The Last Time We Spoke (10 page)

‘I hear he’s entered a guilty plea, thank God,’ Vera said, dabbing at the cake crumbs on her plate with her forefinger. She’d dropped in unannounced, bearing a home-made banana loaf.

They were sitting out on the deck overlooking the garden. It was a grey day, but at least not raining. Although freshly mown, the lawn looked untidy; it had been churned into long ridges of mud where Rangi had got stuck on the ride-on mower. The roses were straggly, their leaves peppered with black spot, and the lavender was dry and woody. Geese had soiled the deck with droppings, and the outdoor cushions had grown fine webs of mould. The roof had sprung a leak in the laundry, the gutters needed clearing, and the swimming pool was a slimy shade of green.

Kevin stuffed a whole slice of banana loaf into his mouth and slurped his tea, spilling clumps of wet cake down his front.

Carla daubed his mouth with a dishtowel. He swiped it away.

‘At least there won’t be a long trial,’ Vera persisted. ‘Just the sentencing in the High Court, then.’

Carla nodded. Steve Herbert had advised her against speaking to too many people. ‘It’ll suffocate you, Carla,’ he’d warned. But Vera had a knack of worrying at a loose thread until it eventually unravelled.

‘I’m meeting with a real estate agent later,’ Carla said, changing the subject. ‘It’s time to put the farm on the market.’

‘Best,’ Vera concurred, pouring herself another cup of tea.

Carla regretted refilling the pot.

Later that night, after she and Kevin had finished watching a programme about orangutans in Borneo, Carla readied Kevin for bed. They no longer slept in the same room; Kevin was too fractious and sometimes soiled himself.

‘Do you alarm the house at night?’ Vera had pried earlier. Carla knew that Vera was really asking whether she was scared of sleeping alone. In truth, nothing frightened her any more. While some victims apparently became paralysed with fear, Carla felt a strange sense of numb detachment. Sometimes it bothered her that her emotions had become so blunted, that she was skimming across the surface of life. She felt like an astronaut adrift in space, unsure of how to get back to the craft, and not even certain she wanted to.

‘What did you make of the estate agent?’ she asked Kevin, as she unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Do you think he’s right that the farm won’t sell easily because of people’s superstitions?’ She was still in the habit of running things by Kevin. After a lifetime together, it was a hard habit to break.

‘Didn’t like his shoes,’ Kevin said.

She couldn’t decide if this was her old Kev’s sense of humour breaking through, or simply the meaningless observation of a brain-damaged fool. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least pretend.

She laughed. ‘Me neither.’

His quick wit and dry sense of humour had been one of the first things that attracted her to him.

Kevin’s shirt dropped to the floor. She hoisted him to his feet to
remove his trousers. As he rose, she closed her eyes and kissed him on the mouth, a deep, hungry kiss. His lips were dry and peeling. She leant into him, his bare chest grazing her blouse.

The first time they’d made love was on their wedding night. She’d been both excited and apprehensive. Despite her parents’ worldliness, sex was never a topic discussed, her mother in particular keeping a Catholic silence on the matter.

But Kev, the burly farmer with thickset hands and no-nonsense demeanour, had surprised her with his tenderness, and shown her the way. It was to be the start of an incredible love affair, so it felt quite absurd when they couldn’t conceive a child; their bodies fitting so perfectly together. Eight years later, when she did eventually fall pregnant, Carla quickly forgave the heartache of those barren years, safe in the knowledge that the child she was carrying had been conceived out of absolute love.

Now Kevin pulled back and pushed her away. She tripped and fell backwards onto the bed. Then he was wiping his mouth with his hand, his big pink tongue slathering over his arm as he tried to rid himself of her kiss. ‘You taste bad.’

It stank inside the Chubb security van, the sharp sweetness of ganja-poking fingers through the rancid stench. Ben scratched his nose with his left hand, his right cuffed to Diamond – a pro lagger who’d been in and out of the boob pretty much all of his life.

Ben watched as Diamond drew on the joint he was smoking. After a while, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘Hey, brotha, give us a toke. I haven’t been wasted in forever, man.’

Diamond cocked his head to one side as if he hadn’t heard correctly. Then slowly he lifted their conjoined arms, and before
Ben could react, brought Ben’s arm down like a bullet on the edge of the metal seat.

Pain fired through Ben’s arm. He cried out and tried to drag his wrist away, but Diamond held firm. Water pushed out of Ben’s eyes and tracked down his pain-hot cheeks. He rocked back and forth, murmuring to himself as he tried to soothe the agony. The thrill of this adventure was fading fast.

Finally the van jolted to a stop.

‘We’re home, darling,’ Ben’s companion purred, a loud fart accompanying his words.

