Heartland (20 page)

Vera drags back the curtain. The world is carpeted not in black but in sparking white. Ruapehu has blessed the skiers,
the townies, the outsiders who are simply waiting in this pristine world until the snow-ploughs open up the roads. It has bloody snowed!

It’s history now, of course, that a week later the mountain erupts, not in a fiery display like the previous year but just as devastating for the ski industry. Vera wakes to a colourless landscape. All night Ruapehu has sent a column of dense material high into the air. The volcanic ash has fallen — a fine, filthy curtain that drifts down, turning the whole world drab. Trees, cars, roofs, all a uniform gun-metal grey. Sheep, wearing dark blankets, nose suspiciously at shadowy grass. All sign of snow on the mountain has disappeared, painted out by a malign hand. It’s as though life has switched over to black and white.

‘Good girl, Lovey,’ whispers Vera, but she’s awed nonetheless, and a little frightened. That Ruapehu — you can never trust him an inch. He won’t really care about the season, or Lovey, or the film crew, or the secret burial of Nightshade’s body, or the problems of any bloody one of the people living on his skirts. She watches the column of dark ash roiling up into the still air, imagines the intense heat that is sending it so high. What new capricious act might their mountain be planning next?

A silly chook

The ash shower over Manawa is short lived. A stealthy overnight visitation. By morning, the wind has veered to the south and the rolling plume from the crater heads north, disrupting flying schedules but leaving populations largely untouched. In Manawa, everyone is out cleaning up.

Bull props a ladder against his water tank, climbs up and wraps the intake sieve in a stout plastic bag. He jams it back in place. Step one accomplished. Now, if it rains, water from the ashy roof won’t contaminate his water supply. Step two — clearing the roof — will have to wait until after a good downpour. Meantime, he buckets water out to his vegetable patch and washes the cabbages and sprouts. His car, protected by a lean-to, seems pretty clear, but he washes it down nonetheless. That fine ash can wreak havoc if it gets into the engine.

By lunch time the heavens have opened. It’s as if the rain clouds are competing with the ash cloud for the biggest dump. Bull runs inside, cursing. He’s wasted all that tank water and now he can’t replenish it until he’s done the gutters. He spends
the afternoon on a new lace pattern, but all the while he’s watching the weather, itching to get up on the roof. Finally, when a watery sun struggles through late in the afternoon, he pulls on his boots, picks up trowel and bucket, and heads outside.

The rain has done its work. The black volcanic stuff has washed off the roof down into the guttering, where it lies in a thick, sandy layer. Bull grunts — worse by far than last year. He starts on the gutters he can do from the ladder. It’s slow work. By the time he has trowelled six inches into the bottom of the bucket, it’s as heavy as lead. For all Bull knows, it
is
lead. Two or three times as heavy as sand, that’s for sure. Up and down the ladder he goes, emptying the solid stuff into a pile. Later he’ll dig it into the soil where it will do some good. For now it’s all a bloody chore.

He decides to clear a section of guttering above the lean-to. This means climbing onto the roof itself, something which holds no fear for Bull. But, in his haste to get the job done, he’s ignored the fact that the roof is still damp. A single footfall on that steep slope is one too many. Down he goes, his boots gaining no purchase on the treacherous iron, grabbing, too late, for the guttering, over and down on to the concrete below.

Bull hears the crack before he feels it. Then the pain hits like a train crash. He lies still, trying not to scream, but can feel the cry building. He risks opening his eyes and sees one leg jutting away from his body at a weird angle. Something’s wrong with his shoulder, too. He groans as the pain hits again — wave after wave.

‘Guardian Angel, please let Vera come early tonight,’ he
prays. He tries summoning the guardian’s creamy-gold aura, but knows, with a sinking despair, that it’s been nonsense all along. A silly game. He wills Donny to call in with a bit of news. Donny and Vera are the only two who will come inside his property. There is no inhabited house close enough to hear his calls.

