New Du Rose Matriarch Read online

  The New Du Rose Matriarch

  K T Bowes

  Copyright K T Bowes © 2013

  Published by Hakarimata Press

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  Acknowledgements

  I wish to acknowledge my long suffering family. Only those related to a writer can fully appreciate the frustration of living with one. I wholeheartedly apologise for the numerous times that there has been no dinner, scant cleaning and little fulfilling conversation, while I sought to bring this novel into being. Writing can feel like an insatiable hunger, which for those not involved may feel at times like a curse.

  Chapter 1

  Hana Du Rose pushed the pram across the soccer field without seeing in front of her, willing the baby to stay asleep. After twenty odd years of undisturbed slumber, she had forgotten how sleep deprivation felt and wasn’t enjoying the reminder. The child fretted, raising her tiny hands next to her ears and moving her head in quick movements. “Come on, hush,” Hana crooned to the child, placing one foot in front of the other in a haze of misery. “I can’t do this,” she hissed in desperation. “It’s worse than I remember.”

  Baby Phoenix Du Rose spent the entire night crying, taxing her mother beyond her ability to stay sane. Instinct told Hana it was a reaction to her six week inoculations and would pass, an opinion shared by the midwife. “She’ll be fine,” came the cool voice through the mobile phone. “It happens sometimes. Just keep feeding her and give her the baby painkiller syrup at regular intervals. I don’t think she needs hospital treatment.”

  “It’s fine for your father though, isn’t it? Bet he had a lovely night’s sleep,” Hana grumbled, irritated her husband went straight from teaching to a night duty at the school boarding house. Hana had paced the worn lino floor of the scruffy two bedroom staff unit, alternately soothing Phoenix and trying to comfort her lonely self. She left the unit at first light and walked the grounds for the last two hours. “I’m a rubbish mother,” she whispered. “I’m just too old.”

  Phoenix tossed and groaned in the pram in answer and Hana rubbed at the tired green eyes aching in her head. She bumped the pram across the pitch and onto the cricket field, hoping Phoenix would go into a deeper sleep. “It worked with Bo and Izzie,” she sighed, relishing the knowledge her older children had offspring of their own to keep them awake.

  Phoenix’s tiny cheeks were pink and her breathing full of little hitches, a physical reminder of her crying. She brought her knees up to her chest in pain and opened her mouth, forcing Hana to push the pram quicker, distress adding itself to the guilt of failed parenting. Hana had wanted to vomit as the needle penetrated the spindly little olive-toned leg, feeling a traitor as she held onto her child and allowed the atrocity. The cry of misery was instant and broke Hana’s heart. She ended up feeding her to quieten her while having an embarrassing conversation with the nurse about contraception.

  “Here you go. You can take this while breastfeeding.” The nurse sounded kind, returning with a prescription.

  After the past twenty-four hours Hana knew she was too old to go through this again, no matter what lip-service her husband paid to his catholic faith. She swallowed the first pill with her only drink since breakfast yesterday. There was no glass involved; she’d swigged straight from the rusty mixer tap in the kitchen, shuddering against the metallic taste in the water.

  The pram bumped across the crease in the centre of the cricket pitch as Hana registered another momentary stab of anger at her husband, who hadn’t accompanied her to the clinic. “Sorry, babe, I’ve got a Year 10 English class,” Logan said with regret. “I can’t get cover.”

  Stop it Hana, it’s his job, she chastised herself, knowing in her foggy haze she was being unreasonable.

  “Oi!”

  Hana turned, swinging the pram around to face the shout. A quad bike sped towards her at speed, making Hana tense as it failed to slow. The head groundsman hurled his stumpy body off the jerkily halted machine and strode the final two metres towards her. He pocked face was bulging and purple. “What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted into her face, spraying spittle into the air and onto Hana’s red curls.

  Twenty-four hours without sleep caught Hana up in one overwhelming punch and she gaped in disbelief. Getting no answer, the officious man stomped and yelled and chastised her for pushing her pram around on the sacred cricket pitch. “Especially the bloody crease!” he yelled.

