The Last Time We Spoke (22 page)

Ben found himself shaking his head, hypnotised by the guy’s words.

‘It’s not so cool to have a screw strip-search you at random just ’cos he wants to teach you a lesson. It isn’t such a cool thing to be told when and where you can shit, and whether or not you’re allowed more bog roll. Alone for fourteen hours a day with just the cold walls for company is no party neither. Boredom and hatred fester like school sores. I’ve been inside a long time. I’ve lived it. I know.’

Chalkie’s face was yellowy brown. The tips of two of his fingers on his left hand were missing. His eyes were thin, his nose bent.

‘You can keep on this road,’ he said, pointing to the line on the board that fed back to itself, ‘or you can do the right thing –
tikanga.’
He pointed to the other drawing where the red line ran off the board to freedom.

Ben didn’t know what to say. This was a different sort of stand over to any he’d experienced before. Things were definitely weird in the north of New Zealand. Experience told him to smirk and toss his chin, flip off this guy’s hold. But he couldn’t. The brown guy’s words had hijacked his attention and were demanding his respect.

‘I’m not playing high and mighty with you neither,’ Chalkie said. ‘I been where you been, boy. I’ve murdered dudes. Been president of a chapter. You could say I’ve lived a little. Got blood
on my hands, just like you, and every night I sleep with my victims, swimming through their red.’

Ben swallowed. Same dreams! His eyes started to sting and his vision blurred. How did this dude know he surfed on waves of gore every night?

‘I still got at least eight years in here,’ Chalkie continued, ‘before they even consider me for parole. But one thing I know is that I’m not coming back after I been released. I got a life to live.’ He pointed to the line that led to freedom. ‘I’ve chosen this route, brother.’

The word ‘brother’, the way Chalkie said it, lassoed Ben and was pulling him in. He ground his teeth, trying to keep tears at bay.

‘And don’t abuse the staff here, neither, ’cos all they doing is their job,’ Chalkie added, ‘to pay for food and a roof over their family’s head. You gotta girlfriend outside?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Okay, then, a mother?’ It was a rhetorical question and Chalkie didn’t wait for Ben to reply. ‘Say someone broke into her house and was going to rape her. Who’s she gonna call for protection? You’re inside and can’t do nothing to help. It’s the police who will come to her rescue. The police! So don’t slag them off.’

Ben’s mind was spinning, his emotions tumbling.

‘Who the screws gonna call if you get stabbed in your crib? The ambulance officers, that’s who. People just doing their job. They deserve our respect, don’t you think?’

Ben wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘Now some basic rules.’ Chalkie turned to the board. ‘No drugs, no drink, no bashings, and in my unit you’ll be sweet.’

Who would have thought you would find
tūrangawaewae
in a prison of all places – a secure and safe place to stand right in the midst of other prison inmates. Ha! Such is the wonder of life and the reach of
tikanga
Māori. But I am cautious, so for now I say no more, but watch and wait with hope.

It was early December and the pohutukawa trees were in full crimson flush. Shop windows boasted brash Christmas displays and postboxes overflowed with advertorials promising the world and guaranteeing a summer of stupid prices.

Carla leant against her front door, a pile of post and papers wedged under her arm. Suddenly the jammed key turned in the lock, catapulting her into her apartment.

Thirty seconds later, Mingyu was standing at Carla’s door. ‘Carla! What happen?’

‘I keep meaning to get the damn lock replaced,’ Carla cursed, collecting her post on all fours.

Mingyu helped her up. ‘You got time for a cup of tea?’ she asked, placing a packet of strawberry-cream biscuits on the counter.

Carla was about to decline, but her friend was already ferreting around in the cupboard for tea bags. ‘Where you move the tea, Carla?’

‘Behind the jam jars. Yes, there.’

Mingyu was in the habit of popping in every evening as soon as she heard Carla’s latch.

Carla sneaked a look at her watch. Paul would be arriving in
less than an hour and she still wanted to have a bath. ‘I won’t be able to make it a long one,’ Carla began. ‘I’m expecting a colleague shortly.’

