Gith (19 page)

'Scaring him shitless like that.'

'Yeah,' Mark said. 'He crapped his pants. Literally.'

I ignored him, kept looking at Trevor. 'Do you know what
Ray and that bastard Wyett did to Gith?'

'They gave her a lift home.'

'Who the hell told you that?

'You got a different story?'

'They tried to bloody rape her, is all.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'Crap,' he said. 'And anyway, any girl who gets into a van
with Wayne Wyett is asking for it.'

'She didn't get into the fucking van!' I almost yelled it at
him. 'They pulled her in.'

'That's all I've got to say,' Trevor turned his back on me
again.

I lunged at him but Monty grabbed my arm.

'Steady on, mate.'

'Jesus!'

'Calm down.'

I looked at Trevor. His back was like a challenge and it
made me even madder. 'Fucker always was on the Tacketts'
side,' I said.

'Bloody Wyett,' Mark added.

Yes, well, I figured I wasn't done with Wyett either.

'What do you know about him?' I asked.

'No-hoper,' Monty said.

'Nasty piece of work,' Tom added.

'Nasty how?'

'Drugs, they say. You know — those people down Ramp
Street.'

Drugs? What had Tackett said? Something about Wyett
being wired?

'If towns have arseholes, that's ours,' Mark said.

'Who does he hang out with?' I asked. 'Other than
Tackett.'

Monty shrugged. 'Wouldn't have a clue.'

'He's got mates in Katawai,' Tom said. 'Does a bit of
hunting with them.'

'Shit,' Mark said. 'I wouldn't trust that bugger with a gun. I
wouldn't want to be anywhere near him.'

'Does he own a black pig dog?' I asked Tom.

'Who? Wyett? Wouldn't know, mate.'

Simon Ingrest was moving through the bar. He stopped at
our table, said hello to Mark and Tom and Monty. But not to
me. I wouldn't normally have done anything but my temper
was up after what Trevor had said.

'Have you got a problem with me too?' I asked.

Simon turned, looked at me. 'Ah, well. I'm afraid I've had
a request to ban you.'

'What?'

'That's a bit on the nose,' Monty told him.

'Who?' I asked.

'I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say.'

'Why?'

'Because of your violent tendencies.'

'Fucking Tacketts,' I said. 'You mean to say you'd serve Ray
Tackett and not me?'

'Now, now, now.' Simon switched his tone. 'I didn't say I
was going to do anything. I just said I'd had a request.'

'I would have thought,' Monty said, 'that it wasn't necessary
to mention a request like that.'

'Maybe not. Maybe not.' Simon turned back to me. 'I
can understand why you reacted as you did. You'd be extra
protective under the circumstances.'

'Given the girl's — you know — disability,' Tom said.

'
Extra
protective,' Simon nodded. 'But, of course, you have
to realise that although people understand, it doesn't mean
they approve. You know what I mean?'

I knew what he meant.

***

I DON'T BLAME Brenda for talking. She would've had
to tell somebody, if only because she needed to work things
through. I guess she talked to Susie Smeele. Susie wasn't a
blabbermouth but she was pretty close with Faye Ingrest, and
Faye would have told Simon, who was almost as bad as Dolly
McKenzie, and that would have been that.

When people turn against you, you see it in little ways.
They don't stop to chat for as long as they used to. If they
think they can get away with it, they avoid your eye and
pretend they haven't seen you at all. In a place as small as Te
Kohuna, where you know most of the people you meet, it
becomes clear pretty quick. There was a difference, though,
between the people around the township and the blokes in
the pub. For the town it was all a moral thing, though I'm not
sure if it was the fact that Gith was my niece or that she was
handicapped that got them going. Maybe there was no real
difference. Either way, they figured I was taking advantage,
using somebody I was supposed to be looking after.

I didn't know how much talk there was at first. It took a
phone call from Joanne to bring it home.

She got straight into it. 'What are these rumours?'

'What rumours?' I could guess what rumours but I didn't
fancy talking about them with my sister.

'About you and Anna.'

'What about us?'

'Is it true?' Joanne was speaking for the family. Had Ma
and the Old Man heard anything yet?

