What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? Read online

  Sheep grazed in the paddock, taking no notice of her presence, though she knew there’d be plenty of eyes out those little box windows wondering at her. Stuff them. Let ’em wonder. (Why the Tramberts?) Her mother said the man himself had come to the funeral, a fine-looking man she said and with great dignity. He’d come to the house, too, just to pay his respects and ask if there was anything he could do. She said he’d got awkward all of a sudden and then she realised it was because he wanted to give her money. (But she didn’t take it. Good for you, Mum!) Not that this Trambert man had meant anything except kindness. Though the neighbourhood was talking when Grace was hardly in her grave that there must’ve been something going on between them. Polly could hear the voices now — when she was too young to hear them at the time — So why’d he offer the mother money if he wasn’t, you know? And why’d she pick his tree to do it off, there’s plenty trees closer than his place. But the letter from Grace ended that: it was Jake, her own father. Grace’d given the letter to Toot and Toot gave it to Beth and that was it for Mister Jake The Rapist Muss. Oh, how she hated the man. Hated him.

  It didn’t take any figuring to know Trambert’s missing land was money in the bank. Money. It was one thing Polly Heke couldn’t get her mind around; she got emotional, she got angry, she got resentful and envious (when I’m not an envious person normally, not even at Kylie Leech getting a modelling contract up in Auckland). For it seemed to her that somehow white people — come to think of it, Asians, too, and probably even more so — had ensnared money with rules and mysteries only they knew so brown people, Maoris and Pacific Islanders, couldn’t get their hands on it. And where she was right now, moving across a shortened stretch of land (I’m trespassing, hahaha!) behind her housing brownskins, it was like a one-way bulldozer carving out little pockets of area for a moneyless brown family to live in, whilst shunting the pay dirt over to the Tramberts. The fucken Tramberts, though she tried not to swear. Especially that Charlie had near fully converted his adopted Heke children to his way of thinking, which was about dignity and — shit, she used to think it was — stuff like that. Swearing, specially for a female, was on his hit list. (Well, I’m swearing now, Charlie Mr Welfare Officer middle-class Maori. Polly Heke’s saying that Mr fucken Trambert gets to have all the money so fuck him.) Though she did put a somewhat guilty hand to her mouth at those thoughts, or those forbidden words, that is.

  Grace’d never said anything about the Tramberts. Though she might’ve and Polly didn’t remember; it was a long time ago. Now she was standing in the part shadow of the very tree Grace took her life on. Or from, as the Pine Block people put it. Part shadow because as she got closer the shadow came from the old brick wall and less the tree, which she thought must be oak for no other reason than oak would be these people. (These lucky white bastard people.) Why the Tramberts?

  When she looked up at the wall several centimetres taller than her for the second time, she could see a clear line of it having been added to, though it was the same style brick. That got to her; it meant Grace must have been able to see into the house. She might have crouched right here at this spot and peered in. What would she have seen? Polly followed the wall, heedless of being seen, not as if anyone would think she was a burglar, she giggled at the thought and at her boldness.

  She ran a hand lightly along the brick as she walked in its constructed shadow. Then it was sun rays at their last low angle as she came around the corner; and all was beautiful reds and pinks of backlit and underlighted cloud formation, and she had to shield her eyes until adjustment came. Sandpaper to the running fingers’ touch she put end to that before her fingers bled. The wall stretched out for some considerable distance so it was some house in there. Or grounds at least. She moved out from the wall until she could see the roof of the house, grey it was, they looked like stone rectangles. Turning, she could see the tree, less what the wall cut off, and she tried to pick what branch it might have been, not the picture itself, of (my) her sis Grace hanging; that had been imagined and come forth in dreams, vomited out of her guts, her heart, a hundred times over. It remained a vivid, stark picture, but one with less meaning than what had brought it about. In her more sensible sixteenth year, Polly Heke thought of the death as the final miserable moments lasting however briefly long they did. But the life before it, leading up to it, as a never-ending — not nightmare, it was worse than that — as an endless lying out in this paddock, middle of bitterly cold, raining winter night with not even stars for comfort. That’s what Grace Heke must have felt life was like. (And you — youuu —) Polly suddenly trembling in her anger (you didn’t even think about what she was going through) as she thought of her father, all six foot three inches of him, of old measurement since he was from that era, of raping fatherhood.