Mingyu raised her eyebrows. ‘Colly?’

‘A col-league. One of the people who works with me at the library. He’s asked me to teach him Italian.’

A knowing smile crept across Mingyu’s face. ‘
He
,’ she repeated. ‘Very good, Carla. About time.’

Carla felt herself blushing. ‘No, no. It’s not like that at all.’

‘Too bad. I’m think a man is what you need.’

Carla bit her lip to hide her embarrassment. The whistling kettle rescued her.

‘Oh, I mean to give you,’ Mingyu said, rummaging in her trouser pocket. ‘Yesterday I am find a letter in dustbin outside. Not yet open. It is lucky. I am looking in bin because I lose my pearl earring. I’m not find the earring, but I find this.’ She unrolled a crumpled blue envelope.

Carla had become ruthless about tossing out unsolicited mail and advertorials, sometimes without first sifting through them properly.

She peered through the bottom of her glasses. The faint postmark came into focus. A crest. The Department of Corrections.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Ming.’

‘That postie, I’m never like him,’ her friend said indignantly. ‘I think I complain. He throw them in the bin. Too lazy, that man!’

Carla was only half-listening, the letter already toying with her equanimity.

Mingyu picked up the TV remote. ‘
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
is already start. We watch with our tea?’

‘Would you mind actually if we don’t tonight?’ Carla said. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a lot to do before my visitor—’

‘Oh, okay. No tea today. I see you tomorrow.’ Mingyu said, retreating towards the door, the tea left unmade. On the threshold, she turned. ‘You not open the letter?’

‘Later. I will later, thank you,’ Carla said, slipping it into the pocket of her cardigan.

Not long after Mingyu’s departure, the doorbell rang, reverberating through Carla’s tiny flat.

Muttering under her breath, Carla looked through the peephole. The distorted frame of Paul came into view. He was twenty minutes early. She was still in her dressing gown and had not yet dried her hair.

‘One minute!’ she called out, darting back to her room to pull on a dress.

When she opened the door, there he was with his wide smile, a bunch of proteas in one hand and a bottle of red in the other.

‘Sorry, Paul. I’m running a bit late,’ she blurted out. ‘Excuse my attire.’

He eyed her towelling turban. ‘Very fetching headgear,’ he said in his thick South African accent. ‘I am early. My apologies. But I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get here in the traffic.’

A noise in the stairwell distracted Carla. She peered out into the lobby to see Mingyu standing in her doorway. On being spotted, her neighbour gave Carla the thumbs up. Carla hurried her visitor inside.

The masculine smell of sandalwood filled the living room. Carla realised she’d not entertained a man in the apartment before. Feeling suddenly awkward, she excused herself and went to finish getting ready.

By the time she re-emerged, hair blow-dried and make-up applied, the curtains had been drawn, the flowers arranged in a vase, and two glasses of red wine poured.

She stopped in the doorway to catch her breath. It was a giddy feeling having someone attend to such things for her.

‘Wow, you’ve managed to make my small box of a place look good,’ she said.

‘You look good,’ Paul said with a skew smile. Paul had suffered from Bell’s palsy a few weeks back and his facial muscles had yet to regain their full function. Disconcertingly, the creaseless left side of his face still drooped.

Carla’s mind went blank.

‘Proteas!’ she suddenly blurted out, jumpstarting the conversation again. ‘I haven’t seen them in years. We used to stop at a protea farm on the way up north. Such dramatic flowers. I tried to grow them once, but the Auckland climate – it’s too wet, and the soil too clayey. Not everyone likes them, mind you. The flowers, they’re quite different. I do. I mean, I like them.’ Words tumbled out of her mouth.

We used to stop
…
We used to stop
. She and Kevin used to stop … Kevin … She was being highjacked by her own words. She felt like a traitor.

‘I hope you drink Pino,’ Paul said, proffering her a glass. ‘It’s a Pinotage from Stellenbosch. I still have a bit of a thing for the reds of my homeland.’

