Rory smirked and Hana giggled.
When Sheila returned brandishing scissors, she was relieved to find Hana already sipping her too-hot-drink. Admitting defeat, she settled for a cup of tea. They chatted about their respective lives in a belated catch up. “My divorce came through last week,” Sheila said, not sounding too sad. “Twenty-six wasted years.”
“Never totally wasted,” Hana chided.
“No, I’ve got the kids I suppose. And it’s working really well living in the granny flat at Rory and Maria’s place. I’m on hand for babysitting and it’s nice and private if I want it to be.”
Hana picked up a hidden thread of wistfulness. It was Sheila’s dream home, built painstakingly to her and Martin’s specifications and sold to her daughter in the mop up of the joint assets. “What’s Martin up to now?” she asked, referring to Sheila’s adulterous ex-husband.
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” the other woman replied. Sheila seemed happy enough and Hana guessed she’d journeyed through the worst of it. Her appearance had changed in the last year and she was a much trimmer version of her former self. She had always been beautiful, her blonde good looks and pale skin testament to her Swedish heritage, but now she exploited it fully. Her hair was shorter and had acquired copper and brown streaks and her clothes and make up were flawless.
“I don’t suppose you’d be able to give me the phone number for Mrs Dobbs?” Hana asked tentatively as Sheila paused for breath. She hurried on, “I had a heart attack in the holidays and needed an operation. Logan missed the funeral - in fact we didn’t even find out Alan was dead until it was all over. I feel like I should get in touch with Dora.”
Sheila was still stuck on the words, ‘heart attack’ and didn’t dwell on the odd request or its impropriety. Hana no longer had any right to the private list of staff phone numbers and addresses, but fortunately Sheila was more interested in a lively discussion about Hana’s holiday, than wondering why the other woman didn’t ask her husband for the number.
Deciding after half an hour she should probably go back to the student centre, Sheila left Hana to retrieve her baby from the Year 13 dean. Rory seemed disappointed. “Shame, I was thoroughly enjoying having a legitimate reason to stand around jiggling from side to side whilst reading the newspaper,” he grumbled.
Sheila photocopied the staff list and handed it over along with a brief hug as she breezed through the common room on her extremely high heels.
“Thanks,” Hana said. “Do you think I should take some baking round?”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Sheila answered and turned to leave. Then her eyes lit up and she imparted a particularly stunning piece of information to Hana’s sorry ears. “Oh, I forgot to say, big-mouth-Amanda’s been blabbing it around that Logan’s the next deputy principal. Apparently she typed up some new contract for him. The stupid woman’s even telling everyone what the starting salary is. You should go to Angus about her; she can’t seem to help herself. Tell Logan congratulations, anyway.”
Hana swallowed and managed only a nod. Feeling excluded and devastated, she left the main building before the bell rang, determined not to run into her overly perceptive husband. His absence all night wasn’t completely unexpected, but Hana had no idea what she’d say if she bumped into him. It was hardly the place for hollow congratulations or the beginnings of a divorce. The fissure between them became a canyon as Hana digested the news of Logan’s new role and his failure to even discuss it with her.
On the way across the field she used her mobile phone to call the landline on the sheet of paper, disappointed when an answering machine greeted her and Alan Dobbs’ disembodied voice asked her to leave a message. Phoenix woke and set up a wail of hungry protest, distracting Hana from her task as she pushed the pram home at speed.
Back at The Gatehouse, Hana put her phone on charge and fed her baby. “That’s weird,” she said to the child. “My battery hardly lasts any time at all. It used to last all day.”
Phoenix paused her suckling to smile and Hana stroked the soft, baby fingers. While winding the baby, Hana tried the number again, finally leaving a message. “Hi, Mrs Dobbs. I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Hana and I worked with Alan for a long while. I’m sorry to have missed you. I’ll call again later.”
Hanging up, Hana felt stupid. “I bet she doesn’t even remember me,” she whispered to her baby. “We went to heaps of social events together but she might just think I’m some crazy; it’s not like we were ever friends.”