  At the next corner there was a long driveway, which took some working out and only from the line of trees and deduction and the break in the wall — when she got the courage to step out to get view of it — and open iron gates. Now she definitely was a trespasser, as well feeling suddenly like the girl Charlie Bennett’s influence and her mother’s good sense and love for the man had made her: sort of, well, a better class without being fancy-dancy about it, but not like what was behind that brick wall living in the grey-slated, white house she could see a slice of through the wrought-iron gate. Charlie Bennett’s class was lower than that and Polly Heke was glad it was. (Happy as I am.) But I’m no Pine Block girl out here in a lost state, a wretched state, about to end her life for reasons unknown on the property of someone she neither knew nor was remotely like, no. I’m not here to commit suicide, I just want to understand, to put my mind at rest; and if they come out and ask me what I’m doing, I won’t be no Pine Block bitch with attitude and thieving intentions casing the place, tell them I was just looking, that’s all. Or just passing, even if on their land.

  She was just Polly Heke of Western College with a mother and an adoptive father expecting, not hoping, more of her than what her mother in her earlier union had ever imagined; why, there had been talk of university. An otherwise impossible thought if it wasn’t for the fact that Boogie was at one right now, as this sister baulked at several moments from the last of following up on their sister Grace’s last, very last, moments. Old enough now to do this. But not quite ready to take it further.

  She turned and walked off into the dusk, the colours all bled down into the horizon, the night just starting with that funny quiet, of the mothers cooking their kids’ tea and (too) many of ’em wondering what the night was gonna bring; Jake Heke wasn’t the only one of his type round these parts, the property behind her excepted. A sister wondering, wondering, what Grace’s last thoughts had been and if she’d been cold that night her last. Which is what she figured she was crying for, that Grace’d been cold and shivering that last night.

  FOUR

  WHEN JAKE SAW the metal ball swinging on the end of the crane at McClutchy’s pub, a clock pendulum against a fully clouded sky, he smiled inwardly and followed its progress like he would in admiration a punch, specially that it made a kinghit first blow and put a hole right in its side, a perfect body punch it’d been a man. Fuck the pub, is what he told himself, bitter at how everyone there’d treated him, same arseholes who’d sucked up to him all his years there (when I fucken ruled. I RULED) when he had the status in the place — the frequent of Two Lakes’ lowlifes, specially the older sleaze and unknowing pissheads who’d made their lives the place and the drink the centre of their wretchedly tiny universe — of The man. (I was The Man.) Jake The Muss. Toughest in all of Two Lakes and, he never doubted, beyond its boundaries if it’d suited him to go out and show outsiders how tough he was. All those sweet years, of respect, only to come crashing down, for all of it to mean nothing, now like that building was about to when he just happened to be walking past to catch his after-work bus home and licking his lips at not being able to afford a beer not in any pub. It was the day before payday, he could never make his money last till then no ma
dda how much extra overtime his paypacket might have he always spent up to it, and on piss what else, and being generous to Cody cos Cody didn’t have a job and jobs were a bit tight, no denying, in Two Lakes, even with tourists everywhere here to see the thermal sights out the other side of town. Oh, to look at the Maoris, their culture which he’d not inherited and anyway was bothered by cos they seemed to have something he didn’t. McClutchy’s exposed guts now echoing with the booming of a ball, metal, pounding it out of existence; McClutchy’s, where the sheer pressure of people not talking to you or, even worse, being hostilely uncomfortable in your company when ordinarily they’d’ve shook in their scuffed, dirty boots and outta date shoes and jandaled feet at jus’ being in his presence; he’d stopped going and instead did his drinking at home or at another pub, Lakeside Tavern, where people didn’t seem to know him and he could drink in his quiet corner with a cupla old codgers who did most of the talking, he anyway realised he never had much to say to the wider world, not really, that it’d been simply a physical existence with him in its centre on account of what he was and that they had done a lot of talking but none of it meant anything, not now he was six years down the track burdened with unjust shame for something he hadn’t done. Pine Block inhabitants, Jake Heke had realised, were wordless people pouring out with words that didn’t mean nothing. Whereas at least his corner pub companions at the Lakeside Tavern had a war they’d fought in to talk about, even if that was near all they talked and a man only had to give ’em half a ear he knew it so well, bombs and Italian names of towns and sheilas turned to easymeats (so they claimed), when he’d heard you ever touched a Eyetie woman her bros’d come get you — witha gun, or stab you to death, even someone like him — of fullas shot before these old codgers’ eyes that never failed to tear a li’l bit in repeated recall, but that was alright, leas’ it was company, and company he didn’t have to be always on his guard ready to fight. And it was better’n talking drunken shit and mean-minded gossip. Though he did miss hearing the talk about who’d done pub battle with who, of the up and comers, the down and knocked outs, the fistic heroes and would-bes of his world even if he was no longer a member. He missed that.