He lies there. The cold of the concrete is seeping into his bones. He moans again as a fresh stab of pain rocks him. Is he bleeding from his head?

‘Mr Howie?’

Bull opens his eyes. He has difficulty focusing, but it appears that the blessed Virgin Tracey has heard his prayers. Her peeky little face peers down and, on either side of her, two cherubs regard him with solemn eyes.

‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘I’ll ring 111.’

She runs to the house, leaving the cherubs in charge. It seems no time at all before she’s back with a blanket, a pillow and a blissful hot-water bottle.

‘You look too awful to shift. Can I get something else?’

‘Aspirin.’

‘Ambulance is coming from Ohakune. They’ll have something stronger.’ She stands there, solid and reassuring. ‘Do you mind if I take the children inside? It’s too cold out here for them.’

Bull closes his eyes, but the tears of shame leak out. This angel of mercy has to ask permission to enter his forbidden house. How has it come to this?

‘Yes, yes,’ he croaks, ‘please take them in.’

‘I’ll turn on the lights, so the ambulance knows.’ And the
Virgin’s gone again, with the cherubs, leaving him fearfully alone.

‘Please come back,’ he prays.

A dark red swirling behind his eyes takes him up and away.

When he comes to, he sees pastel-green walls and white sheets, a plastic bag on a hoist which is attached to him. And dear scruffy Vera sitting beside him, reading the newspaper.

‘There you are,’ she says. ‘About bloody time. I’ve read the news twice over.’

‘Vera,’ he croaks.

‘Well, at least you haven’t lost your marbles. It’s me all right. Whatever possessed you, you silly chook?’

Silly chook is a term of endearment in Vera’s vocabulary. Bull attempts a smile which migrates into a pained wince. ‘My head hurts.’

‘So it bloody should. There’s fifteen stitches in the back of it. Just as well you’ve got the rugby physique.’

Bull keeps his head still but lets his eyes rove. Out the window there’s an unfamiliar landscape. ‘Not Raetihi?’

Vera sighs. ‘No, Bull, we’re in Whanganui Hospital. Raetihi couldn’t cope with you. Your leg is broken in two places, your shoulder was dislocated and then there was the split in your head. If your skull had cracked, which it didn’t, you’d be in Wellington, and then where would I be?’

Bull gives up trying to follow Vera’s logic. A nurse comes to administer medicine. Bull has to grit his teeth not to flinch at her touch. He closes his eyes.

‘It’s all right,’ says the nurse in a soothing voice, ‘I’m just giving you morphine for the pain. You’ve been properly in the wars.’

Bull can’t respond.

‘He’s not used to strangers,’ says Vera.

‘Well, he’d better buck up, because there’ll be plenty of strangers like me around him for the next few weeks.’

The nurse moves on to the next patient. There are three others in the room.

Bull feels the pain recede, but the unfamiliar surroundings panic him. He grips Vera’s hand.

‘I need to get home.’

Vera locks his hand in both of hers. ‘I know you do, Bull, but it’s not going to happen.’

She stays there, holding tight, while he drifts off to sleep. When he wakes up — how much later? — she’s still there, flicking through a gardening magazine.

‘Right,’ she says in her most workman-like voice, ‘I’ll be off now. The meat supply van for the New World will take me up the Paraparas. Donny arranged it. Donny said he’d send you a hug from him, but he knows you wouldn’t like it.’

Bull smiles and this time it doesn’t hurt so much. ‘He’s a good lad.’

‘He is, for all that he’s a few pence short in the pound.’

‘Tell him to thank the Virgin from me. Tell him I’m switching religions. From now on, it’s definitely the Virgin Tracey who gets my prayers.’

Vera grins. ‘So you haven’t lost your sense of humour. Good to see, Bull.’

He reaches for her hand again. ‘I won’t be any good when you go, Vera.’

She stands, puts down the magazine and picks up her grubby old shopping bag. ‘Think of it this way, Bull. It’s a chance to break this thing you have. One way or another, there’s no choice.’