  Hana’s shoulders slumped in defeat. His rant falling on deaf ears, the groundsman jumped onto his quad bike and tore away. Hana watched dust puff out from behind the heavily treaded tyres and looked at her delicate pram wheels. He did far more damage than I ever could.

  Phoenix, asleep during both the noise of the quad and the loud, antagonistic tirade of its owner, opened her eyes and let out another wail.

  It was seven thirty in the morning but seemed more like midday for poor Hana. She abandoned the pram outside the dining hall of the boys’ boarding house, St Bartholomew’s, rubbing a shaking hand across her eyes. The school was over one hundred and thirty years old, conceived as the original church school in Hamilton and its first pupils were garrison’s children. The school added the boarding house after the Second World War, when bereaved mothers had no father to direct the family and education became the only way to better circumstances. Boys poured in from rural areas and more distant locations as the success of the school spread by word of mouth. The Waikato Presbyterian School for Boys became one of the most successful boys’ schools in New Zealand and commanded an appropriate price tag.

  Hana pressed the brake and retrieved the baby from the copious blankets. As Phoenix wailed again, Hana coloured in shame at the desperate inner voice which rose to the fore, telling her to leave her daughter in the pram. Hana took a deep breath and corrected herself. It’s not because you’re a horrid person. You just can’t think straight.

  The baby’s face made a picture of misery as her dark downy head poked out of the blanket and her unfocussed eyes tried to latch on to the shapes and colours whizzing past. Hana walked through the lobby and into the dining room, her eyes downcast and the set of her shoulders oozing defeat. A hundred pairs of eyes turned to watch as she appeared in the entrance and Hana regretted her desperate decision to seek Logan. The last thing her husband needed was a scene in front of the boarders. She tried not to grimace as Phoenix cranked up again for another bout of wailing and searched the feeding crowd, trying to spot her handsome husband in the myriad of faces.

  “Hey Miss.” A tall, dark haired, Fijian boy dressed in a prefect’s white shirt and black-and-white striped blazer stood next to Hana.

  “Hi, Acton,” Hana said, aware of her red, waist length hair, fluffy and unkempt, her shapeless tracksuit bottoms and sick-stained hoodie.

  “You looking for Mr Du Rose?” his voice had a resonant inflection and Hana nodded. Phoenix stopped grizzling and her head nodded comically as she held it up to focus on the young man.

  “She won’t stop crying,” Hana blurted, surprised by her own confession of failure to a teenage boy.

  He looked sympathetic, reaching out a finger and slotting it into the baby’s little fist. “They do that don’t they?” His face held a knowing expression. “My baby brother squalled when he was born and he’s still going. He’s four now.” Seeing the misery cross Hana’s face, his cheeks reddened with guilt and he tried to back pedal. “This lit
tle girl won’t be like that, she’s gonna be gorgeous.”

  Every face turned back to their breakfast, a series of heads from different angles chasing cereal spoons or toast into their mouths. Just as Hana gave up on finding her husband, she saw him stride across the room towards her. Her breath caught in her chest with that familiar sinking sensation as her stomach flip-flopped. Logan Du Rose’s Māori heritage exuded from him in the smooth olive skin and dark wavy hair. His features were dark, but his eyes were a striking and unusual grey, which could change from granite to smoke in an instant depending on his mood. Logan was tall and lean, muscular from his regular workouts in the school gym and Hana was dwarfed by his immense personality, feeling ragged in comparison. In a second, she went from relieved and overjoyed at seeing him, to woefully inadequate.

  Logan’s presence was powerful and authoritative as he issued instructions to the prefect. “Flush out any younger boys who haven’t shown for breakfast, please. Any problems - find me or Matron.”

  The prefect nodded and peeled his large brown finger out of the baby’s tiny fist. Logan put his capable arms around Hana and his daughter, disregarding the rapt audience and drawing her into a firm hug. “Hey babe, how did it go yesterday?”

