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Sport 41: 2013

Breton Dukes — A Lonely Road

page 51

Breton Dukes

A Lonely Road

Kelly was returning from the supermarket. It was hot. Her shadow was long and thin with drooping bags for hands. She turned onto their road. On one side were houses and a footpath. On the other a long strip of grass abutted a swathe of mangroves. The mangroves bordered the harbour. You couldn’t see the harbour from their house, but from this part of the road you could see the claws of land that made its entrance, its sand bars at low tide, its deep, steady blue at high tide, its pylons and narrow channel. Between the footpath and the houses were long ditches that filled or emptied with the tide. There was weed in the ditches. There were ducks and sometimes shags. There were grey herons and sprats and tadpoles. Families of pukeko patrolled the grass by the mangroves. Sometimes they too were in the ditches. Other times they were dead on the wide, straight road, flattened by cars, half cooked by the sun.

Kelly had been with Shane in Whangarei for three months. He’d been there for four. Shortly after she’d arrived in Northland, he’d used the odometer in his new station wagon to measure the road’s length.

‘One hundred metres.’

‘What?’

‘The road. Our road.’

‘Oh,’ she’d said.

‘You walk it all the time.’

‘I know.’

‘Well, it’s a hundred metres.’

‘Oh, okay. Thanks.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ he’d said, hugging her.

Spontaneous hugging was still common. So were apologies. Shane would hug her, and then laugh, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just so perfect you’re here.’ Then he’d grab her again.

Kelly passed the ditch with the discarded eeling spear. Low tide, page 52 the water was clear. There were little holes in the mud where mud creatures breathed. The spear hung in such a way as to suggest it had been thrown. Sprats milled about the shaft. She kept walking. A hawk kited up from the mangroves. A van went past. PLUMBER. The men inside spoke to each other and laughed. The driver waved. She’d lost weight and gained a tan. Not trusting the local hairdressers, her hair had grown and grown.

Their place was up a private drive, one house back from the road. It had an open-plan living area—wooden floors, lots of windows—and in the back, off a short carpeted hallway, a bathroom and three small bedrooms. Kelly left the house unlocked. It was a good neighbourhood. People smiled and said hello. Men were always out the front hosing down their boats or using lawn mowers and weed eaters. She walked up the drive. Below them the neighbour owned a business that made pools, above were South Africans whose two young children went up and down the drive on scooters. At meal times Kelly often heard little voices leading prayers.

A frozen chicken, bacon, rubbish bags, a Steelo pad, fly spray, and in the other bag flour, fresh tarragon, lemons, milk, poppy seeds and butter. Though Shane wouldn’t be home before midnight, Kelly was roasting a chicken and baking a cake. She’d eat a small meal and offer him a plate when he got home—when he saw the food, he’d hold up his hands and say it looked perfect, but there was just no way. Then he’d shower and they’d go to bed. In the morning she’d rise with him and make the meal into leftovers for his lunch.

Past the carport and up the wooden stairs. Sweat ran down her legs. She went into the house. Curtains were drawn to keep the heat out and it was gloomy after the hard, mid-afternoon sun. The bench and oven were against the wall nearest the driveway. She put the bags on the bench. The milk flopped over. Two lemons rolled out. A fly landed and went quiet on last night’s dishes.

Prior to Whangarei, Kelly and Shane had spent six months in an informal coupling in Wellington. When they met she was at the tail of a long-term relationship with a tall, unlucky sculptor, who, at their last meeting, had forced her hand up her back, and spat, ‘You’re arrogant. You’re egocentric.’

Shane had been single and studying and working hard for most of page 53 a decade. On their first date he’d said, ‘You’re what I’ve always been looking for.’ He took her to the five best restaurants in Wellington, to vineyards in Martinborough and Hawke’s Bay. He took her for a week in Samoa and flew them to a concert in Auckland and a racing carnival in Canterbury. She forgot his birthday. He bought her a mountain bike. They were both in their late thirties. When his contract in Wellington ended he’d applied for jobs all over the northern North Island. Warm weather and the outdoor lifestyle, that’s what he was after. Everyone said she should go for it—he was so much better than the last one and my god, Kelly, a doctor?! They’d all just presumed it would work out. And of course they were right: he was good to look at, he was bright and generous and successful. She should love him.