Hana played with Phoenix for a while, crawling around behind her until she was tired, then reading a little cloth book with her. After a hearty lunch and another breastfeed, Phoenix seemed tuckered out and Hana put her upstairs in her cot to nap, bringing the baby monitor downstairs. Her phone looked fully charged but when she unplugged it, the battery light came on. “Yeah, because it’s not like I don’t have enough problems already,” Hana groaned. She plugged it in again and rang Will to see how he was getting on with the artifacts and also because with Phoenix asleep, she realised she was bored. The absence of the diary galled her further.
“Do you think you can keep it under a thousand dollars?” she asked. “I have access to that much quite quickly but if it’s any more, I’ll need time to get to it.”
“It’s coming along nicely,” Will informed her. “I’ve repaired the easy ones and cleaned up the frames and glass that were mouldy and dusty. But some of them, I’ll need to dismantle and see if I can do anything to safeguard them against further harm. I’ve had to order some special powder to take off the dust and mould from some of them and that’ll be an added cost.”
“Ok, thanks.” Hana bit her lip and started worrying. If Bodie couldn’t sell Amy’s house in time to buy Culver’s Cottage, she wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the old man back. Her other property on Achilles Rise went up for sale during the holidays, but Hana hadn’t paid any attention to how it was doing. Tipene came on the phone as Will wheeled himself back out to his shed to continue his work. Hana opened her mouth to ask Will’s brother to halt the endeavours, but Tipene’s next comment added guilt to the emotional soup of Hana’s financial worries.
“Hi, Mrs Du Rose. I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am you gave Will this job to do. It’s given him a new lease of life and I can’t thank you enough. He talks about nothing else. He can’t wait to get the rest of it down here and look over it all. You should see what he’s done with those framed photographs of your whānau; they’re glowing as though they were taken yesterday. He’s had his daughter make copies of them down at the printers and I have a disk for you next time you’re passing the marae. It’s an added cost, but my brother’s learned from other people’s mistakes. There was a marae that burned down over near Whangamata last year - they didn’t have any copies and it all went up in smoke...”
Hana’s mind worried about the money as Tipene chatted and so at first, she didn’t understand why he went quiet and then began to apologise. “I’m so sorry, Mrs Du Rose, that was a tactless tale to tell, especially after poor Reuben’s death.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I understand the point you were making,” Hana replied. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to get the other boxes from the hotel.” As she disconnected the call, a spiteful thought pricked her mind and was out in the open before she could stop it. “If Logan chooses to end our marriage, none of it will be my problem anyway and he’ll have to pick up the bill!” The notion caused more misery than release and Hana recognised the level of her increasing investment in his family. She shrugged. “Let it go, Hana,” she told herself. “You’d do all this work to restore his family heirlooms and then they still won’t accept you. Stop wasting your time.”
Hana pottered around the huge house, cleaning things that didn’t really need cleaning and generally fiddling about. She tried not to think about her precarious marital situation and the disturbing fact that her husband married her under false pretences. Hana genuinely believed he loved her - not some fictitious person he invented in his mind and allocated her body to. What does he want? She tortured herself, frustrated. Some ditzy eighteen year old who cries all day and looks out of train windows with a hopelessness in her eyes, because she’s got herself into a whole world of trouble and doesn’t know how to get out of it? That line of thinking brought back terrible memories and Hana chose to push them away. It turned out all right, she reassured herself. Her marriage gave her Bodie and Izzie and Vik wasn’t always unfaithful. It was unfair of Logan to keep the eighteen year old Hana pinned in that awful place and demonstrated how little he really knew her.
From the attic room Tama claimed and then left in a mess, Hana discovered an unimpeded view of Mount Pirongia. She pressed her splayed fingers against the glass and framed the view, aiming to pluck the mountain from its foundations. A noise behind made her jump and cry out, clapping her hand over her mouth. As Logan’s grey eyes watched her, Hana waited for Phoenix to wake up, relieved when the little girl made no sound through the monitor in Hana’s pocket. “Go away, Logan,” she sighed. “I don’t have the energy for your prejudice and rejection this afternoon.”
The stand-off between them was tense as he said nothing. Logan’s face was impossible to read, the shutters down over his emotions. He was neatly dressed as always, but there were dark circles under his eyes where he hadn’t slept. Leaning against the door frame he oozed sex appeal and Hana worked hard at resisting him, instinctively drawn to the natural intimacy between them. She tossed her head and put her hands on her hips, backlit by a setting sun which turned her hair gold. “I’ll move out so you can come back here?” she suggested, keeping her tone level and reasonable sounding. “You don’t have to spell it out, Logan, I’m not who you thought and probably not what you want. It’s better you find out now.”