  But by the time the demolition ball had punched its way into the building and exposed it like the inner workings of a defeated person, exposed guts, innards, he could even imagine kidneys and liver (I hate offal) and the heart of the bar beating no more, just anutha target for the demo man prob’ly enjoying his fucken heart out taking this place apart, Jake The Muss Heke started to thinking it was his memories being destroyed there. He could see the timber framing where they must’ve removed the bar counter cladding and the solid timber bartop itself, wires hanging down, a tangle of shapes. He could see the linoleum floor and its multitude of liftings where it was cracked — and hear the NOISE used to make the place alive in there, on a Friday night especially. Oh, and Sat’days when a man could start ’bout lunchtime, get his horse bets on — not that a man’d ever been able to pick anything but his nose — drink all day, party at his place or someone else’s when the closing bells claaaang-ed at ten o’clock. The music, the laughter, the howls that were meant to be laughter but could’ve been anything, ranging from emotional outrage to emotionally messed up to howling for someone’s blood to howling for a husband too many days, and money, gone and the kids anutha day older of neglect. Was those memories crashing down, too.

  As the hole got bigger he watched for the jukebox, the jukie, trying to recall the songs he got others to play for him (weren’t that stupid I was gonna spend my own money on it). Sam Cooke, anything by him Jake loved. And he could sing a bit like him, too, when he was drunk and surging with that (false) confidence. He used to play ‘Mean Old World’, that started with a piano flipping out the rhythm and mood except Jake liked to play it, sometimes, with someone else’s money a course, after he’d had a fight; with a smile on his face, not in keeping with the lyrics which he sorta heard as Sam sang about the world — for a nigger, Jake guessed — being mean, really mean. Jake only meant himself, when he was crossed. Beth, she liked ‘Sad Mood’ of Sam Cooke’s, he remembered she sang along with it, the record, at home on the stereo; and, if he was honest, usually after he’d given her a biff. But that was her lookout. Anyrate, a man now was, well, kind of different, he thought. But wasn’t exactly sure how or where. No one to show by example if he had changed. He couldn’t see the jukebox so they must’ve taken it away to another pub, somewhere out in the wops prob’ly where people didn’t mind it bein’, you know, out of date.

  One blow brought a section of ceiling and roof down with it. Made a great sound of collapse and looked a sight awful of sagging finish, like a man on his knees and still getting it. Dust and shit kicking up everywhere. That was it, Jake Heke started walking, he’d seen (and felt) enough. Now his eyes were smarting — only from the dust thrown up — though when he kept walking right past where he sometimes caught the bus he admitted to himself that his eyes were like they were for the memories being about all he had of these last many years, if he didn’t count the last six. All he had. And he asked himself the question of damn near every man he knew: Wouldn’t you?

  Funny thing, when he heard the crash behind him of another blow struck against his life his past, he got a song Mavis used to play on the jukie, and everyone if they were drunk would sing along with it and depending on how drunk they could reach such heights, man, including himself lost in the song with closed eyes and a beer in his hand, surrounded by his own, his mates around him, as he was, taken on of the voice’t was all throat, Dool did the voice best, pulled it from way deep inside him and let it gargle out his throat like the ole Negro dude they were all trying to copy; so it was a pub of fuck-ups and the lost temporarily found of ’emselves all singing like Satchmo Louis Armstrong, ‘What A Wonderful World’. When it was. But it wasn’t. That was what Jake, used to be The Muss, Heke walked away remembering, everybody (and myself) singing that song. And crying, damn near to. For the memories (I guess). And other things. Lotsa things.