Kelly finished unpacking, put the chicken on a plate to defrost, and washed her hands. The sink was part of a breakfast bar that divided the bench and oven from the living area. The fly resumed looping the room. Shane’s coffee table and laptop, his medical texts, the long leather couch he’d brought north. She’d lie there and escape into her books, resting her iced water on the low table. But her book had moved. After ten years teaching she had a sense of the whereabouts of valued things. She’d marked her page and left it on the coffee table; now it was on the dining table by the window. And the door to the hall was open. She kept doors and windows closed—you worked hard up here to stay on top of the bugs. There was a noise from the toilet: short steps on the rough tile floor and then flushing.

‘Shane?’ It sounded strange saying his name with any urgency.

She crossed to the window and made a crack in the curtain. The carport was empty. The plumbing got louder as someone opened the bathroom door—now they’d be in the hall. Blood gushed through her throat to her brain. Shane was the only person she knew in Northland. She stepped back to the sink. There was a knife she’d used that morning. On the blade was a shaving of apple skin. She was middle-class New Zealand. She believed in rational explanations. She left the knife, gripped the dishcloth, and stared at the door.

A man appeared. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and carefully wiping his fingertips on the cloth over his belly. Had Shane organised something? Was he a tradesman? But where’s his truck, where are his shoes? Rapist. A cord went tight in her groin. Her hands were little page 54 birds fluttering for the knife.

The man looked up. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Shit.’

‘Hey,’ she said, and then louder, even though she was stepping backwards, ‘Hey there.’

He spoke with his arms raised; he spoke softly like they were together at the movies. ‘It’s okay.’

The blood to her stomach and chest went cold. ‘It’s not.’

He came into the room like there was broken glass.

‘Hey, no!’ With her heart flinging about in her mouth it was like shouting around a wad of meat. The knife felt unfamiliar. It might as well have been a banana. She pressed herself back against the bench.

‘My name’s Jeff Collins,’ he said, ‘with a J.’ Then he spelt his surname. ‘I’m not here to hurt you. I just need a little time.’

She forgot the name straight away. ‘Please,’ she said, wobbling her knife-hand towards the door. ‘PLEASE!’

His hands went higher. When he turned his small feet made a kissing sound on the wooden floor. The hair on his upper arms was black and wiry. ‘I’m a farmer from Raurimu—’

‘No!’ she said.

‘I’m sorry to have frightened you,’ he said. ‘I thought the house was empty. I needed a drink—’

She shook her head and, though he couldn’t see, she again pointed at the door. ‘Get out!’

The fly landed on his neck and crawled up his ear. ‘I’m sorry I’m here. I knocked. When no one answered, I came in. The police are looking for me, but I’m okay. I’m a taxpayer, I’m a decent New Zealander.’

She freed herself from the bench. Moving felt good. She put down the knife and picked up the frying pan. Making decisions felt good. ‘Why are you here?’ she said. ‘There’s no law against farming?’

When he laughed his thin body shuddered.

Angered by his mirth she shouted, ‘You can’t be here!’ Then, carefully, as if unsure how the words would taste, ‘You fucking creep.’

Smooth and so slow the fly was undisturbed, the farmer re-raised his arms and went forward onto his knees. ‘That’s fair enough,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’d say, but please, you could be in my position, anyone could.’ He put his face in profile. He was sweating, maybe page 55 crying. His eye was wide and white. ‘I’m asking you for compassion.’

She felt responsible for his submission and some of the cold went out of her torso. Outside a car went up the drive. Cicadas pulsed. The other rhythmical sound was her breathing. Aiming the pan at him she went to the front door. ‘If I go outside and scream—’

‘I’ll wait here, right here if you want,’ he said, then pleading softly, ‘But please, just until it gets dark.’

‘What if I call the police?’

Something jigged in his throat. He lowered his hands to his knees as if about to pray. ‘You’re reading Dick Francis.’

Being so near the outside she felt she had choices. ‘What were you doing in the bathroom?’