A bell. Voices. An intercom. Then the scraping of metal and the van jerked forwards.

Ben peered out of the small windowed cube of light. A tall blue gate was grinding closed. He needed fresh air. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and his wrist was throbbing. A soft bubble of skin had ballooned at the base of his hand, causing him to yelp every time the handcuff rode over it.

The van door swung open and white afternoon light rushed in, stunning him.

‘Okay, guys, out!’ a guard bellowed.

Ben’s travelling companion yanked him forwards and they jumped in unison to the ground.

It was a hot afternoon, yet Ben couldn’t stop spasms of shivering from highjacking his body. He was standing in the middle of a long yard. At one end towered an ominous building, its black scoria walls rising up against the sky. The slab of darkness was interrupted only by chalky bird droppings, which tracked down the wall like white tears. At the opposite end of the yard stood the arch they’d just driven through. Topped with silvered hoops of barbed wire and a sun-bleached flag, it straddled the gated entrance to Mount Eden Remand Prison.

A pigeon swooped low. Ben felt the wind from it wings. It
circled once, then landed on a ledge of the black building, between the vertical bars of a window.

The sun ducked behind a cloud, importing a gloom more in keeping with the grim surrounds. The gate screeched again. Ben turned. Another van was pulling in to the yard. With any luck Tate would be in this one.

The two had been apart since Tate’s arrest, catching only corridor glimpses of each other at Auckland Central. The police had told Ben his accomplice had ‘spilt the beans and bleated like a baby’. After that, there’d seemed little point in denying the charges. Only later did he learn he’d been duped. Tate hadn’t cooperated at all, and Ben had dropped them both in it.

A squalling noise like the sound of cats fighting came from above. Ben looked up. An arm covered in tattoos was reaching out between the bars and throwing signs. ‘Come here, sweetie! Come, come, come.’ A coldness thudded up his throat.

‘Welcome to Mount Eden Prison.’ A female officer dressed in an olive-coloured uniform with a coffee-brown tie stood in front of them, her legs apart, her arms packed neatly behind her. Three diamond studs ran up her right earlobe. An enormous bunch of keys more suited to a dungeon hung from a chain on her belt. Another guard, this one the size of a nightclub bouncer, stood behind her, like some grotesque shadow.

‘The first thing you need to know is that Mount Eden is a transit prison,’ she said briskly. ‘Which means you will only be kept here while on remand. You will
not
be staying once you have been sentenced, so don’t get too comfortable. You
will
be moved on.’

At the receiving office, Ben was assigned a number. He was told to remove any ‘instruments of suicide’ – his belt and the laces from his trainers. After that, his jeans kept riding down over his butt and his trainers slopped on and off when he walked. His few possessions were packed into a large brown paper bag, and an officer wearing a pair of latex gloves handed Ben his bedding, a grey tracksuit, and a
copy of the prison rules. ‘Stick to them rules and your stay with us will be a happy one.’

Ben held up the piece of paper and squinted at the meaningless squiggles.

At the medical station, he got undressed behind a curtain, keeping on his trainers. The nurse, a red-faced woman with enormous breasts, weighed him, listened to his chest, examined his hair for lice, then made him piss in a pot.

She eyed his Nike trainers. They were new, bought with money from the farmhouse haul.

‘I’m not leaving my trainers in some paper bag,’ Ben said, pre-empting any request to remove them.

‘First time in prison?’ she said with a knowing smile.

He stared at her.

‘You can keep those shoes, son, for as long as you can hold onto them.’

He relaxed his jaw. ‘I think my hand’s broke, miss.’

She lifted his wrist with her gloved hands and examined the blue-black bulge. ‘How did it happen?’

He shrugged.

She eyeballed him sideways, before carefully moving his hand up and down.

‘Jesus!’

‘Don’t think it’s broken,’ she said, releasing it. ‘Just bruised. Now tell me, is your family mad at you for what you’ve done? Are they still speaking to you?’

He nodded. She ticked a box on a clipboard. He didn’t know whether the tick was for
mad at you
or the
still speaking to you
question. He didn’t care.

‘Ever thought of harming yourself?’

She must have taken his silence for a yes, because he spent the first night in a Special Needs unit in a stitch gown.

‘Can’t be ripped, so don’t try.’

The green lino walls had no corners, one curving smoothly into another. It felt as if he was locked inside some giant ball, just how he imagined it would be inside the ZORB at Rotorua. Simi’s brother lived in the sulphur-smelling city, and once he’d shouted Simi a ride in the giant, tumbling ball. It had sounded intense – ‘the most awesome ride ever’– rolling down a hillside, the outside world spinning away until there was just bellyaching laughter left.

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 0800
VISITS
. 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.

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
…

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 neighbour’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.