‘I drink anything and everything.’ Oh Carla! Now he’d think she was a lush. She was behaving like a schoolgirl – gauche, inept, tongue-tied. And this wasn’t even a date. What was she thinking?

Paul worked at the library. He was a quiet man, which she’d initially mistaken for aloofness, but over time had come to realise was simply a manifestation of his shyness. Buried beneath this reserve was a delightful, dry sense of humour.

The other librarians had filled Carla in on all the gossip. Paul was a retired publisher who’d worked in Durban until he and his
wife followed their only daughter to New Zealand. Soon after arriving, however, Paul’s wife was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and eight months later died. Not long after this, Paul’s daughter was headhunted for a job in Germany, and after much agonising, decided to make another shift. This time Paul did not follow. He couldn’t face relocating again, or leaving his late wife behind; she was buried in New Zealand.

Now, a year later, he planned to visit his daughter in Berlin and had decided to combine this with a trip to Italy. When he learnt of Carla’s heritage, he’d asked if she might teach him some basic conversational Italian. And so it was that she’d come to invite him over.

He was a tall man, in his late fifties, with haywire grey eyebrows. Their prominence lent him a serious demeanour and belied his playful eyes, which sloped away gently to disappear in deeply rutted crow’s feet. He usually wore cashmere jumpers and baggy trousers.

‘Mmm. Something smells good,’ Paul said, breaking another awkward silence.

Preparation for the Italian-themed meal had taken Carla the entire weekend. Parma ham and melon to start, home-made ravioli filled with spinach, ricotta cheese and porcini mushrooms to follow, and Tiramisu to finish.

Carla squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the intrusive thoughts about Kevin. She’d never had trouble working alongside Paul. Yet somehow allowing him into her home had altered the dynamic. It was all Mingyu’s fault for putting a different spin on what was going to be an innocent evening. This had been a bad idea.

‘To Italy,’ Paul said, clinking his glass with hers. ‘It was a long-held wish of my late wife, Veronica, to visit Italy. I guess I’m doing this for her.’

The mention of Paul’s wife came as a welcome relief, immediately redefining the boundaries of the evening.

Carla took a gulp of wine. ‘Mmh,
molto buono
,’ she said with a nod. ‘Which means “very good”.’

‘
Molto buono
,’ Paul repeated slowly.

‘I see you’re a natural.’ She took another swig. ‘This will be easy.’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ he said with an engaging smile.

They sat down to dinner at eight. At eleven o’clock they were still at the table; three hours had effortlessly elapsed.

Paul poured the last of the wine into Carla’s glass. ‘The way Kiwis say “see you later” is confusing too,’ he said. ‘Veronica and I held a dinner party soon after arriving in New Zealand. The guests left around midnight, and as they were departing, one chap said “see you later”. We thought he was coming back later that night. We didn’t dare go to bed till after one.’

Carla laughed. ‘You South Africans have some strange words too. I mean, calling traffic lights, robots!’

‘And?’

‘A robot is an automaton! You know, Star Wars and all.’

‘I guess, but—’

‘And what about “hold thumbs”,’ she said, watching Paul scrape at the last smudge of tiramisu, ‘instead of “fingers crossed”. A South African friend of mine once said to an electrician who’d just repaired her faulty telephone, “Let’s hold thumbs.” She couldn’t understand why he suddenly started to flirt with her.’

Paul’s laughter was contagious. It had been a long time since Carla had laughed. It felt so good.

When he finally got up to take his leave, they hadn’t covered much Italian.

‘Consider this a taster,’ Carla said as she walked out with him to his car. ‘An introduction to the proper course.’

The blue night air was sharp against her face. ‘Next time, the real work begins.’

‘Carla.’ Paul stopped, his jovial eyes suddenly still. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time.’ He took her hands in his. They were big and warm, like Kevin’s. ‘Thank you. Or should I say
grazia
?’

‘
Grazie
,’ she corrected.