  Hana heard the muffled sounds of the dining room dull through Logan’s expensive jacket as the crowd of young men watched the show of affection. Teenage boys missed nothing, chewing like cattle as they observed their respected housemaster.

  Logan kissed his baby daughter on her fluffy dark head, smiling as she looked up at him with tears still drying on her gorgeous face. He leaned his cheek against Hana’s forehead. “What’s up love?”

  Hana sensed a growing wave of uncontrolled emotion. How could she confess to this wonderful man she was a failure as a mother? “I forgot how hard it was,” she stammered, hating how she sounded a fool. “I thought I’d make a better job of things second time around and having a twenty-six-year-old son and twenty-four-year-old daughter would qualify me to be more superior in the parenting stakes.” Her voice sounded listless and sad. “She can’t tell me what’s wrong and won’t stay quiet long enough for me to get a grip and work it out.” Hana kept her head down, knowing Logan could read her like an open book.

  He took Phoenix, hoisting his daughter over his shoulder in strong, tender hands, loving being an unexpected father. Hana felt naked without the child in her arms and wished she could disappear through a hole in the ground. Logan’s other arm wrapped itself around his wife, nudging her towards the door. “They’re gonna stampede in a second. Let’s get out of the way.” He kissed Hana’s temple, his brow knitting when she didn’t respond.

  Hana tried to collect herself, straightening her spine and forcing a smile onto her lips. “Sorry, it’s your job and you have things to do.” Those things didn’t include consoling his incapable wife. “Sorry,” she said again out in the lobby. “Go back to your breakfast, everything’s fine.”

  Hana took Phoenix, still not looking Logan in the eyes in case he saw her ineptitude and walked towards the pram. He followed her out. “Hana, look at me. Babe, what’s happened? You were fine when I left yesterday morning.”

  Hana laid Phoenix back onto the slim mattress, tensing as the little mouth opened for its familiar wail. Hana knew her own tired tears were near the surface and wanted to escape. She loved her baby with all her heart but valiantly fought the dreadful urge to abandon the noise and disturbance and life changing numbness - and walk away. “It was fine when you left yesterday morning,” she said with a bite in her voice. “But it’s obviously not now, is it?”

  “I’ll walk you home.” Logan stepped after her, attempting to follow his little family along the wide path to the soccer field, but Hana waved him off with a dismissive gesture.

  “What’s the point? You’ll only turn and walk right back here again. It doesn’t take two to push a pram, but it takes two to raise a child. Or so I thought!”

  “Hana!” Logan’s concerned grey eyes watched his wife walk away, seeing the despondent droop of her shoulders and sensing her unshed tears below the surface. Guilt assailed him. His night duty was undisturbed and his hair still wet from the hot shower an hour ago. His poor wife didn’t look as though she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours, let alone slept or showered.

  It wasn’t working. “Damn it,” he cursed, interspersing it with a swearword. He should never have agreed to Angus’ request to take on the boarding house. The unit allocated to Logan’s family was small and tatty, their baby hadn’t settled since they moved in and nor had Hana. Logan knew she longed for the peace of their expansive villa in the Hakarimata Bush and sympathised. March and the replacement boarding house manager couldn’t come quickly enough for him.

  The bell sounded from inside the house, letting the boys know they had half an hour to walk to the main school for tutor group. Logan reluctantly turned back to the boarding house, deciding to talk to the principal in his next free period.

  “Things not good with your missus?” the chef asked, grabbing fresh air before the big clean up from breakfast. “She looks shattered.”

  “Yeah.” Logan nodded. “I should be with her, not here. I don’t know what Angus is playing at. I’ve done five night duties in the past week, on top of my usual teaching commitments and I can’t keep this going.”

  The chef laughed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, you should know this place by now. Work ya till ya drop and then find another mug. No wonder Dan Fowler took off in such a hurry! He probably got fed up. I’d give up if I were you.”

  The sound of shouting broke out in the lobby and Logan saw fists flying. The chef grinned and walked towards the back of the building. “That’s your next hour taken care of,” he sniggered over his shoulder. Logan rolled his eyes and waded in to break up the fight.

