Just For You (Escape to New Zealand), page 5
“Says he’s brave,” Uncle Matiu said. “But you knew that already. You saw him save Tai. You don’t need to watch him play rugby to know he’s strong and brave. That isn’t the part that counts most anyway.”
“It isn’t?” It counted to her.
“Nah,” he said with decision, lifting his beer to his lips with one leathery brown hand and taking a sip. He set the handle down, wiped his mouth, and Reka waited. What counted, if that didn’t?
“That he was able to save Tai, that isn’t the point,” her uncle continued at last. “Just like you were able to do it, because you’re a good swimmer too. You were able to, and you got stuck in and did it, because Tai’s your nephew, he’s your blood. But he isn’t Hemi’s. Strong is one thing. Brave is one thing. Heaps of war heroes who’re rubbish at home, though. What matters…” He thumped his skinny old-man’s chest. “Mana. That’s what matters. That he runs strongly, that he fights bravely, yeh. And that he can speak softly, that he uses his strength to protect, not just to hurt. That’s what you know about him. That’s what counts.”
A day and a half later, she was still waiting for him, and her kids seemed to have got together and determined to make her life difficult. All she wanted was for the work day to be over, to go home and get ready for Hemi, and she could swear they knew it.
She sniffed as she approached the little group at the corner table. Oh, bugger. She knew what that was. They had been happily coloring just a minute before, but there was some shrieking going on now.
“Ewww!” Mandy exclaimed, her voice shrill with excitement, brown ponytail bobbing as she jumped up. “Somebody has pee-pee pants!”
“Robby!” Beauden shouted. “Robby weed in his pants!”
Robby had stopped coloring and started to cry, rocking a little in his little wooden chair.
“He’s a crybaby!” Beauden said. “Robby weed in his pants, and he’s crying, because he’s a baby!”
“He’s a big baby,” Mandy echoed. “Robby’s a big, big baby.”
“Stop it,” Reka said firmly, gathering Robby off his chair, the telltale acrid aroma letting her know that Beauden had pinpointed the sufferer. “Just about everybody in this room has weed in their pants at school, and you all know it. Today’s Robby’s turn, that’s all.”
“I didn’t,” Mandy said stoutly. “I never did.”
“You spewed, though,” Beauden said with delight. “I remember. You got sick all over the doll corner! Miss Reka had to clean it all up!”
“Everybody has accidents,” Reka said, trying not to sigh. “Every single one of us. Stop crying, Robby. Let’s get your clean pants.” She nodded across the room to Heather, her aide, took Robby by the hand, and set off for his cubby as the little boy wiped a hand under his running nose, still sniffling. Geez. Mondays.
A half-hour later, she had the kids on the round carpet in the center of the room, singing the alphabet song. Calm and structure, she’d decided. Wouldn’t do her any harm either.
A sudden outbreak of four-year-old giggles, then a pair of strong brown legs at the edge of her vision, and that wasn’t something you saw much of in her classroom. She turned her head, and her voice trailed off. A few of the kids were still singing, plowing on to the end, and then they were all staring and giggling.
Hemi. Standing next to the bricks table, a grin on his face, an enormous bouquet of orange Asiatic lilies in his arms. Shorts, jandals, blue T-shirt stretching across that broad chest. Hemi. With a jaw darkened and swollen with bruising, and she exclaimed aloud at the sight of it as she got to her feet, but he paid that no attention.
“Hi,” he said. “Decided I couldn’t wait another minute to see my favorite kindy teacher.”
Heather came over with a smile on her round face, gave Reka a little dig in the ribs, and eased her middle-aged body down to the carpet to take her place. “Come on, kids,” she said. “Zippety-zap! Get ready to wiggle your body!”
Reka barely heard the group starting to sing behind her, because Hemi had put his arms around her, flowers and all. He was holding her, and she was holding him back, loving that she was in his arms again, wishing he would kiss her but knowing it would hurt, and the kids weren’t zippety-zapping nearly as much as they ought to have been.