He moved his shoulder to clear the fly from his cheek and then shifted his face from view. A bottle-sized stain of sweat shaped down his back. ‘A house burnt down. I burnt a house down.’

‘I’m calling the police—’

The man spoke quickly, loud at first, fading to a whisper. ‘The owner of the house killed my partner. Tuesday last week, the jury found him not guilty. Gill, my partner’s name was Gill.’

‘What jury? What not guilty?’

‘The judge called it a tragic car accident.’

The farmer glanced back. Kelly weighed the pan like it was an axe.

‘I didn’t go into your bedroom. I did not go into your bedroom.’

‘Why should I believe—’

He spoke so quietly she had to lean away from the door to hear. ‘Gill was walking the dogs—the man ploughed into the back of him. Though they say the man stopped to help, Gill died at the scene.’ The farmer shifted as if to ease his knees. ‘He and the man had history—they’d played rugby together. They didn’t get on. Gill always worried the man would do something, but no one listened when I said that. The man owns the local garage. He’s known throughout the district—he does his own ads on the radio.’

‘And now what? You’re a fugitive?’ said Kelly, experiencing the word as a sliver of excitement.

‘After the fire I ran. I just ran.’

He was little: little feet, little features, little head. He shifted again and winced.

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‘Sit back,’ she said. ‘Sit back on the floor.’

He raised himself off his knees and sat with his legs crossed. ‘Thank you,’ he said, turning to look at her.

‘I haven’t decided,’ she said, pointing the pan. ‘I haven’t decided anything yet.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again, and sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

Lately, lying there on the couch, just beyond where he knelt, Kelly had wished for an earthquake or a fire, some massive thing to bring massive change.

Forty minutes passed with the farmer on the floor, and, frame by frame, Kelly trusted him a little more. When he’d asked for water she’d slid in a bottle and then thrown a bag with bread. The meal sounded dry in his mouth and, watching him closely, she’d delivered a piece of cheese on the underside of the pan.

‘Gill and I used to make our own.’

‘Your own what?’

‘Cheese.’

In Wellington, Kelly had taught science in high schools and, in letting the man describe cheese making, in allowing him to detail the processes used to formulate the different varieties, he’d reminded her of the small boys who ended up in the tough schools because of their background: the kind who were bullied because of their brains and feeble bearing, the kind who, even as fourth formers, had to be reminded to blow their noses.

This comparison caused further relaxation and in noting that, she’d felt even more in command, which put her on high alert: the con-man who sneaks into women’s houses and earns their trust. Clutching the pan in a threatening way, she’d made him go through his story from the beginning. Liars tripped over facts. While plot lines were retained, details failed. But he answered sincerely and without hesitation: Gill, the long leash, the quiet country road. And reliving it seemed to hurt. The patch of sweat enlarged. His little body shook.

‘You can sit on the couch,’ she said.

‘Tie me if you like,’ he said, pushing his hands back.

‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

Meekly, he stood, turned, and sat in the couch, raising his legs page 57 and crossing them primary-kid-style. With his elbows in his lap he was rendered even smaller. ‘Just like you’d truss the bird,’ he said, nodding at the chicken by the sink.

Kelly almost smiled. Instead she shifted the pan from side to side as if about to return serve.

‘Gill and I honeymooned in Aitutaki,’ he said, looking at the framed photo of herself and Shane in Polynesia.

‘That’s Samoa, and we’re not married.’

‘Our civil union was one of the first,’ he said, holding the ring on his finger.

‘He’s a doctor, he works a lot.’

The farmer was quiet. Head bowed. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. ‘It was all thanks to Aunty Helen.’

Kelly didn’t know where to look.

After a moment he smiled wetly. ‘What sort of doctor?’

In the staffroom, Kelly had had a reputation for picking the bad ones. They held themselves a certain way. Their eyes had that dead look. How many murderers, or robbers, or rapists knew cheese making? How many knew about civil unions or the person responsible for them? More tension went out of her. ‘A paediatrician,’ she said. ‘I guess he’s married to his work. Not that I want—’ She stopped herself midsentence, and looked into the pan.

The farmer gestured faintly towards the dining table. ‘Bring a chair over?’