He leant forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Carla’s body melted, and a hungry ache hollowed out her insides.

Then he climbed into his old Saab convertible and reversed into the darkness.

Paul squeezed her breasts and kissed her in the gulley beneath her collarbone. Carla’s head was ringing. He fingered the space behind her knees. Ringing. Kissed her inner thighs. Ringing. Blasted ringing! Carla sat up and slammed her hand down on the snooze button of her alarm clock, then collapsed back onto her pillow in the hope of landing again in the dream. But it was gone and she was awake, Kevin watching her from the photograph on the bedside table. She turned it face down.

She hauled herself out of bed and traipsed through to the kitchen to brew herself a strong black coffee, even though a migraine was threatening. Then she began to tidy up the mess from the previous night. Her cardigan hung abandoned over a dining room chair, the corner of an envelope poking out of the pocket. A letter. The one Mingyu had retrieved from the rubbish bin.

A large yellow stain on the envelope had dried, wrinkling the paper into a contracted scar. Carla brought it up to her nose. It had the putrid smell of garbage.

She didn’t want to open it. It felt as if all her yesterdays were chained to her, dragging behind like the Ghost of Christmases Past. Could she never break free?

Finally, she took a sharp knife out of the drawer and sliced open the envelope.

Neat pencil print.

Carla’s skin had risen into hundreds of tiny bumps. She slipped the letter into the bottom drawer of her desk, concealing it with other papers.

‘You are full of surprises,’ she said out loud, then put a hand over her mouth, surprised by her own words. It had been so long since she had spoken to Him. It had been so long since she had believed.

Paul was arranging a book display at the front door of the library when she hurried past him. He made a show of looking at his watch.

‘
Buongiorno, Signora Reid
. Fine time to arrive! Did you have a late night or something?’

Carla laughed.

‘Thanks again for a great evening,’ he said, following behind her like an overenergetic puppy.

She stopped and turned. His eyes were shining. She looked away – coy, clumsy and confused, and with a serious hangover. Then hurried on.

‘I’d like to reciprocate,’ he called after her. ‘I know this fabulous little trattoria in Birkenhead. My shout Saturday?’

‘Talk to you later,’ she mouthed, as Diana at front desk looked up.

They went out the following Saturday night, and the one after that. Then Carla started to decline Paul’s keen invitations. It was an attempt to ring-fence her emotions. For the first time in years she had felt alive and sexual, both emotions she’d thought had died on that fateful autumn night. However, along with these wonderful feelings had come guilt, overwhelming guilt. She didn’t feel entitled to happiness. By engaging in the frivolity of living, she was surely dishonouring the memory of her son and husband. She had survived. They hadn’t.

Paul took the hint and backed off.

When his visits dwindled, Mingyu was the first to notice. One afternoon she sat Carla down. ‘Carla, you love Jack. You love Kevin.’

‘Of course!’

‘You love beautiful sunset?’

Carla nodded.

‘You love my pork dumpling?’

‘Where is this going, Ming?’

‘You can love many thing, Carla. The love for one is not undo the love for the other. There is much room in your heart.’

‘Mingyu’s pragmatic philosophies to the fore,’ Carla said, brushing off her neighbour’s advice with an air of nonchalance.
However, she found herself pondering the words, and with time the struggle inside her heart began to ease.

She started seeing more of Paul again outside of work hours, and slowly began sharing bits of her biography with him. However, it was a censored and abridged version she shared; she wasn’t going to allow the past to tarnish what she had this time.

They had been seeing each other for several months when he stopped her in the Reference Section one day, somewhere between the letters N and P, and asked if she’d consider joining him for a weekend in Wellington, where he’d be attending the Readers and Writers Festival.

The prospect of going to Wellington was both exciting and daunting. It had been forever since she’d even travelled over the Harbour Bridge. Her life had shrunk down to a circumscribed coin of safety. To test the boundaries was terrifying.

