Heartland (26 page)
Authors: Jenny Pattrick
Dreadnaught Road is as straight as an arrow, running alongside the railway, pointing towards Ohakune. It has pitfalls, though, especially today. Twice it is cut by streams. At these places the road takes a dip, crosses by means of a one-way bridge, and then rises steeply to reach the level of the railway line again. Donny takes the first bridge carefully, easing the old car down the slope and then up, half hoping it won’t make the rise. But the solid Austin Princess purrs regally on.
‘Just keep thinking you are doing the honourable thing,’ says Roe, sitting stately and stiff as the Queen herself, looking neither right nor left, a black crone in a black car in a snowy landscape.
Donny doesn’t feel honourable. He feels alone and miserable as he drives on towards the town — the Big Smoke, as Manawa people call it.
As they approach the second bridge, Donny glances in the rear-vision mirror. Something is bearing down on them, weaving dangerously. His heart starts to hammer. He looks again. Surely that’s his own bike? If that’s Tracey, she’s bound to come a cropper at the bridge. They all will. He slows the car to a walking pace.
‘Drive on,’ says Roe, ‘if you please, nephew.’
Just before the bridge, Tracey and the bike pass them.
‘Tracey!’ bellows Donny. ‘Here I am!’
Tracey looks grimly ahead. She crosses the bridge, and somehow manages to slew the bike across the road and into the path of the Princess. She can manage no more. Machine and girl crash to the ground, the bike’s rear wheel still turning, engine still roaring.
Donny slams on the brakes. A mistake in these slippery conditions. The car skids ponderously towards the prone Tracey. She disappears from sight under the huge bonnet and Donny roars again, this time in fright. Roe is jolted sideways as the car hits the bridge railing and comes to a halt. Donny is out of the car and down on his knees in the snow.
‘Trace, Trace!’
There she is, lying between the wheels, her blue eyes open, staring at him. Donny moans, unsure whether to leave her or pull her out. Is she dead?
‘Stupid bloody bike,’ says Tracey. ‘That’s the last time I ever go near it. Get me out of here, Donny, you big idiot.’
Donny is crying now, his smile twisted by all manner of thoughts. ‘Trace! You okay?’ He crawls around to the front of the car, reaches and, with shaking hands, pulls her out gently by her
feet and lifts her. He holds her close to his chest and will never, ever let go again.
The upturned motorbike sputters and whines in its own little drama, but neither pay it attention.
Tracey, shaking violently, speaks from inside his arms, her face jammed against his shoulder. ‘What in hell were you up to, going to the police?’
‘She said it was the right thing. Honourable.’
‘Holy shit, Donny! What about me and Manny and Sky?’
‘She said it was the only way. I’d feel better, she said.’
‘Bullshit. And do you?’
Donny grins, holding her tight. ‘I do now.’
She punches his arm. ‘Idiot.’
‘She said it was wrong to bury someone where it wasn’t holy.’
‘Since when did that old bitch rule our lives?’
‘She’s my aunty.’
They are interrupted by a blast from the Princess’s impressive horn. Inside, Miss Roe has struggled upright and is watching them, her face thunderous. A trickle of blood runs past her ear.
‘Get in the back,’ says Tracey. ‘I don’t trust you behind that wheel.’
Donny does as he’s told, Tracey scrambling in beside him, glad of the warmth. In her haste, she has come out without coat or mittens.
Roe looks at the pair of them, soaked now from the melting snow. ‘The upholstery will be ruined. There’s blood here, and now you are both saturating the back seat.’ But she can’t keep it up. Her hand reaches up to her ear and her voice quavers. ‘Oh!’
Tracey clambers forward, dabs at the wound with a damp handkerchief. She eyes the old lady fiercely. ‘You need a bloody good telling off. Are you gone soft in the head or what, stealing Donny away like that?’ She dabs again. ‘You need a bandage on this.’
Donny uses the car rug to wedge Roe’s head more comfortably.
Suddenly the car jerks. Donny shouts, thinking the bridge is giving way, but the jolt is from behind. There is George Kingi, hooking up a cable to his tractor. Lovey, sitting on the tractor seat, waves.
‘Handbrake off!’ shouts George. ‘Get you out of this mess.’ He walks around the car, checking the lie of the land, then picks up Donny’s bike and runs it up onto the tractor.