“Whoa, boy,” she said when she was finally able to get herself under control and step back. She took the flowers from him, laughing and heated and so happy to see him. “You really know how to turn an impressionable girl’s head.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” He watched, his smile lopsided, painful, probably, but broad all the same, as she buried her nose in the extravagantly scented mass. “Believe me, that’s what I’m hoping.”
That wasn’t the only surprise he had in store, she discovered a couple hours later when he came to collect her at her flat.
“Lucky it’s summer,” he said, eyeing her yellow sundress with approval.
“Why’s that?” She laughed again, because she couldn’t help laughing, because she was walking down the Chapel Street hill with him holding her hand.
“Well, because you’re not wearing much, for one thing. But also because we’ve got enough light left for this.”
“For what, exactly?” All he’d told her was to pack her togs and towel, and she’d been surprised when he’d headed in the exact wrong direction for the beach.
He took her across the minimal traffic on The Strand, through the line of ancient trees stretching along the shore beside the harbor, onto the jetty leading to the little platform that was Russell Wharf, and nodded at the sleek white power boat moored there. “For me to impress you,” he told her. “As much as I can right now, anyway. At least I hope so.”
“We going out in Ewan’s boat?” she asked with pleasure. A bit above her touch. If she needed to go somewhere, the ferry or an occasional water taxi was as flash as she got.
“We are,” he said, his hand around hers as he handed her down into it, then jumped down himself with their bags, stowed them at the direction of the man waiting for them, his face and arms seamed and brown from a lifetime on the water.
“Afternoon, Reka,” Ewan said. “This fella come back for you, did he?” Because of course Ewan knew her business. Everybody did.
“Where are we going?” Reka asked, deciding not to answer him.
“It’s a surprise,” Hemi said, and Ewan smiled at Reka, closed one brown eye in a slow wink.
It didn’t take her long to suss it out, of course, not when the boat rounded the end of the peninsula, headed northeast, and the broad, scooped bay of Motuarohia Island came into view. Barely twenty minutes later, because Ewan’s flash boat had a pretty powerful motor.
A few sailboats bobbed at their moorings, a few afternoon visitors walked the beach, and otherwise, there was nothing but bush, sand, and bright blue sea. Ewan loaded the two of them into the dinghy along with a chilly bin and a bag of snorkel equipment, and Reka laughed again.
“You really have done it up right,” she told Hemi.
“Hope so,” he said.
Ewan piloted the little dinghy up onto the sand and Reka jumped out, sandals in hand, into the bit of surf near shore, the hem of her sundress catching a bit of salt water along the way, but who cared about that?
“Two hours,” Ewan told Hemi before taking himself off to the boat again.
“You can’t snorkel, though,” Reka objected once Hemi had carried their chilly bin and gear up the beach, set them near a gnarled old tree growing sideways at the edge of the sand. “Not with your face.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Course I can.”
“But won’t it hurt?”
He shrugged. “It hurts anyway. May as well do something I like. You want to make me feel better, I can still flag Ewan down. I don’t mind turning straight around again. Not at all.”
She laughed. “Nah, boy. I’m not that easy anymore, remember? Takes more than flowers and a boat ride, much as I love that you did them both. Let’s walk to the top first, though. I love the view from here.”
“Suits me,” he said, and they left their gear where it was, climbed the half-kilometer track up through the bush.
She followed Hemi up. No habitations here, nobody but the occasional boatie, nothing but sea and sand, ferns and native hardwoods and the ever-present gnarled trunks of pohutukawa, their red blossoms fallen to the ground now, but the berries attracting the tui and bellbirds whose musical calls filled the air. A breeze stirred the long fronds of the fern trees to either side, and a cheeky little fantail swooped and darted around them, aiming for the insects stirred up by the humans’ passing feet.
Reka inhaled the joy of being here. Of walking with Hemi, of following his broad back, his sturdy brown legs as they planted themselves in the earth, making short work of the little climb. No matter that his body, as well as his face, had to still be aching and sore.