He looked like what he said he was: a gay man of the land. Cropped hair (she could see him in a cloth hat), wiry, nice even teeth, a crooked nose, a kind sparkle in those sad eyes. Persecuted by a bunch of red-necks; she’d have to work hard not to forget the manner in which he’d appeared. She’d get the phone and keep it close, and from one of the tall chairs she’d be able to stand quickly.

Still holding the frying pan she went to the dining table and slid a chair across the floor, positioning it at a safe distance from the couch. ‘Pass the phone,’ she said, pointing.

It lived in a port beneath the coffee table. Cat-like he tipped forward and with an arched back retrieved it. The move was swift and efficient. Unsettled, Kelly stayed standing. He seemed to notice. ‘You could keep the front door open,’ he said, putting the phone at page 58 her end of the table.

She dialled 111, and hung up. She held the pan in her lap and kept her finger on redial. Sitting was a relief. She sighed. ‘If I open the door there’ll be flies.’

‘I am really sorry,’ he said.

‘And you’re not a murderer?’

‘I used to do yoga.’

She put the phone in the pan and pulled her hair back, binding it into a ponytail with a tie from her wrist. If she’d had sleeves she would have rolled them up. She wanted to confess—she’d thought of it first when the farmer went to his knees. She couldn’t stand Shane. His round nostrils, his thick gums, the way he said perfect all the time. She was awake all night thinking about escape. She was rotting. But returning to Wellington terrified her: some grotty high school, all those flabbergasted friends and family.

She must have been staring intently at the farmer.

‘Check what I’ve told you on the internet,’ he said.

Shane had left her in charge of contracting a provider, but she hadn’t got to it yet. Nor had she replaced her cellphone. ‘I will.’

‘Or there might be something on the radio.’

The fridge ticked loudly and then shook itself into silence. Another car went up the drive.

Exhaling dramatically, she said, ‘I’m forty next year.’

He smiled. ‘Forty’s good. I came out when I was forty. Gill and I met the year before. He taught at the local primary.’

‘I’m a teacher,’ Kelly said. ‘Science. I hate it.’

‘And now?’

Morning’s she slept—it was easier without Shane there—then she read. Tough talking Scottish cops, humble ex-jockeys infiltrating rings of country folk engaged in foul play. Heroes and villains. To keep her devotion from Shane she left one book out with a bookmark that rarely moved. Afternoon’s she walked to the supermarket and then cooked. Dining at home was perfect for the bank balance. She chose complicated recipes and did multiple courses. He thought it was all for him. ‘What more could a man want?’ he’d ask at the conclusion of a meal, ‘I’ve got the perfect job and the perfect girl.’

‘I read a lot,’ she said. ‘I cook.’

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‘Hard to find work up here?’

She nodded. She’d told Shane she was looking, but that was a lie—she avoided anything that committed herself to the place.

‘Before I came out,’ he said, ‘Mum and Dad called every week to remind me about wedding bells and the patter of little feet.’

The fly still circled, in the willow at the back of the property the pair of herons made their emphysemic bark, and in Kelly, the balance shifted. He was now more sympathetic listener than intruder. In a rush, she told him about Wellington and Samoa, about the vineyards and concerts.

But he missed her tone. ‘Falling in love’s fun,’ he said.

She stood, taking the phone, but leaving the pan by the chair, and crossed to the kitchen, returning with a printout. ‘When I got here, he’d bought a station wagon, and look at this, he’s suddenly right into saving.’ Accrued money was described in the form of a bar graph. Behind the graph was an image of a large home: a two car garage, a pohutukawa with a swing. Each month, Shane solemnly fixed the latest printout to the fridge.

‘Ah,’ said the farmer, ‘the white picket fence.’

‘Life’s suddenly so serious—all he does is work. Double shifts, weekend shifts. Days off he goes in to review babies he’s helped resuscitate. I don’t even know if I want kids.’

The farmer’s head was as still as the Buddha’s.

‘I stay in relationships too long,’ she said firmly. ‘You think they’ll get better, that people will change. I get stuck.’

‘People don’t change,’ he said.