Bull swallows.

Vera squeezes his hand, then leans down to plant a bristly kiss on his cheek. ‘And no flirting with all these pretty nurses. I’m your girl, you remember that.’

Bull sees her tears, which gets him going.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ says Vera gruffly, ‘here we are blubbing like a couple of kids. And what were you doing, I’d like to know, getting up on a wet roof? The rest of us were waiting like sensible people, but you had to rush ahead like some townie. I’ll never forgive you, you silly chook. Back tomorrow.’

And off she goes, padding through the pristine ward like a ferocious old bear, the nurses giving her a wide berth.

Throughout the long painful night, Bull finds the comings and goings of the nurses, the mumblings of the other patients in his cubicle, the volunteer with the early-morning cup of tea less frightening than he had feared. Everyone approaches him quietly; every intervention brings relief of pain
or reassurance that he’s making good progress. He remembers the desperation of lying alone on the concrete, knowing that no one would be likely to call in; Tracey’s hesitation about taking the children inside. And now there will be the problem of his brother. He tries to remember how all this withdrawal, this building of ramparts around his life, came to be. How he let it happen. It was easier to let it happen, that’s the truth of it, easier than explaining.

Vera’s righter than she knows, he thinks. I’ve been a silly chook.

Bull's story

Bull says, ‘There's something on my mind, Vera. I probably should have told you years ago.'

Vera brushes crumbs from the coverlet and settles back in the hospital chair. ‘Well, spit it out then, the meat van won't be here for three hours. You've got a captive audience.'

Vera had arrived before Bull was awake, having hitched a ride down on the carrot truck. She brought with her a freshly baked carrot cake and a picture of his house, painted on card by Tracey, with the inscription
From your Virgin with love from us all. Get better quick!

‘I don't deserve them,' he'd said, and Vera had agreed.

‘Well then,' she says now as he relapses into silence, ‘what's on that mind of yours?'

Bull takes a breath, shifts a little to change the dragging weight of the huge cast on his leg, clears his throat. ‘It's something I'm not proud of, Vera.'

‘For heaven's sake, man, the meat truck will be here before you've started at this rate.'

Bull fixes his eyes on a distant tree. ‘You remember my brother?'

‘Spud?'

‘That's the one.'

‘I never really knew him. He was a few years younger, wasn't he?'

Bull nods. ‘Ten years.'

‘And not good at the rugby like you, as I recall. I remember hearing about the crash that killed him, though.'

Bull shifts irritably. ‘You want to tell this story then?'

Vera gives him the eye.

Bull sighs. ‘The thing is, he's not dead. He didn't die in that crash up north. He wanted to but he didn't. The police said there were no signs of skid marks. He drove hard at a tree, hoping to kill himself.'

‘Dear God. But you said—'

‘I never really said he was dead, but I let people think it. It was because of me that he wanted to die.'

A nurse comes to take his pulse and give him his medication. They wait in silence until she's gone, rattling her trolley to the next bed. But the silence seems to have taken root.

‘So he's not dead,' prompts Vera. ‘Then where is he?'

‘I'll come to that.' Bull groans, whether from physical or remembered pain, he doesn't know. ‘Spud was a late starter as far as girls went, but he finally found a girl he was keen on. Very keen. Name of Rita. An Ohakune beauty, admired by many. Part-Maori was Rita, a lot younger than our Spud who was in his thirties. They both worked in the chemist's.' Bull looks over at Vera. ‘You'd remember that Mum and Dad had retired to Tauranga and I stayed on in the family home and took over the drapery.'

Vera nods. ‘You were — what — when they moved north? Forty-five?'

‘About that. Spud rented in town. He brought Rita home a couple of times. Very proud of her. Our Spud was a quiet boy, very serious about life. He knew Rita was the girl for him and planned his life around that. He announced that he was saving for his own place. Spud wanted to farm, and he wanted to marry Rita.'

Vera fidgets with her specs. ‘Where's all this leading, Bull?'