They paused at the top, turned three hundred and sixty degrees to take in the view, and her heart sang.
The Bay of Islands expanded before them in every direction, endless blue water punctuated by the irregular shapes of islands colored all the variegated greens of the Northland bush. The peninsula that held Russell stretched out long to the southwest, a larger smear of green, but the tiny settlement was invisible from where they stood, and it was as if nobody else existed, as if the two of them were alone in this pristine world.
He reached for her from behind, and she relaxed back against his chest, felt his arms wrap around her.
“Looks just the way it must have when the ancestors came,” he said, and she hummed her reply.
They stood like that, looking out, Hemi strong and solid behind her, content just to hold her, and she was happy.
“This is the best part of my week,” he said after a moment. “Coming here.”
She laughed a little. “Considering the other part of your week was getting bashed in the head, not sure that’s too flattering.”
She felt the rumble of his own laugh radiate through her. “Even so, baby. Even so.”
“You won, anyway.”
“Yeh, it was nice, but it’s what I told you. Preseason.”
“You looked good, though,” she insisted. “You looked so good. Even after you did get bashed in the head.”
He shrugged, she felt it. “That’s the job.”
She laughed a bit more, and he said, “What?”
“That’s what my Uncle Matiu said. Exactly that. That’s what he said you would say.”
“He’s a wise old one, eh.”
“He is.”
Hemi hesitated a moment. “I’ve met a fair bit of your whanau now. But never your own mum and dad, your brothers and sisters. Thought you were from Russell.”
“Ah,” she said. “My dad buggered off to Aussie a long time ago, that’s why. Got some other kids, across the Ditch.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Nah. It happens. What men do.”
“Some men,” he said, his voice quiet. “Some men.”
“Yeh. Men like him.”
“And your mum?”
“Oh, she’s around. Down in Whangarei now, though, working there.”
“Mmm. Not much work in the North.”
“No,” she said on a sigh. “There isn’t. That’s why I’m a kindy teacher. There’ll always be kids, as long as there are people.”
“At least as long as some of those people are Maori,” he said, and she laughed again.
They headed back down the track again after a few more minutes, got their gear on and cooled their heated bodies in the crystalline waters of the sweeping bay, the sea glowing an unearthly turquoise in the slowly fading light of a Northland summer evening, and it was even better, swimming slowly with Hemi and looking at the world beneath. The spiky black of kina, the multicolored sea stars near the shore, and then, farther out, the red moki, the gorgeous blue of a maomao darting by, the silver flash of the black-striped parore. And the mighty snapper, as much as a meter long, making their majestic way through the kelp beds.
They sat on their twisting branch afterwards, sedate in the view of the boats at anchor around them, and ate their picnic. Nothing flash, sandwiches and another bottle of white wine drunk from plastic glasses. Perfect. And then Ewan was buzzing toward shore in the little dinghy and their lazy evening was coming to an end.
“Too short,” she sighed, tossing the last of the rubbish into the chilly bin and closing the lid.
“And I have training in the morning,” he said. “Too short. But good, eh.”
“Yeh.” She smiled at him, put a gentle hand on the uninjured side of his jaw, and gave him a soft kiss there. “So good.”
“Have a good time?” Ewan asked them when they were back on the boat and underway again, to Hemi’s regret.
“Brilliant,” Reka said, and he glowed a little inside.
“Other than that she outswam me,” he told the older man. “Got a glimpse of an eagle ray, and off she went. Couldn’t keep up. My ego’s still smarting.”
Ewan laughed. “She’ll do that. Been a surf lifesaver from the time she was about fifteen, eh.”
“Fourteen,” she said, and Hemi saw her wicked smile at the expression on his face and had to smile himself.
“Well, I know she’s not bad at lifesaving,” he said.
“Not so bad yourself, are you,” she answered.