‘I just don’t love him.’ Distracted by the intensity of her confession she leaned forward and put the phone on the table.

‘Have you got friends here? Family?’

She shook her head. There was the sound of the children on their scooters. Pre-dinner they liked to do bunny-hops in the empty carport. ‘I shouldn’t have come. My instinct said, stay in Wellington, but when it comes to men, my instincts have never been reliable.’

The farmer smiled. ‘Bloody men, eh?’

She shook her head and looked at the ceiling. ‘When he got the job here I couldn’t give him an answer and he came alone, but he was so persistent . . . And I missed all the fun we’d had.’

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Somehow he’d claimed the phone. He tapped the end of the antenna with his thumb. ‘Just tell him it’s not working out.’

Kelly shrugged. She didn’t want to get into the things she should do. She changed tack. ‘My last partner was abusive too,’ she said, muddling the direction of the violence the farmer had described. ‘He was an artist,’ she said, making a long curvy motion with both hands. ‘Everything had to be so tactile.’

The farmer stretched out his legs and flexed his toes.

‘The last time I saw him he almost broke my arm.’

The farmer filled his cheeks with air and bulged his eyes.

There was a beeping—the pool-king’s truck as he reversed into his drive. ‘It must be six o’clock,’ said Kelly, irritated the sculptor’s assault wasn’t being treated seriously.

With his feet now on the floor and his left arm along the top of the couch the farmer looked larger and more at home.

She pointed at the phone and held out her hand.

He bared his teeth.

From mouth to anus, her every pipe froze. ‘I’m going to put that chicken on,’ she managed, and then stood, which was when he made his move—springing out of the couch and riding her and the chair down, so that the action ended with him squatted over her, so that when he spoke there was a hint of the DKNY Shane kept in a drawer in their bedroom.

‘The real story,’ he said, ‘is that I need a little money.’

He hadn’t made her lie face-down on the couch, but that was how she felt safest, huddled into the leather like a new-born pup. He was at the dining table, slowly turning the pages of her book. He had Shane’s credit card and he had a small knife. When the roads were quieter they’d be walking to the supermarket’s ATM.

He’d fried eggs and from his place at the table, she’d heard the crispy periphery of the white, the crunch of toast, the sound of his tongue clearing yolk from his lips. After dinner he’d rifled her utensil drawer for the knife.

‘Which one’s sharpest?’

She hadn’t answered, just clutched her hands beneath her chest and counted each breath.

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Her bladder was full, but she didn’t trust herself to make the words to ask. And anyway the back of the house terrified her. In books and movies, blood was often shaped as numbers and words on walls. She imagined the blade between her ribs, the lining of her lung giving under the point of her paring knife, alveoli exploding like fish eggs. Sweat on her forehead sucked on the arm of the couch. She opened her eyes and stared at the leather. On a Ministry of Ed field trip, extolling the benefits of dissection, a teacher/part-time farmer had opened a pig and scooped out the innards, detailing all the interesting parts with a piece of kindling.

Should she beg or scream? Or stand and confront him? It worked at high school. Tough kids buckled hardest. He farted and then coughed as if to cover the sound. She couldn’t remember the self-defence she’d learnt. You shouted a lot. To gouge eyes you went in hard and kept digging. Back in the capital, when she’d shown Shane, he’d made his hand a fin and set it between his eyes. It had made her giggle. He was strong. He’d been into BMX when he was a kid. He had big calf muscles and could walk around on his hands. On Sunday, they’d walked through bush to get to a cove. There was a photograph on Shane’s computer of two kaka ring-barking a tree, and there was a self-timed one of herself and Shane arm-in-arm—the ocean behind them, a freighter on the horizon. Part of her missed the conversation she and the farmer had been having.

She’d closed her eyes and was back to concentrating on her bladder when he pushed out from the table. ‘Righto,’ he said.

Trying to stay small she rolled over and stood. He was in the middle of the room, arms wide, shepherding her towards the front door. Her clothes were damp with nerved-up sweat and her balance was off. She walked as if supporting herself on a railing.