Tracey releases the car’s handbrake and they inch away from the bridge, rear wheels in the air, the Princess travelling ignominiously backwards through the snow to Bull’s place, where everyone is waiting.
‘Donny I’ve got to say something,’ whispers Tracey.
‘Yeah.’
‘They’re none of them talking about it.’
‘Yeah, I know. You say something then. You’re better than me.’
‘Hold my hand.’ Her hair is bedraggled, there’s a bright scrape all down one arm; one of Bull’s towels is draped over her shoulders. She makes an awful, mad face, poking out her tongue and screwing her eyes almost shut. Tracey’s way of gathering strength.
Donny grips for all he’s worth.
Mona Kingi has lit a fire in Bull’s lounge — a room seldom used but immaculate. Now she hands around cups of tea.
Above the fireplace blazes Tracey’s purple volcano, framed by Bull in blond kahikatea wood. Roe sits close to the fire, sticking-plaster covering the cut which turned out to be minor, a rug over her knees. She glowers from inside a small bubble of isolation. The others busy themselves looking elsewhere. Aureole, never one to miss out on excitement, had bundled the little ones and skipped through the snow with them, following the motorbike tracks until they reached Bull’s place. Now she, with Lovey and the children, are messing around in the kitchen, which puts Bull on edge — but on the whole he’s managing magnificently, Vera considers. He wouldn’t have coped with a crowd like this a month ago.
She has settled him on the other side of the fire, his cast, now battered and damp, propped on a stool. Delia sits on the couch, as far away from her sister as possible. She accepts one of Vera’s scones but forgets to eat. Her mind is elsewhere. Manawa, she is thinking, this gentle, odd little community, is a world her sister Roe cannot understand. She is too old to understand, and disaster may yet come of it.
Gradually everyone becomes aware that the Virgin, standing by the door, hand in hand with Donny, wishes to speak. A silence grows and spreads, eventually, even to the kitchen.
‘You’re all pretending!’ Tracey’s words burst out louder and angrier than she means. She swallows. The solid attention is unnerving. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she whispers, too quiet now. ‘I don’t mean that.’ She turns to Donny, desperate to find the right way.
‘Go Trace!’ he says, grinning, and they all smile and murmur, breaking the chill that had settled in the room.
‘What I mean is, I reckon you all know what happened.
You all know—’ she shrugs, takes a breath, then manages to get it out — ‘that we buried the girl in the bush section. We both did it, both of us. So anyway thanks for keeping quiet about it.’
The others shift a little, unsettled, perhaps, by the raw words, but Roe clears her throat, sits a little more upright. Mona’s heavy hand descends on her shoulder. ‘Let the Virgin have her say,’ she mutters.
‘We knew it wasn’t right—’ Tracey is speaking directly to Roe now — ‘but Donny was just out of prison, I was running away from … well, anyway. We knew no one would believe us and they’d take the babies away. Put Donny back inside. They would have, you all know that! We didn’t count.’ The towel slips from her shoulders and Tracey lets it fall; stands there, small and damp and fierce. ‘The babies
needed
us.’
Delia speaks gently. ‘They needed you, yes. We all understood that.’
Tracey glances at this ally, and swallows. ‘It was my idea to bury her. Then Donny did it best he could. Properly, deep down. He said some words. It was a
good
burial. Respectful.’
‘Yeah,’ says Donny, ‘respectful. Yeah.’ His eyes plead.
Roe McAneny speaks. ‘It was wrong. Not proper. You hid the truth.’
Tracey snorts. ‘Donny couldn’t hide one hand from the other. Everyone here has known for ages.’
‘Then everyone has been mistaken.’ Roe will not be guided by Mona’s warning hand. Her voice grates on. ‘What you did was unlawful. Against God’s law and against the law of the land. You must right this deed.’
‘Why? Why must we?’ Tracey is shouting now. ‘It’s all come right on its own, don’t you see?’
‘No, I do not see. What I see is a room full of silly people who have aided in hiding a crime.’
Tracey steps forward, dragging a frightened Donny by the hand. ‘What crime? What crime did Donny commit? Or me? Eh? That … that Pansy was a sad, lost woman who no one would help. No other person, not even her mother. Donny took her in. Donny put up with her. When she drank herself to death, Donny buried her and planted a tree over her grave. No one came looking for her. We were the only people in the whole world who cared about her. Then we brought up her child and loved him. What crime, Miss McAneny?’