Hana’s smile was wooden as she waited, but Logan didn’t move, paralysed by some inner demon that held him captive. “Fine!” Her exasperation escaped and she moved towards the door. “I’ll leave as soon as Phoe wakes.”
“No!” His arm shot out and strong fingers gripped Hana’s forearm, clinging on even as she struggled. More than anything, Hana knew she didn’t want her marriage to end, not before they’d journeyed further, but resignation told her it wasn’t her choice. Logan reeled her in until she stopped just inches from his chest. Her breath moved the fabric of his shirt and she saw the whites of his knuckles over the bone in her arm.
“I hate you,” she said, seeing the familiar twitch at the side of her husband’s mouth.
“Don’t lie.”
“I can’t be who you want.”
“You are who I want.”
Hana shook her head, cynicism spreading across her beautiful features. “You don’t really know me, Logan. Last night made that clear.”
“I’m sorry. Hana, I’m sorry. It came out wr...wrong; all of it.” Logan’s stutter betrayed his stress as his brow furrowed and desperation coursed through his veins.
“I can’t keep trying to be someone I was years ago,” Hana hissed. “I was never this elfin vision of perfection, but I’m killing myself trying to be her. I’m me and my body is faulty and aging and falling apart. Maybe at eighteen I was beautiful and ethereal and I captured some part of your imagination but Logan, you missed it! I grew up and moved forward. I can’t help it if you didn’t!”
“It wasn’t like that.” Logan reached out a shaking hand and stroked his fingers along Hana’s jawline, seeing her shiver at his touch. “I love you, Hana. I need you.”
Hana’s lips parted. “The real me, Logan, or some image of me? Your emotional demands are wearing me out. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was a whisper of desperation. “Stay? Let me put this right, please?”
Hana yanked her arm free and ran her fingers down the buttons of Logan’s shirt, seeing his pupils dilate. “You won’t let me in, Logan and it exhausts me. As soon as I show an interest in your precious family, you expel me like I’m nothing. So keep it all to yourself, I really don’t care anymore.”
“Hana please, I said I’m sorry.” Logan’s grey eyes failed to mask his pain in their glittering surface and he reached for her hand again, pulling her into his body. “Forgive me?”
Fearing rejection, Hana moved forward, her breasts barely touching Logan’s shirt as she breathed in his familiar scent. It intoxicated her like alcohol, leaving her heady and dizzy. She couldn’t bear to look at the pain in his eyes. His skin looked darker in the wintry sunshine and she traced the line of his tattoo through the sleeve of his shirt with her finger, seeing only a faint outline but knowing by instinct each line and twist of its path across his muscular arm. When she looked up, his eyes were on her face, narrowed and expectant but beautifully unsure of himself. It made Hana feel powerful for once.
Logan dipped his head, his fringe brushing her forehead like a feather light stroke. “I keep messing up,” he whispered, and his head jittered from the tremble in his body.
“Yes, you do.” Hana knew she sounded cruel and unsympathetic and Logan’s eyes met hers, amusement creeping into his grey irises. He kissed her gently on her cheek, a tantalising touch from full lips accompanied by the roughness of his bristled cheek. Hana tipped her head back and found Logan’s lips close to hers, her heart thudding in her chest like a drummer’s beat.
The grazing of her soft lips across his was like the flick of a switch, the giving of permission. Logan’s arms fixed around Hana’s waist and he hauled her into him, unbalancing her so his kiss became more frenzied than intended. Within seconds, her tee shirt was on the ground next to her and Logan dragged at his tie. He looked in disgust at Tama’s half-made bed and the room in disarray. “Come downstairs to bed with me?” he asked tugging Hana’s hand. She dug her heels in and her face creased in fear.
“I can’t, I don’t trust you,” she said.
“Hana.” Logan’s lips turned down in sadness and his eyes narrowed in pain. “You’re my equal and you belong in my whānau. You’re my pirinihehe, my princess. I’ll earn your trust, I promise, babe.”
Hana followed him from the attic, snatching up the baby monitor as she went and hoping she didn’t live to regret it.