Outside the low sun was still hot. Windless, a muddy sand and foliage smell off the mangroves, cicadas, the pool-man’s boat aboard a trailer in his drive, a wet stain on the concrete from water dripping from the outboard motor. No humans in sight. She wobbled out onto the road. It was empty and wide like a runway.

‘Easy there,’ said the farmer.

The tide had filled the long ditches with seawater. Five pukeko stitched at the grass by the mangroves.

page 62

‘What happens when we get there?’ she asked.

‘Eh?’

Her mouth felt dry, especially her teeth. She swallowed and passed her tongue over them. She repeated herself.

‘We take out some money.’

‘And then?’

Before he could answer there was the sound of a plane and, when that faded, a hard, windy, flapping. They stopped and looked. Two parachutes. One lemon, one mandarin. The sound was the chutes catching and filling. For a moment Kelly imagined a rescue attempt: the armed offenders, an airborne SAS. And the farmer must have sensed her hope because he came forward, eyes wide, arm raised. Kelly’s knees went, she ducked and got her hands up. But there was no strike, no puncture. He tapped her elbow as he’d tapped the phone’s antenna and then hands on hips he waited while she gathered herself. ‘Lot of picket fences along here,’ he smiled.

She turned. They kept walking.

Panic pumped in her heart. She saw her legs taking her in the wild way of a beheaded hen. Adrenaline. The word spaced the white of her brain. In the next house the doors and windows were wide open, breeze moving through white curtains, a smell of seared barbecue meat, and men’s voices! Clear, but not close. Not from the house. She scanned the road. Inflatable boats on the harbour? In the mangroves? But they were coming from above—the parachutists shouting joyously. One, then the other, started singing. Behind her, for a moment, the farmer joined them in song.

She glanced back. He was off to her right and a metre behind. His head shiny with sweat, body hair tufting round his neck and up the back of his T-shirt. Furry and wet like something squeezed from a drain pipe.

‘What?’ he said, coming up fast and shoving her.

She stumbled, but didn’t fall.

It wasn’t so much the contact as the face he wore.

The road started its familiar incline. The discarded spear. It was in the next ditch. Could she jump in and come up fighting? But he was so fast. And how would she hold it? She moved her hands, trying to figure the best grip. The water was shallow, the road a good distance from page 63 its surface. Eight metres until she was level—she shortened her stride, not wanting to decide. Was it best to pay? Isn’t that what the police said? There’d be people at the supermarket, kids riding skateboards around the carpark. The lime-green ATM. She’d once found a sausage roll on its keypad. He couldn’t kill her there. Now level with the spear, she raised her eyes, stepped a little further into the road, and stared ahead to the intersection. If she ignored the spear, there was no decision. A red wagon turned. Headlights on. He was cautious with things like that. It was Shane.

Run. Across the road. Scream like you’re on fire. But just stopping was easier. He was here—a body to fit between her and the farmer. Her bladder let go. It went warm in her shorts, then dripped. Quiet on his bare feet, the farmer came up and put his hands on her shoulders. Shielding her from the road, he made her turn and face the ditch.

‘Pretend you’re looking at the little fishies,’ he said, pinning her arms to her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder.

She looked. There was the knife in his hand, the wetness on her legs, the ditch water, and then the spear. But it didn’t matter. ‘It’s Shane,’ she said, as if they were in the playground.

‘Shhhh,’ said the farmer, nuzzling in.

Kelly glanced past the farmer’s ear. Head back, arms straight. Sad and serious. Shane looked, but didn’t even slow. What had he seen? Two lovers? With the farmer’s hot, eggy breath down her front, she watched the car turn into their drive.

‘Actually, I could return couldn’t I? You could be my wee bank. Food. Money. Conversation.’ The farmer nudged her with his stomach as if to knock her in, then let her go.

‘Righto,’ he said.

But the line had snapped. And aiming just to the side of the spear, Kelly dove into the ditch. Sprats fled as her hands hit the water that was more shallow than it looked. Soft, soft sand, first to the elbow, then to the shoulder—an ooze which welcomed her head and torso with thoughtless and utterly breathless black, and bar the occasional smooth-skinned sea worm, there was nothing on which to get purchase, and it would have taken swift action and the strength and determination of a man in love to prise her free.