‘I'm giving you the background. It's important. I suppose I wasn't that caught up with Spud and his ambitions, being older. I was into rugby, coaching the local team, and we were top of our division. We were getting quite a bit of attention.'

Vera grins. ‘You were famous, Bull, no need to be coy about it.'

‘I was, yes, for a year or two. Mum and Dad, being rugby people, were pretty proud of what I was up to. I suppose we all ignored Spud a bit. But he never seemed grumpy or jealous of his older brother. I think he was proud of me too. Had all my rugby posters on his wall and the clippings from the paper. He was a sweet boy.

‘So he brought Rita home a couple of times. She was quite different from him, lively, a bit flashy, wore lipstick and eye make-up. He took her up to Tauranga but I don't think Mum and Dad were that keen on her. Spud wouldn't have noticed, though — his eyes were only on Rita. She was a drinker, that shocked me a bit at the time, her being seventeen, eighteen when he first started going with her. Much younger than him.'

Bull reaches for his water glass and drinks. Vera watches him. Now we're getting to the nub.

‘Then she began to call in without Spud. Always with some excuse — a pair of dark glasses she'd left behind, a magazine to return, that sort of thing. Every time it coincided with when I was at home, though to start with I didn't twig. She'd hang about, laugh a lot and try to chat me up, ask about rugby, go on about my fit body. It embarrassed me, to tell the truth.'

‘Did you fancy her then?'

Bull screws up his eyes as if they hurt. ‘That's the awful part, Vera, I didn't. Not at all. I was much older. And anyway … But one night she arrived unannounced. She said she was looking for Spud, but we both knew he was working late. I'd had a couple of drinks with my dinner and was into a third when she marched in all bright and bushy tailed, pretty drunk herself, I realised later. Stupidly, I offered her a drink and she poured herself a big whisky and topped me up.'

Vera growls. ‘You should have had more sense, Bull. I can see where this is leading.'

‘And you'd be right. On both counts. It was a sordid little encounter. She had me half undressed on the couch before I realised what was up. I didn't enjoy it and she can't have either. I was pretty inexperienced with women, despite all the rugby after-match dos, and I can tell you the whole episode put me off for life. That and Spud arriving while we were still undressed, her draped all over me.

‘Spud went pale and quiet. He should have screamed at us or hit us — we deserved it, both of us. But he just stood there looking at the drunken pair of us, me trying to put myself together, Rita grinning like the brazen wretch she was. “So what?” she said to poor Spud. “You're neither of you worth the effort. What a pair
of no-hopers” — or something along those lines. And out she flounced, still only half clothed and not caring.

‘As far as I know, she never spoke to Spud again. And Spud,' says Bull, his voice creaking, ‘has never spoken to me since then. Not once. He took off a couple of days later on his motorbike. A week later, we heard he was in hospital up north.'

‘Jesus,' says Vera, ‘I'm not surprised you've kept that one to yourself.'

‘Well, now you know.' Bull presses the bell for the nurse and closes his eyes. When she comes, he asks for painkillers: his head is splitting.

Vera watches him. There's more to this story. Something has prompted him to tell it after all these years. But for now he seems to be drifting into sleep. She stumps off down the corridor in search of a cup of tea.

An hour later, Bull is still sleeping. Vera, back at his side, thinks about his story. Something about it is catching at a corner of her mind. She didn't know Bull well until he moved to Manawa twenty-odd years ago. When his parents died, he sold the family home and business in Ohakune, bought his cottage in Manawa, and settled to his quiet and reclusive life.

Vera picks at a spot on her cardigan, thinking of the time she'd first brought him food — a welcome offering of her chocolate clusters at Easter. Feeding him had grown from then. She'd known him at the drapery, of course — he was quiet then too but well liked. Jim at the post office a few doors down said Bull was quite chatty in the early days but became quieter as the years went on, until it was almost an embarrassment to
go in for a pair of socks or a few yards of curtaining. Bull had sold the business and retired before he was much over fifty.