The day they arrived in the capital, Wellington put on quite a show. Its notorious wind settled and the sun’s rays cast the ocean in a stunning Pacific-blue hue. The mewling cry of seagulls overhead, the sun-baked boulders and the mineral-scented air were all so marked in their difference from Carla’s familiar landscape. Nature had opened a window and helped her step outside.

The day was theirs to enjoy before the festival’s opening that evening, so after depositing their bags at the hotel, they hailed a taxi and headed for the national museum.

A few hours proved hopelessly inadequate to do justice to Te Papa, and by the time they emerged from the bold building of block and glass it was three o’clock and they were ravenous. They grabbed a belated pub lunch on the waterfront, then headed back to their hotel to ready for the evening.

Carla had just climbed out of the shower when she heard someone knocking at the door. Swathing herself in one of the
luxuriously thick hotel gowns, she pulled the door ajar.

Paul was standing there, all polished and spruce.

‘Hey, Speedy Gonzalez,’ she said, laughing, ‘a woman needs time to get tarted up.’

Paul looked sheepish. ‘It’s just that it has been such a great day and I wanted to … I had to tell you something.’

She opened the door wider.

‘
Ti amo
.’

The words caught her off guard.

‘Did I get it right?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I mean,
ti amo
. Is that the way you say “I love you”?’

‘Yes. Yes. I … Yes. Absolutely. Corre—’

Without waiting for her to finish, he leant in, his mouth trapping her words. They stumbled backwards into the room, Paul kicking the door shut with his foot, and they landed on the king-size bed with a thump.

He untied the belt of her dressing gown and parted the thick white cloth. Her breathing was loud in her ears, her whole body an extension of this rhythm – anticipation, anguish and excitement all distilled into each noisy breath.

Paul ran a finger down her middle, dividing her in two. She groaned as he lingered at the end of this imaginary line, then began pulling at his shirt buttons, her fingers clumsy and impatient. He slipped his hands behind her ears and out through her curls, returning to massage her earlobes. Her body loosened. He stroked her spongy belly, detailing every crease. She clasped the back of his neck, digging into the strong ridges that ran down his back. Gently he parted her thighs.

Then he was leaning over her, his eyes …

All of a sudden they were those eyes staring at her – the black, angry, mocking eyes. Too close. Taunting. Hot breath …

‘No! Get off me! Get off!’ Carla screamed.

Paul pulled back, the colour draining from his face, confusion spinning through his pallor.

She sat up, panting. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

She began to cry.

Paul was on all fours at the end of the bed, his arms trembling. ‘I … I don’t—’

Loud knocking at the door interrupted them.

‘Everything all right in there? Open the door, please!’

Paul jumped up, buttoned his shirt and stumbled towards the door. A freckly lad stood in the corridor, a shiny brass
Concierge
badge pinned to his lapel and a keycard in hand.

‘Is everything okay, sir? I was passing and heard a woman s-screaming.’ He craned his neck, trying to see around Paul.

Carla was now lying in the foetal position on the bed, the bedspread pulled over her. ‘Yes. All fine.’

The concierge hesitated.

‘The lady … uh, my friend, just saw a mouse,’ Paul added quickly.

‘A mouse?’ The lad was now on tiptoes, trying to get a better look at Carla. Paul coloured.

‘Would you like to be moved to another room then, sir?’

‘Oh no, that won’t be necessary. I’ve killed it.’

The boy’s eyes grew round. ‘Killed it?’

‘Yes. With the Bible in the bedside drawer. That book sure comes in handy. Anyway, I’ve flushed it down the toilet,’ Paul said, pre-empting the next question.

Before the boy could move beyond a stutter, Paul thanked him again and closed the door.

He peered through the spyglass. The young man was still there, ear to the door.

Paul waited until he had gone, then walked back over to the bed and passed Carla her gown.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to ruin things. I misread the moment, thought you—’

She shook her head. She didn’t know where to begin, or what to say, but she couldn’t stall her history any longer.

They never got to the festival opening. She told him everything – about Jack and Kevin, and about Toroa. Everything. Even that she had herpes, and if they ever made love he would need to use a condom.