Roe’s cheeks are beginning to glow. Her eyes brighten. Delia can see that she’s enjoying the battle, which is a bad sign. Roe is rarely beaten in a moral argument. Delia grips the cushion on her knee and wonders how long it would take to smother her sister.
A hint of a smile appears briefly on Roe’s papery face and disappears. ‘You are a brave girl,’ she says, ‘and a very unfortunate one. Better for Donny to take the blame while you remain to care for our great-great-nephew.’
Tracey explodes. ‘Good bloody hell! You sour, bloodless old witch! You don’t care how many lives you ruin as long as your own cruel rules are obeyed.’
‘They are not my rules, Tracey.’
‘Oh yes they bloody are. What about kindness and love? Aren’t they rules too?’
‘I have shown you kindness. My sisters and I have loved
Donald Munroe. This is a matter of obedience to the law.’
‘What about the Prodigal Son, then?’
Roe seems a little taken aback by this turn. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Jesus said it. Welcome back the son who has strayed. Well, you didn’t to your own brothers, did you? You cast them out when they came back from the war. Ruined their lives. No welcome to the Prodigal like Jesus said. And now you’re casting Donny out.’
Vera chuckles. ‘Good one, Virgin.’
‘She’s Trace,’ says Donny, holding on for dear life.
Roe pauses to gather her argument but Tracey, a terrier now, drives on. ‘What about turn the other cheek? What about let he who has no fault cast the first stone? Those are rules too. Yours all come from the Old Testament. Vengeance. Honour. That old stuff.’
There’s a murmur in the room. Surprise, approval. Most don’t know about Tracey’s background.
Roe’s flush is anger now, that this young thing — whom she, Miss Munroe McAneny, has saved from a godless father — should turn against her, even dare to quote the Bible! ‘Mind your tongue, young lady,’ she snaps. ‘We are talking about burying a body, secretly, in unconsecrated ground. This is against every law, mine and yours.’
‘Oh Miss Roe,’ wails Aureole from the kitchen door. ‘What does it matter? Who cares?’
‘I care. So should you, you silly woman.’
It’s Lovey, peering into the room from under Aureole’s arm, who offers the killer blow.
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘An urupa’s sacred ground. It’s a proper place to bury bodies.’
Everyone murmurs at this. Vera chuckles. ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’
Tracey, sensing general support, develops the argument. ‘That’s the thing, Miss McAneny, it
is
consecrated ground. Pansy Holloway was part-Maori—’ Tracey is guessing, but there’s at least a chance — ‘and that urupa will soon be fenced and notified and as sacred as any other cemetery. She’s lying there in the company of plenty of other souls. They might even be relatives.’
Lovey Kingi lets out a triumphant whoop and begins to clap. Aureole and the children join in.
‘Sacred, my eye,’ mutters Vera and is smartly shut up by a prod from one of Bull’s crutches. But everyone is talking now, the awkwardness broken. A legitimate, if slightly dodgy way out has been offered. It makes sense.
‘What about it, Aunty?’ says Donny, hope and fear chasing each other across his big open face. ‘You were kind to Trace. Over her dad. Me too?’
Bull clears his throat. ‘Miss McAneny,’ he says, quite formally, the first time in many a year that he has made a speech, ‘Donny belongs here with us. You and your sisters too, now that you have come to live here. We keep an eye out for each other here, as you may have noticed.’ He smiles. ‘Look at Vera and her meals. We settle our own problems as best we can. Sometimes our way might seem odd to outsiders. But we rub along with good heart. That’s what the name of our settlement means: Manawa — heart. But we can’t have you
taking the law into your own hands. Can you not accept this, Miss Roe?’
‘The law!’ Roe begins with some indignation and then falters. Everyone is looking at her. She opens her mouth; closes it again. Looks into the fire. She’s remembering Tracey’s father, that criminal reverend, and the way she drove him away. Has she, after all, been infected by Manawa’s way of dealing with matters? Slowly sighing and settling, like a deflating cushion, she says, ‘Well.’ It’s the best she can manage. A reluctant acceptance of doubt.
Tracey detaches herself from Donny’s grip, steps up to Miss Roe and shakes her hand, a quiet, serious gesture, signalling agreement reached.
‘Whoo hoo, Trace!’ shouts Donny Mac.