'If you mean are Gith and me sleeping together, the
answer's yes.'

'That is so bad news, so absolutely
rural
in the worst
possible sense. How could you?' She reminded me of Brenda
all of a sudden.

'We love each other,' I said.

'Rubbish. You're in fantasyland. You're just taking advantage,
abusing her.'

'No, I'm not. Come round and talk to her. Ask her for
yourself.'

'I can't talk to her. Nobody can.'

'Sure you can,' I said. 'If you know how.'

'How could she possibly understand? She has nobody but
you. Nothing to compare the situation with. She's seriously
handicapped, for God's sake. How could you not be abusing
her?'

'You'd condemn her to a nun's life then?'

'That's the oldest excuse in the book. If you didn't give her
sex, she would never experience it. Half the child abusers in
the country come up with something along those lines.'

'She's not a child,' I said.

'Mentally she is.'

'No. No, she's not. She's smarter than half the people I
know. She's a lot smarter than me.'

'Oh, for God's sake!' She sighed. I could hear it. 'I knew it
was no use talking to you.'

'Well, don't then.'

She hung up.

Gith was sitting on the sofa, listening in. She looked at me,
wanting to know.

'That was Joanne,' I said. 'Word's going round about you
and me.'

She looked a bit puzzled.

'Brenda must have talked about the other night.'

She rolled her eyes like Brenda was a bore.

'People don't like it,' I said. 'They think it's wrong.'

'Tho?' She shrugged. Then she waved for me to come and
sit beside her. She put her arms round my neck and gave me
a big sexy kiss.

'Listen,' I said, when she let go. 'About Brenda . . .'

'Narg!' She put her hand over my mouth. 'Ken,' she said.

'Gith. Good. Good. Brenda. Pth.'

'I love you, sweetheart,' I told her.

'Gith.'

***

I KNEW WHAT Gith and I did was wrong. I'd thought it
was wrong from the beginning. I'd thought it was against the
law. But what could I do? I wasn't going to try and stop it.
Gith didn't want to stop it, and I just couldn't see any way
of making her stop that wouldn't have destroyed our life
together. She was my life and I was hers. Making love was
just what it says. Our relationship went to a whole new level.
It felt like a miracle.

I'd never been all that keen on sex. Young blokes in their
teens and twenties are meant to care about nothing else, and a
lot of the guys I knew were like that. They thought about it all
the time. They talked about it all the time. Most of their lives
were spent in trying to get girls into a spot where they would
give it out. I don't know if I was weird or thick but it wasn't
like that for me. I liked girls. I liked the way they looked and
the way they made me feel. I liked being with them and I was
keen enough to play around. Not that I got much opportunity
as a kid. Fat boys with glasses don't cut it. The few times I did
get anywhere, it just didn't seem to work. It always felt like, at
some point in what we were doing, the girl just seemed to go
AWOL, leaving me there all by myself. I figured I was getting
it wrong or missing the point somehow. Sex never seemed as
satisfying as the sound of a well-tuned motor roaring into
life.

I felt pretty much the same with Michelle. Maybe neither
of us had high hopes. For her, I think, marriage was a means to
an end. For me it was more like something you were meant to
do, a stage of life. When it came to the sex thing, it was always
disappointing — for her and for me. With Gith all that changed.
She made love the way she laughed. She gave it everything and
I felt that life was happening right there in my arms. There
was nothing I could do. I couldn't have held back even if I'd
wanted to. It was like jumping off a cliff into a roaring torrent
of feeling, and being swept away. We were so happy. We'd go
about our work and I'd be whistling my head off and she'd be
making the weird noises that she called singing, and every time
we looked at each other we'd just grin, and I knew the grin on
my face was as big and dumb as the grin on hers.

Maybe, in a way, it wasn't good for us. It became more and
more like the rest of the world didn't exist. Sometimes, in
the middle of the day, in the middle of a job, we'd touch each
other by accident, and something would happen, like a switch
going on, and we'd leave the car and go to bed. We'd want
each other so much we didn't even stop to take a shower, just
stripped off and grabbed each other, leaving oil and grease on
the bedclothes and on each other's skins. At the weekends
we'd sometimes spend all day in bed, eating and drinking and
making love, and stroking each other and talking in the way
we always seemed to manage to talk somehow. I guess love is
talking, or it was for her. Maybe it was the only time she ever
felt she was completely understood. It wasn't too different for
me. I felt I was the luckiest bloke alive. I felt I was alive for the
first time. Until the day that Michelle walked in on us.