  Chapter 2

  Hana pushed the pram away from St Bart’s, hot tears blurring her vision. Phoenix grumbled and groaned in the pram and Hana tortured herself with her irrational thoughts of child abandonment, increasing the tears to racking sobs of exhaustion and failure.

  At the tiny-detached staff unit, she bumped the pram up the front steps and into a small hallway, realising she left the door unlocked in her hurry to get out. Not that it mattered, there was little worth stealing. “A prospective burglar might feel sorry for me and leave something nice,” Hana sniffed, wiping the back of her hand across her face and streaking the sticky tears over her cheeks.

  Peering into the pram Hana’s relief produced a sigh as her daughter settled, fatigue claiming her tiny body at last. The sleeping infant was beautiful, dark eyelashes fluttering over olive cheeks. “Sorry baby,” Hana whispered, “I’m sorry I’m so rubbish at this mummy thing again.”

  The silence seemed to reverberate around the tiny unit and Hana eyed the many jobs requiring her attention. The washing up from Logan’s breakfast yesterday sat accusingly on the draining board and bits of blanket fluff lay on the tatty rug near the gas fireplace. It demanded the last of Hana’s energy and a whole day of not eating, sleeping or being able to lay the child down, robbed Hana of every ounce left in her forty-five-year-old body. “I can’t do this,” she said again, indulging the negative self-doubt with of defeatism.

  The place looked a tip, but then it looked like that even before the little family first walked in. Logan had stared around him in disgust and walked them all right out again. “I’m not bringing my bloody family here!” he exclaimed.

  Angus, the school principal, pleaded with him. “Please do this for me, Logan. There’s no one else I can trust.”

  “I’m not surprised if you’re offering this to live in!”

  Hana remained tight-lipped and silent, mortified at switching her palace in the hills for a dirty cave and amazed when Logan agreed. “I can’t explain,” he told her later. “But it’s important.”

  The ripped wallpaper overlooked the decrepit, filthy old furniture. Hana’s body craved a cup of English tea and a lie on the bed, but the thought
of the smelly mattress in the double room made the caved in, mustard coloured sofa seem appealing. Logan was a neat-freak and the place was killing him, even though he didn’t have to spend twenty-four hours, seven days a week in it.

  “What am I doing here?” Defeated, Hana slumped onto the sofa, not bothering to take her shoes off. “This place needs tearing down,” she groaned, peering at the sore areas on her hands from scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen with bleach; to no avail. She reached for one of Logan’s sweaters curled over the back of the sofa and buried her face in it. She smelled his familiar, safe scent and wished he were there with her, wrapping his comforting arms around her tired body. Tears leaked out and soaked into the sweater. Hana struggled valiantly for control but knew it was short lived. The dam was close to breaking.

  The sound of the front door creaking open, made her sit up and frantically wipe her eyes on the sleeve of the sweater. She turned a face filled with hope towards what she hoped was Logan’s welcome figure. It wasn’t.

  “Where’s Logan?” the visitor demanded, a sneer in her voice. Her glossy lips curled backwards into a dangerous sneer.

  Hana struck the tears from her cheeks and sat up. Logan’s ex-fiancé stood in their living room, her sassy blonde hair windswept and sexy. She wore a tight fitting pair of jeans which accentuated her gorgeous figure and Hana reluctantly stood and faced her, wearing yesterday’s rumpled, sick-stained clothes. Her natural English reserve for once deserted her. “Get out Caroline!”

  The woman was unfazed and determination lit her eyes. “I need to see him,” she repeated. “Where is he?”

  Hana sighed. “Well, he doesn’t want to see you! So get out!” She sensed an incredible emotional shunt as an insane power coursed through her veins like burning mercury. Six weeks previously she survived a traumatic birth alone, high in the bush above her husband’s family hotel hours after watching her mother-in-law die in a house fire. She arrived home only to be transplanted to this filthy prison and Caroline’s appearance was the final straw.