“Our women’s team took second place in the Northland Surf Lifesaving Challenge not so long ago,” Ewan went on, chatty now. “We were pretty chuffed about that. With Reka, of course. I wouldn’t be too quick to take her on in a paddling contest either, unless you’re sure you’ve got the bollocks for it.”
“The bollocks to lose, you mean,” Hemi said.
Ewan had a good laugh about that. “Yeh. Think you’re man enough for her? I’d say it’d take a fair bit of confidence.”
“I guess she’ll be the judge of that, eh, Reka.”
“Yeh.” She was laughing now too. “If you’re not well and truly warned off by now, and you want to have a go, I’m willing.”
“Works for me,” Hemi said, and Ewan just smiled.
The boat picked up speed, out on the open water, and he saw her shiver a little. He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her up against his side, felt her snuggle up closer, and sighed himself, because that was good.
He would have helped her out of the boat, too, but she didn’t need his help. As soon as Ewan had eased the craft into the tiny landing stage that was Russell Wharf and tied off, she was grabbing her bag, jumping down onto the dock with a “Cheers” for the skipper, and Hemi was left with nothing to do but follow her.
“So,” he said. He took her bag from her, because that was one thing he was going to do no matter what. He slung it onto his shoulder, then took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. “Any chance of you sending me on my way back to training tomorrow with a smile on my face?”
She was nestled up close again, but didn’t answer for a moment.
“I want you to know,” she finally said as they began the steep climb up Chapel Street past the church, past the ancient graves of soldiers and sailors killed in the skirmishes for this ground, the white headstones ghostly in the starlight. “It’s not just…I’m not playing. This isn’t some game, some hoop I’m trying to make you jump through. It’s that I’m afraid I like you too much, and I don’t know you well enough, to risk it. To risk my heart. Not with everything you are, everything that’s out there for you.”
“And everything you know about me,” he said, and wished it weren’t true. “Not the way you risked it last time, because I broke it. I know I did. I thought we both knew we were having fun. I thought that was all I was having, and that it was enough.”
“Well, to be fair, I’m not even sure you broke my heart,” she said, and surely only Reka would be that honest. “More my pride, maybe. But now…”
“Yeh,” he said. “Different for me too. And I know. I know it’s your heart, now. And it matters to me, your heart.”
“It does? You sure about that?”
He smiled and kept walking. As steep as the incline was, she wasn’t out of breath, just as she hadn’t been on the island. “Yeh. Because I’m selfish about it. I want you to give it to me. And when you do, I want all of it, so it would be better for me if it were whole, eh.”
He could hear her sigh. They had turned her corner now, and unfortunately, had reached her front door, and this was where he drove away and left her again. The velvety dusk had turned to full, black night, uninterrupted by anything as prosaic as street lighting, and he wouldn’t have been able to see her at all if the night hadn’t been so clear, if the stars hadn’t been so spectacular, complete with the broad, bright streak that was the Milky Way.
He turned, took her in his arms, and felt the way she came to him. He didn’t kiss her, but she kissed him again, the gentlest press of her lips against the aching soreness that, for all its throbbing insistence, was no match for the way the rest of his body ached for her.
She clung to him a moment, then pulled back. “So hard, when it’s so good.”
“I did all right, then,” he said. “Made you happy.”
“Yeh. You did. I think you’d better get on back to Auckland, though, before I forget myself and ask you to make me happier.”
He smiled. “I’ll do that. And I’ll work out how to see you again, soon as we can manage it. We’ll get to work on that heart of yours.”
He was almost to his car when he turned around and said, his voice not loud but carrying across to her all the same, “Think about me.”
“That’s all?” she called softly back. “Just think?”
“Well, watch me, too, if you get the chance of it. Watch me, and know that I will’ve been thinking about you too. You can count on that.”
“Nah, I dunno,” Hemi said on the following Saturday night, reaching into his locker for his shirt, pulling it over his chest and tugging it down, wincing inwardly now that the adrenaline was no longer coursing through his body, leaving him with the throbbing reminder of every single tackle he’d made and received over the past couple hours.