It was Sunday afternoon and we'd fallen asleep. I woke up
to feel Gith beside me, all tense. Michelle was standing there
in the bedroom doorway, staring. She had a terrible look on
her face — we were seriously lucky there wasn't a gun in the
house. After a minute she turned and walked away without
saying a word. I made a move to get up but Gith wouldn't
have it. She wrapped herself round me and hung on. It was
easy enough to let her have her way. We lay back and I stroked
her hair and we listened to what was going on in the other
rooms: Michelle finding whatever it was that she had come
back to fetch. Then the front door slammed.

We only ever saw Michelle one more time. She came
to the house with some papers for me to sign: a separation
agreement.

'You disgust me,' she said. 'You make me sick. I want
nothing more to do with you. So here's the deal. Whatever's
here on this property is yours. Whatever's left in our joint
account is yours. The rest is mine. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'Right. And I want nothing more to do with her, either. So
I'm not one of her trustees any more. I've talked to Peter and
it's all fixed. He'll be in touch. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'Because if it's not okay, I'll go to the police. Understand?'

I didn't know if this threat was real or not. I didn't care. I
just wanted her to go away. 'Yes.'

'Good. Then sign here.'

I did read it. It seemed to say pretty much what she had
said. I signed.

'Thank you,' she said. She sighed like it was a relief to get
it over.

***

THE BLOKES IN the pub took a different view of Gith and
me. With them it wasn't looking down their noses. It was
more like we were a dirty joke. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

'Here's the mechanic. Oy, mate, my drive shaft needs
lubricating. Not like yours, eh?'

Or.

'Ken's not a bloke with loose morals. He likes 'em young
and tight.'

'And dumb.'

'Oh yes. Dumb's the word.'

I pretended not to hear, or I tried not to. Like I'd done at
school with those nasty fat pig comments. There I'd just tried
to keep my head down and let it wash over me. I guess my
gut feeling now was to do the same. Inside I was boiling, but
I knew that anything I did would only make things worse. If
I lost my cool it would only feed that other story about what
a violent bloke I was. I didn't want to run, but if I didn't run
all I could do was pretend I hadn't heard.

Simon Ingrest was behind the bar. He didn't say anything
when I ordered my jug. He didn't need to. The look on his
face was enough.

'You'll take my money though, eh,' I said. 'That's good
enough for you.'

'I won't grace that with a response,' he said, giving me my
change.

I headed over towards Tom and Mark and Monty. I could
feel the eyes staring after me as I passed. Muttered comments.

Snorts of laughter.

'Oy.' Blue Cormer was blocking my way. Blue wasn't tall
but he was solid, with arms as thick as a lot of people's legs.

'What?' I said. I knew I had to watch my temper here.

'I'm disappointed in you. I thought you were a decent joker.
You're as bad as that little cunt Cleat.'

'Two of a kind,' somebody said.

'Bullshit.' I didn't look round to see who it was. I kept my
eyes on Blue.

'You talk to the fucker, don't ya?' He was frowning.

'He's a human being,' I said.

'Like fuck he is. He's a pile of ratshit. And you're no fuckin'
different.'

'Okay,' I said.

'Just keep out of my fuckin' way.'

'I will if you let me past,' I said.

I made it to the table.

Monty and Tom and Mark all stared at me. For a second
I was worried they were going to give me a hard time too.
Mark, I could see, was barely managing to hide a smart-arse
grin.

'It's not bloody funny,' I said.

'No, mate. No.' He pulled a serious face.

'It's all bullshit,' Monty said. 'Mates are mates. That's all I
know.'

'Too right.' Tom nodded.

I was grateful. I was a bit surprised at Tom though. I'd
never figured him as a mate of mine. He always seemed a bit
of a sheep — like he could only be himself if the mob didn't
make a move.