  FIVE

  EVERYWHERE WERE FACES — stealing knowing glances at her, and then some. Little vases of flowers and a candle in a holder and a silver dazzle of cutlery on each stark white-clothed table. And before her, like everyone, this … this — she picked it up. What’s this for? pretending a calm voice when inside she was anything but. And those faces (looking at me) and not a brown one except for him across the table. Who was now grinning. What you smiling at, mister? Which only made him chuckle, and her start to get mad.

  I dunno, might be a free hanky. She knowing he only had that smiling confidence because he had his back to most of the eyes and if he could only see them that’d wipe the smile from his face. They sposed to be for wiping our mouth? she guessed. No, your nose. And he burst out laughing, which fair jolted her with embarrassment as now the whole place was looking. Charlie! But he wasn’t stopping now, not Charlie, he had a roll on, that’s how he laughed, a kind of teasing process even when he wasn’t teasing. Every (white) face seemed to be frowning disapproval. So Beth, who used to be a Ransfield before she married the nightmare (well, maybe not all the time) Jake Heke, joined her man in laughing, too. And exclaimed, Fuck it. Who cares? When really, she did. But damned if she was gonna show these people, damned if she was.

  Why they got candles if they got the lights on? she wanted to know. Power cut, he was in a smartarse, joke at everything mood, even her sensitivity, her sense of profound unfamiliarity. In case they have a power cut. Bring your matches? Yeah, she snarled at him. To set fire to your black bum. Now, now, Bethy, leaning his big frame back. But at least he reached a hand for hers which she took with gratitude. And as if Charlie’d arranged it, along came a waiter and lit the candle, as was happening all over the little restaurant, and then the lights got dimmed right down. Magic had been cast. Her smile more relaxed. Tha’s better. Squeezing his big hand, bigger than Jake’s and they were big, yet not once used in anger. The difference.

  You
never told me this is your first time. You never asked. Well, don’t be worried, it’s only a restaurant. That’s what is worrying me. Look at them they keep glancing at us. He smiled: Or you at them. What? You heard. Charlie, don’t be laughing at me. I’m not, Beth. You are. What you ordering for starters? Now that put her back on the back foot. She grabbed up the menu again, where’s it say starters? She peered at it, harder to read in the candlelight, It says soup and entrée. On-tray, he corrected her. Yeah, yeah, on-tray, whatever. Don’t see no starters. She shot him a warning look: Charlie? Don’t tease. But he pointed over her shoulder, and she near jumped. Tell him what you want, at the waiter. She took a deep breath — Oysters. Please. Staring straight ahead, just to the side of Charlie. Who she could see was staring right at her, with that stupid grin. And the bloody waiter wouldn’t move; she wanted to ask what the hell he was staring at, she’d just told him her order hadn’t she? But still he waited.

  You got a problem? she couldn’t help herself. Stuff him. And that fixed him, see how he felt being on the back foot. Madam, I was waiting for your mains order. (Oh.) Oh. Well, I haven’t decided yet. She gestured at Charlie. Take his. Mister Grinner’s, she said it aloud. Though that didn’t help, Charlie was still grinning.

  But, you know, the wine — also her first taste ever — the candlelight, the realisation that oysters can taste like heaven just by being served on ice, with a bit of class, a wedge of lemon, a bit of bullshit waitering fuss, and a live three-piece band started up, a woman, well, she couldn’t’ve been happier, or wanted to be anywhere else. And, funny thing, she gave him back the smile, They’re not looking at me are they? No, he shook his large head, such a big man (’cept down there. But, he’s average. And sure beats having a Jake and suffering his other side. Give me a small one, short performance, great company to be in any day.) They’re not looking, and even if they were, we can’t put signs up saying they can’t — Or walls around us, she added her own t’uppens’ worth. And reached for his hand again and mouthed him, I love you. And he nodded in that dignified way of his, such a fine man, the irony of being grateful that son Boogie had had court dealings with this man as one of the town’s child welfare officers but now the general manager of the department, and things’d just happened. Of a life in which so much had happened, none of it good (fucken tragic, in fact), not till the day she kicked Jake out. Though she was not convinced their daughter Grace’s letter accusing her father of raping her was right. At the time she did. But she’d read it a hundred times since and so had Charlie; both were of the mind there was some doubt. Grace wrote she thought it was her father.