Bull opens his eyes.

‘I'm thinking Rita,' says Vera.

Bull looks away; shifts against his pillows and winces.

‘That tart who ran off with Jimmy Mac was a Rita.'

Bull sighs. ‘The same.'

‘Donny's mother.'

‘If you can call that being a mother.'

Bull's eyes are sparking now, which pleases Vera. She makes a note in the margin of her crossword. ‘So what age do you reckon Donny is now? Twenty-five?'

‘Don't, Vera.'

‘And you've been in Manawa — what, twenty-two, twentythree years?'

Bull won't look at her.

‘Well, come on, Bull, don't leave me in the lurch here. Are you his dad?'

The expression on Bull's face would challenge a top psychoanalyst. Vera guesses pride is definitely in the mix. Also a terrible sadness.

‘Donny's always been vague about his age,' he says. ‘Who knows who his dad might be? Could be Spud for all I know. Or Jimmy Mac. I doubt I would be a top contender.'

Vera laughs. ‘O-ho! Better not let the McAnenys know this story. Their long-lost great-nephew. Last of the line, etcetera. Maybe bearing not one drop of McAneny blood.'

Bull grins at last. ‘I've thought of that, Vera. But let's not cloud their sunshine. They love him. And Manny.'

A doctor walks down the ward. Vera hails him over and he approaches warily. She explains that they've had some difficult news and they both need a cup of tea: could he see to it? The young fellow, looks about sixteen, steps back, mumbling something Vera can't hear. ‘A cup of tea!' she shouts, assuming deafness. ‘We're thirsty!'

He hurries away, blushing.

‘That was my doctor you shouted at,' says Bull.

‘Go on, he never was. In those old pyjamas? Some kind of orderly, surely.'

But the tea arrives. Vera brings out some of her chocolate clusters which somehow manage to break up and make a mess of the white counterpane.

‘There's more,' says Bull.

‘More chocs?' Vera offers the tin.

Bull shakes his head. He wants to get this over now and go back to sleep. ‘Spud is living down past Raetihi on a block he bought in the bush. Way out in the wop-wops. He's a hermit, I suppose you'd call it. Never comes out. I take him fresh bread and milk every week. Somebody else is going to have to do it.'

Vera takes this calmly. She makes an addition to her crossword, then looks at Bull over her specs. ‘On a Sunday? You make this delivery on a Sunday?'

‘Yes. Maybe Donny could …?'

‘Bull Howie, you told me that was your sketching day. That you drove out to keep your motor in nick and try to improve your landscapes.'

‘Not entirely untrue, Vera.'

‘Well, surely he can bloody well come out and fetch the stuff himself. This is an emergency.'

Bull sighs. ‘It doesn't work like that, Vera. He has no car, no phone. His mailbox is a couple of miles away from his whare. He just leaves a note for what he wants. I do the fresh stuff and a farmer nearby delivers the cans of food and the whisky on his farm bike.'

Vera stands up, sending a shower of chocolate crumbs to the floor. She takes off her specs, tucks away the crossword and glares at Bull. ‘That Spud, he's playing on your guilt, Bull. For heaven's sake, that was twenty years ago. More. Time he got over the grumps. He needs a good flea in his ear.'

Bull closes his eyes. He looks desperately tired, his skin grey; a spot of bright blood shows on the bandage on his head.

‘Well, maybe we can do something,' she says in a gentler voice. ‘You write down how to get there and we'll see.'

Bull opens his eyes, nods his thanks and then, in a last burst of energy, says, ‘One last thing I should tell you.'

Vera waits.

‘I'm not that keen on your chocolate clusters. Sorry.'

Vera snorts. ‘Well, why didn't you tell me years ago, you silly chook? I don't like them either.'

As she walks away down the ward, she's thinking about Spud and the Sunday delivery. Donny and the Virgin will have more on their mind than taking bread to a hermit. Vera hasn't had the heart to disturb Bull with the news that the movie people are back in town to film in the bush block.